About this item
China's current leadership lays claim to a 5,000-year-old civilization, but "China" as a unified country and people, Bill Hayton argues, was created far more recently by a small group of intellectuals. In this compelling account, Hayton shows how China's present-day geopolitical problems - the fates of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the South China Sea - were born in the struggle to create a modern nation-state. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reformers and revolutionaries adopted foreign ideas to "invent' a new vision of China. By asserting a particular, politicized version of the past the government bolstered its claim to a vast territory stretching from the Pacific to Central Asia. Ranging across history, nationhood, language, and territory, Hayton shows how the Republic's reworking of its past not only helped it to justify its right to rule a century ago - but continues to motivate and direct policy today.
About the Author
Bill Hayton is the author of 'The South China Sea: the struggle for power in Asia' published by Yale University Press in 2014 and 'Vietnam: rising dragon' published by Yale in 2010. He has worked as a television and radio journalist since 1995 and for BBC News since 1998. He has focused on Southeast Asia since working as the BBC's reporter in Vietnam in 2006-7. He has written about Southeast Asia for many publications including The Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, National Interest and The Diplomat. Before working in Vietnam he reported from Europe and the Middle East including Iran, Yemen and the Balkans.He has a personal website at www.billhayton.com
