China Imagined : From European Fantasy to Spectacular Power

If 'China', as Lee argues, is a product of Westernisation, then the West is itself in a process of becoming China.

How did China become China? And where is it leading us? We talk as if it had always existed: eternal China with its 5,000 years of uninterrupted history. But the name ''China'' was first used by sixteenth-century Europeans, and its Chinese equivalent, Zhongguo, only gained currency in the mid-1800s. China Imagined is a thoughtful exploration of the idea of China, from the naming and mapping of its territory and peoples to the creation and rise of the modern nation-state. China''s early history describes a multilingual space, ruled by a homogeneous elite with its own minority culture--a far cry from Maoism''s national mass culture, or Xi Jinping''s state-controlled digital society today. Gregory Lee traces this complex, diverse entity''s evolution since the Opium Wars into a China made in ''our'' image. Today, it is a great power integral to the global system, whether it comes to climate change, security or inequality. Given this rapid convergence with the West, Xi''s China holds up a mirror to our own nations. Trump''s America, Putin''s Russia and post- Brexit Europe all betray echoes of the ''Chinese Dream''. If China is a product of Westernisation, is it now the West''s turn to become China?