The Idea of China

A Contested History
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-0-674-97679-5
Verlag: Harvard University Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 608 g

An acclaimed historian’s bold response to two simple, yet vexed, questions: What counts as China, and who counts as Chinese? China became a capitalist superpower by investing in globalization. Now that it has established its credentials—and emerged as a major US competitor—its leaders are looking within, focused on suppressing dissent and fostering cohesion. The result has been an increasingly nationalist cultural agenda, celebrating a Chinese identity steeped in the mystique of the Middle Kingdom and nostalgia for heroic twentieth-century resistance. Yet Chinese nationalism, like nationalism everywhere, is fraught. Few Westerners, and even fewer Chinese, recognize that the very idea of China is up for grabs. In this sweeping history, Xu Guoqi explores the transnational construction of Chineseness. The Idea of China describes an identity constantly under renovation. Through dialogue and confrontation with neighbors, more distant outsiders, and Chinese speakers and writers within the state, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the diaspora, the idea of China has been reshaped repeatedly across time. Even bedrock cultural formations like Confucianism have been reimported to China after their translation in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and elsewhere. The idea of China has always been and remains a continuing process, invented, subverted, and reinvented to serve the shifting needs of kings and bureaucrats, industrialists and intellectuals, allies and adversaries. Xu’s chronicle is as provocative as it is rigorous, and his conclusion could hardly be starker: China, fundamentally, is constituted by a shared history. To accept this is to begin moving past the heated great-power rivalries that threaten international peace and stability today.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Xu, Guoqi

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Innen-, Bildungs- und Bevölkerungspolitik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Ethische Themen & Debatten: Zensur
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen

Über Autor(innen)

Xu, Guoqi
Xu Guoqi is David H. Y. Chang Professor of History and founding director of the Institute of Transnational History of China at the University of Hong Kong. He has written many books, including <i>Asia and the Great War, Chinese and Americans, Strangers on the Western Front, China and the Great War,</i> and <i>Olympic Dreams</i>.