Chinese Whispers. Why Everything You've Heard About China Is Wrong

Cover Type: Softcover
Book Condition: Good
Jacket Condition: None Issued
Publisher: Weidenfeld And Nicolson
Publisher Place: Uk
Publisher Year: 2013
Edition: First Edition

Description: 278 pages. Book is in general good condition. There is some light reading wear present, but still a presentable copy.

Publishers Description: An iconoclastic portrait of modern China and a counterblast to Western assumptions. We think we know China. The worlds most venerable and self-confident civilisation, home to the largest unified race of people on the planet, China manufactures the objects that fill our lives. We see a country peopled by docile and determined factory workers, domineering Tiger Mothers obsessed with education and achievement, and a society that has put the accumulation of wealth above political freedom. Above all, we see a superpower on the rise, destined to overtake the West and to dominate the twenty-first century. But how accurate is this picture What if, as Ben Chu argues, we are all engaged in a grand game of Chinese Whispers, in which the facts have become more and more distorted in the telling. We have been getting China and the Chinese wrong for centuries. From the Enlightenment philosophes, enraptured by what they imagined to be a kingdom of reason, to the Victorians who derided the flowery empire, outsiders have long projected their own dreams and nightmares onto this vast country. With Chinas economic resurgence today, many have fallen once more under the spell of this glittering new global hegemon, while others foretell terrible danger in Chinas return to the centre of the world stage. Chinese Whispers tugs aside this age-old curtain of distortion in a powerful counterblast to modern assumptions about China. By examining the central myths, or whispers, that have come to dominate our view of China, Ben Chu forces us to question everything we thought we knew about worlds most populous nation. The result is a surprising, penetrating insight into modern China. About the Author Ben Chu is the Economics Editor of the INDEPENDENT. He was born in Manchester to a Chinese father and a British mother, and lived in Hong Kong for two years as a child. After studying modern history at the University of Oxford he joined THE INDEPENDENT in 2000 where he became a leader writer. He lives in south London with his wife and daughter.

ISBN: 9780297868453