Chinese whispers
Subtitle: why everything you've heard about China is wrong
By: Ben Chu
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Orion Publishing Group, Limited
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 278
ISBN-13: 9780297868446; 9780297868453; 9780297868460
Copyright date: 2013
Subjects: Civilization; Social conditions; Social life and customs; Economic conditions; Economic history; Manners and customs; Kultur; Sozialer Wandel; Chinabild; Nationalcharakter
Description: "An iconoclastic portrait of modern China and a counterblast to Western assumptions. We think we know China. The world's 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 21st 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 China's economic resurgence today, many have fallen once more under the spell of this glittering new global hegemon, while others foretell terrible danger in China's 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 world's most populous nation. The result is a surprising, penetrating insight into modern China."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: WHISPER ONE China has an ancient and fixed culture; title: WHISPER TWO The Chinese are irredeemably racist; title: WHISPER THREE The Chinese don't want freedom; title: WHISPER FOUR China has the world's finest education system; title: WHISPER FIVE The Chinese live to work; title: WHISPER SIX The Chinese have re-invented capitalism; title: WHISPER SEVEN China will rule the world; title: Conclusion.