Why history is so galling for the world’s newest superpower / by Simon Scott Plummer
Out of China: How the Chinese Ended
the Era of Western Domination
Robert Bickers
(Allen Lane, 576 PP, £30)
tablet bookshop price £27 • tel 01420 592974
In 1949, Mao Zedong declared that China had “stood up” after more than a century of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers. Such is his colossal presence that the nationalist struggles of the first part of the twentieth century, and the dependence of Chinese Communism on the Soviet Union after the revolution, tend to be overlooked. As a groundbreaker, Mao ranks with Lenin, but there is more continuity in China’s recent history than his famous declaration of 1949 would suggest.