Shifting realities
RANA MITTER is gripped by this sharp and persuasive account of China’s ever-changing relationship with the west
Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination by Robert Bickers Allen Lane, 544 pages
In November 1935, the International Exhibition of Chinese Art opened at Burlington House in London. Showcasing nearly 800 items from the Forbidden City in Beijing, the exhibition was a turning-point in changing the image of China among the wider British public, as its new Nationalist government used the power of Chinese art to demonstrate not only that the country had a long cultural tradition, but that its modern new government could project cultural power to define its future relationship with the west.
Chinese nationalism has been, and remains, a powerful force in global politics. It stems in part from the country’s painful history of interaction with an often violent outside world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Robert Bickers tells this story with immense skill in a book that combines a colourful, gripping narrative with a powerful argument that will stimulate new thinking about China’s relationship with the west. It will also cause some uncom- fortable moments for any who believe that the imperial presence in China was essentially a benevolent one.
Bickers reads the story of China in the modern era as a series of encounters, some co-operative and some confrontational, between China, the west and, at times, Japan. It describes the rise of radical nationalist and communist revolutions provoked by the presence of western empires in China in the interwar period, shows the devastating effects of the Sino-Japanese War on a slowly modernising country, and then illustrates the continuing effects of the hatred of imperialism on Mao’s China, even after all hostile foreigners had been expelled from the country.
Yet even the fire and fury of the Cultural Revolution would eventually fade and nationalism once again would take a more outward-looking form. One of the great sensations at the British Museum in 2014 was an exhibition on the Ming dynasty: Fifty Years that Changed China. This was a version of that great exhibition some 80 years earlier. But today’s China is in a much stronger position to avoid the invasions and wars that ultimately doomed its Nationalist predecessor.
Chinese nationalism has been, and remains, a powerful force in global politics