China Resurrected: A Modern Geopolitical History [Paperback]

China's rise to superpower is seemingly a modern phenomenon, but it has a long history.

This book follows China's geopolitical transformation on the world stage, from struggling to defend herself against the British in the Opium Wars, to rivalling the United States for supremacy. What started as a response to Europe's colonial influence has gradually become China's quest to take a leading role on the word stage. But how did this happen? And what kind of actor is China as a global great power?

The answers to these questions lie in how China has been shaped by its changing relationships with major world powers over the last two centuries. Arguing that a series of military defeats in the Opium Wars, Boxer Crisis and Japanese occupation led to a deep-rooted national sense of geopolitical vulnerability, van der Putten shows how this imbalance of power has resulted in Chinese distrust and uncertainty, even after it ceased to be prey to imperialist powers.

Tracing China's relations with other major powers over the last 185 years,China Resurrectedshows how they have influenced the way in which China itself has become a leading power, and what this means for its relations with the West.

A history of China's geopolitical evolution from 1840 to the present, tracing its rise from the Opium Wars to an emerging world power.Frans-Paul van der Puttenis Senior Research Associate at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, Netherlands, and Associate China Expert at the Leiden Asia Centre, Netherlands. The founder of ChinaGeopolitics, a research and consulting firm, he was previously Head of the China Centre at the Clingendael Institute, and chief editor of theJournal of Global and Imperial Interactions.

China Resurrected stands as an insightful and compelling contribution to both political science and modern Chinese history. More importantly, it will enrich scholarly debate on the meaning of China's resurgence in global affairsl“W