1/10 I’m very pleased to unveil the cover of my new book ‘The Invention of China’ due for publication in September 2020 by @YaleBooks. I thought I would explain why I think the cover - designed by @Mister_Kirby - is so great. 
2/10 The book shows how many contemporary East Asian problems (Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, South China Sea etc) emerged from the construction of Chinese nationhood in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
3/10 I show how European ideas about race, nation, history and territory were adopted by reformers and revolutionaries in the late-Qing era who sought to impose new ideas of singular ‘Chinese-ness’ on a diverse population.
4/10 This was a vision of ‘Chinese-ness’ that was primarily developed by people who were living outside the country whether as political exiles in Japan - like Liang Qichao - or as overseas sojourners - like Sun Yat-sen.
5/10 The main image on the book cover is of a statue of Sun Yat-sen sculpted in 1984 by the late Romanian-Canadian artist Joe Rosenthal, and erected in Riverdale Park, Toronto by the city’s Chinese community.
6/10 It portrays Sun Yat-sen in a highly idealised manner - as a classical scholar wearing a gown and carrying a scroll. In reality, Sun was never a classical scholar and he was far more comfortable in a Western-style suit or a military uniform.
7/10 The statue shows Sun Yat-sen carrying a copy of his ‘Three principles of the people’ (people’s lineage, people's sovereignty & people’s livelihood) originally formulated on his international travels in 1905
8/10 Sun was able to mobilise overseas Chinese communities with a potent mix of ostensibly traditional ideas and a new nationalism. These communities provided the money and the ideas that propelled him, and later Chiang Kai-shek to power.
9/10 In the book I argue that our contemporary idea of China is first and foremost an external construction. It was developed outside China by people like Sun Yat-sen and Liang Qichao, and both imposed on and adopted by the nascent elite of the new state.
10/10 Thus an image of the original Chinese nationalist dressed in an imagined traditional manner and erected by overseas Chinese in a Canadian park is absolutely fitting for a book entitled ‘the Invention of China’.
