Pan Asianism And The Legacy Of The Chinese Revolution

Download or read book Pan-Asianism and the Legacy of the Chinese Revolution written by Viren Murthy and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With Xi Jinping's project to revive the ancient Silk Road for the contemporary era, new analyses of pan-Asianism have proliferated. Most of these narratives focus especially on the "rise of China" as the natural leader of new capitalist bloc, foretelling a shift of power from the West to the East. What these approaches lack, however, is any historical grounding in the thought of influential twentieth-century pan-Asianists. Viren Murthy explores the writings and specific historical contexts of key pan-Asianist intellectuals in Japan, China, and India from the early 1900s to the present to clarify how current discourses distort the very foundations of pan-Asianism. At the heart of this thinking was the notion of a unity of Asian nations, of weak nations becoming powerful, and of the Third World confronting the "advanced world" on equal terms. But there was more: pan-Asianists envisioned a future beyond both imperialism and capitalism. That the resurgence of pan-Asianist discourse has emerged alongside the dominance of capitalism, Murthy argues, signals a profound misunderstanding"--