China's long-playing geopolitical conception

Xi Jinping's call for the "rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" is the central pillar of Chinese domestic and foreign policy.

- GUNJAN SINGH

It is generally understood that this tenet departs from Deng Xiaoping's dictum of "hide your strength, and bide your time". However, Frans-Paul van der Putten's book, China Resurrected: A Modern Geopolitical History, argues that similar sentiments prevailed as far back as Sun Yat-sen's time. The "... resurrection of China as a powerful state was a matter of necessity: it was all or nothing for the Chinese civilization," Mr van der Putten writes. He also makes the point that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s foreign policy was no different to the one followed by the Qing rulers and the Kuomintang.

Thus, as the author sums it up, the focus of the book is that "the emergence of China as a major global power today is the continuation of a process that began in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with attempts to reduce the influence over China of other great powers". The book provides a "historical context to current events" and shows how China is reacting in the same or similar fashion as it has done in the past 200 years.