China’s hypersensitivity - the world’s problem? The ‘invention’ of China and the promotion of anxiety

Bill Hayton, Chatham House and author of ’The Invention of China'

This event is online only. Times are UTC+11 (Sydney, Canberra Melbourne). After you register, you will be sent a link by 5:45pm on the day of the event.

Why do Chinese officials get so upset about a map printed on a T-shirt or an advert for an American brand of cosmetics? Why do questions about China’s territory and sovereignty become such emotive topics? A common answer is to blame everything on the ‘century of national humiliation’, from the First Opium War until the end of the Chinese Civil War. In this talk, Bill Hayton will argue against this explanation. He will discuss how China came to adopt Western ideas of sovereignty and territory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how politicians deliberately promoted anxiety over territory during the 1920s and 1930s in order to foster feelings of national unity. He will argue that contemporary China’s hypersensitivity over these issues is a deliberately promoted political strategy.

Bill Hayton is an Associate Fellow with the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House, a former journalist with BBC News in London and a regular writer on Asian issues. His latest book, ’The Invention of China’ was published by Yale University Press in late 2020. He previously authored ’The South China Sea: the struggle for power in Asia’ (Yale, 2014) and ‘Vietnam: rising dragon’ (Yale, 2010, second edition 2020). In 2006/7 he was the BBC’s reporter in Vietnam and in 2013/14 he was seconded to the Myanmar state broadcaster to work on media reform. 

Photo: A small Free Tibet protest with balloons is surrounded by Chinese flags. 2008 Olympic torch relay in Commonwealth Park Canberra. Graeme Bartlett, Wikimedia Commons.