Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: One, two or many Chinas?
Source: Open Democracy (2-15-08) [ Jeffrey N Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. His most recent book is China’s Brave New World-And Other Tales for Global Times (Indiana University Press, 2007), and his next will be Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (Routledge, forthcoming). He writes for a wide range of academic and general interest periodicals and is a founding member of a new group blog on Chinese issues, The China Beat: Blogging How the East Is Read.] China is continually part of the global news agenda, a tendency that is certain to accelerate in 2008 as its supercharged economy develops and as Beijing hosts the Olympic games on 8-24 August. This media coverage of China in the west is often dominated by emotionally charged stories, of which the reports of the film director Steven Spielberg’s about-face on 12 February – from considering playing an advisory role in planning the spectacles that will accompany the Olympics to criticising the Chinese
