Is China part of the world? Based on much of the political, media, and popular discourse in the West the answer is seemingly no. Even after four decades of integration into the global socioeconomic system, discussions of China continue to be underpinned, bound, and framed by a core assumption—that the country represents a fundamentally different ‘other’ that somehow exists outside the ‘real’ world. Either implicitly or explicitly, China is generally depicted as something that can be understood in isolation—an external force with the potential to impact on the ‘normal’ functioning of things. This core assumption, of China as an orientalised, externalised, and separate ‘other’ ultimately produces a distorted image of both China and the world. By examining five key issues that frequently arise in current discussions about China, this book seeks to illuminate the ways in which the country and people form an integral part of the global capitalist system.

The book, written by Ivan Franceschini and Nicholas Loubere, will be published open access by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

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