BOOK REVIEW: The Invention of China

By Bill Hayton. Yale University Press, hard cover, US$26.13

This is a bombshell of a book. It will doubtless enrage not only officials in Beijing but a mainland populace brought up on narratives of China’s past which have not been subjected to fact-checking. It will confuse foreign readers mostly used to milder versions of the same narrative. Many scholars of China will doubtless attack either specifics or the o…