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Review
'Confident and enthralling discussion.' --John Keay, Literary Review
'Thant writes compellingly about how both India and China have changed their attitudes towards the military junta ... [he is] an idiosyncratic cultural historian. ... the book possesses a heartfelt and welcome optimism, giving voice to a desire for connections that exceeds all notions of foreign policy, geopolitics or business and becomes, instead, about people encountering each other in all their glorious difference.' --Siddhartha Deb, Guardian
Thant Myint-U ... is in a perfect position to comment on the past, present and future of a country whose fate in intertwined with its boisterous neighbours, and he does so in this fascinating book with skill and rare insight.' --Oxford Times
'Thant writes compellingly about how both India and China have changed their attitudes towards the military junta ... [he is] an idiosyncratic cultural historian. ... the book possesses a heartfelt and welcome optimism, giving voice to a desire for connections that exceeds all notions of foreign policy, geopolitics or business and becomes, instead, about people encountering each other in all their glorious difference.' --Siddhartha Deb, Guardian
Thant Myint-U ... is in a perfect position to comment on the past, present and future of a country whose fate in intertwined with its boisterous neighbours, and he does so in this fascinating book with skill and rare insight.' --Oxford Times
Book Description
Where China Meets India is a vivid, searching, and timely book about a remote region that is suddenly becoming a geopolitical center of the world.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is really three books in one: it's partly a travelogue, across Burma, southwestern China and northeast India; it's partly a study of recent geopolitics; and its partly, and this is my favourite part, a deep look at the interconnected histories in the region. As anyone who has read the author's first book The River of Lost Footsteps will appreciate, Thant Myint-U weaves together dozens of wonderful and entertaining stories, from ancient China to medieval Bengal to the Sino-Indian war of 1962.
The book's starting point is what the author says is the great geographic shift underway, the result of the big infrastructure projects that will overcome traditional barriers and move India and China, across Burma, much closer to together than ever before. He uses this to start his journey in Rangoon, ever step of the way peeling back layers of history, whilst at the same time describing the places he visits, and discussing the profound changes underway. Along the way, he explores the fate of many little kingdoms, like the Naxi in today's Yunnan, or Manipur, now part of India.
It's an easy book to read, structured as a travelogue, and will appeal to anyone interested in India, Burma or China, interested in Asian history, or who just wants to explore a little known corner of an increasingly very important part of the world.
The book's starting point is what the author says is the great geographic shift underway, the result of the big infrastructure projects that will overcome traditional barriers and move India and China, across Burma, much closer to together than ever before. He uses this to start his journey in Rangoon, ever step of the way peeling back layers of history, whilst at the same time describing the places he visits, and discussing the profound changes underway. Along the way, he explores the fate of many little kingdoms, like the Naxi in today's Yunnan, or Manipur, now part of India.
It's an easy book to read, structured as a travelogue, and will appeal to anyone interested in India, Burma or China, interested in Asian history, or who just wants to explore a little known corner of an increasingly very important part of the world.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
What makes this book unique is the way in which it combines the past, present, and future of three very different countries - India, Burma, and China - weaving together the history and politics of each place in a way that provides fresh insights into all three.
Only the first part is actually about Burma, the politics there today, the history of this incredibly diverse country, with mountain peoples even today at war with the central government, and the ways in which it is finding itself now increasingly squeezed between Asia's two big powers. He takes the reader from Rangoon up to the border regions where China is launching huge infrastructure projects but where Chinese people are also settling in huge numbers and where Chinese culture and language are starting to make big inroads.
It's the second part that really unveils the central premise: that something very special is happening now, with a Chinese frontier that has moved steadily south-westward for more than two thousand years, finally reaching Burma's Irrawaddy valley and the edge of Indian civilization. It's a fascinating idea that I have not heard anywhere else, despite all the hundreds of books on China's 'rise' to global power. As the author explains, through wonderfully told historical stories, what is today southwestern China was once, a myriad of small kingdoms and even (non-Chinese) empires - a view that would be entirely unacceptable to today's Chinese leadership. Only slowly, over centuries, did the Chinese gain control - making war, making treaties with local chiefs, sending in settlers, crushing rebellions, in a way strikingly similar to the European colonization of other parts of the world. It was a process, the author says, that has continued well into the 20th century. The 'China' part of the book, which is about a third of the whole, is a travelogue, partly to Beijing (to discuss current geopolitics) but partly through this realm of forgotten and conquered kingdoms.
Then there's India, and is this part (another third), the author travels from Delhi and Calcutta to the Northeastern provinces, barely known to outsiders, and explores the legacies of the British partition of the country, and the creation of what became Bangladesh. He also takes us on a tour of a whole other set of forgotten kingdoms, now part of the India, and the literally hundreds of different peoples in that part of the country, peoples once linked to Burma and to the southwest of today's China. He also discusses ancient ties that once bound India to Burma and beyond, through religion, culture etc. At the heart of this part is an exploration of the question of why, in these new borderlands, its China and not India that seems to be the more dynamic player.
If all this sounds confusing, it's not when you read the book. The travelogue is engaging, and will take you on trips you're very unlikely to ever go yourself. The history is extremely entertaining, with unexpected characters (like Herbert Hoover making a cameo) and stories ranging from those of ancient explorers to the 1962 Sino-Indian War and beyond. And the author's discussions of current and future politics will make you see the map of Asia in a very different way.
Only the first part is actually about Burma, the politics there today, the history of this incredibly diverse country, with mountain peoples even today at war with the central government, and the ways in which it is finding itself now increasingly squeezed between Asia's two big powers. He takes the reader from Rangoon up to the border regions where China is launching huge infrastructure projects but where Chinese people are also settling in huge numbers and where Chinese culture and language are starting to make big inroads.
It's the second part that really unveils the central premise: that something very special is happening now, with a Chinese frontier that has moved steadily south-westward for more than two thousand years, finally reaching Burma's Irrawaddy valley and the edge of Indian civilization. It's a fascinating idea that I have not heard anywhere else, despite all the hundreds of books on China's 'rise' to global power. As the author explains, through wonderfully told historical stories, what is today southwestern China was once, a myriad of small kingdoms and even (non-Chinese) empires - a view that would be entirely unacceptable to today's Chinese leadership. Only slowly, over centuries, did the Chinese gain control - making war, making treaties with local chiefs, sending in settlers, crushing rebellions, in a way strikingly similar to the European colonization of other parts of the world. It was a process, the author says, that has continued well into the 20th century. The 'China' part of the book, which is about a third of the whole, is a travelogue, partly to Beijing (to discuss current geopolitics) but partly through this realm of forgotten and conquered kingdoms.
Then there's India, and is this part (another third), the author travels from Delhi and Calcutta to the Northeastern provinces, barely known to outsiders, and explores the legacies of the British partition of the country, and the creation of what became Bangladesh. He also takes us on a tour of a whole other set of forgotten kingdoms, now part of the India, and the literally hundreds of different peoples in that part of the country, peoples once linked to Burma and to the southwest of today's China. He also discusses ancient ties that once bound India to Burma and beyond, through religion, culture etc. At the heart of this part is an exploration of the question of why, in these new borderlands, its China and not India that seems to be the more dynamic player.
If all this sounds confusing, it's not when you read the book. The travelogue is engaging, and will take you on trips you're very unlikely to ever go yourself. The history is extremely entertaining, with unexpected characters (like Herbert Hoover making a cameo) and stories ranging from those of ancient explorers to the 1962 Sino-Indian War and beyond. And the author's discussions of current and future politics will make you see the map of Asia in a very different way.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
I went to Burma once, taking one of those slightly illicit border crossings while trekking in Mae Hong Son, Northern Thailand. Carefully and safely guided hrough different villages of 'hill tribe' people, it felt more like a steamy and exhausting museum tour than a real journey. It's impossible to know what you're seeing in 3 days, when you don't know the language and are a bit overwhelmed by it all.
Thant Myint U is Burmese, and speaks some Chinese and some Tibetan too, so his travels through that wild, uncharted area between Burma, China and India are full of the people he meets and the conversations he has, while he tries to work out what's going on and how the rise of China and India as economic superpowers affects and, is affected by, the lands he's travelling in.
What will happen when there's motorway and high speed rail all the way from Beijing through Kunming to Rangoon, and perhaps from Delhi too? Will the west have any relevance at all? Will Burma become a province of China, or will it manage to use India as a balance?
I'm not sure that Thant Myint U really answers these questions, and perhaps its just too early to tell, but he gives a fascinating travelogue of the area, its historic links to China and India, and a light insight into the geopolitics around it.
Worth buying in the kindle edition, though perhaps not quite at the hardback price.
Thant Myint U is Burmese, and speaks some Chinese and some Tibetan too, so his travels through that wild, uncharted area between Burma, China and India are full of the people he meets and the conversations he has, while he tries to work out what's going on and how the rise of China and India as economic superpowers affects and, is affected by, the lands he's travelling in.
What will happen when there's motorway and high speed rail all the way from Beijing through Kunming to Rangoon, and perhaps from Delhi too? Will the west have any relevance at all? Will Burma become a province of China, or will it manage to use India as a balance?
I'm not sure that Thant Myint U really answers these questions, and perhaps its just too early to tell, but he gives a fascinating travelogue of the area, its historic links to China and India, and a light insight into the geopolitics around it.
Worth buying in the kindle edition, though perhaps not quite at the hardback price.
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A Fresh Look at Asia's Past, Present and Future
What makes this book unique is the way in which it combines the past, present, and future of three very different countries - India, Burma, and China - weaving together the history... Read more
Published 7 months ago by A.H. Lin
Shameful
Mr Thant Myin U should be ashamed
His own articles regarding "where China meets India" that were published in British newspapers and translated notably in French are... Read more
His own articles regarding "where China meets India" that were published in British newspapers and translated notably in French are... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Cdl
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