While the first edition analysed the historical roots of a racialized Chinese nationalism and its contemporary development, reflected in official ideology, popular culture as well as its perceptions of China in the world, the second edition will add a new chapter focusing on how the genetic science has impacted on national and individual identities in Taiwan and China with implications to the cross-strait relations. It is a concrete example of the new development of the discourse embedded in scientific discussions in mainland China. This new edition shows that, after debunking the fossil-based paleoanthropological myth of Peking Man as the ancestor of the Chinese people, a genetically based national myth has been constructed, showing that a bloodline unites China. It will also include a section discussing how the Chinese party-state sponsors interdisciplinary projects to establish China's status as one of the oldest civilizations with a unique and inherent geopolitical tradition of centralized, unified, multi-regional, and multi-ethnic statehood. The book's last chapter expands on how the CCP’s class-based identity politics shares features with race-based identity politics in world history, with a similar structure and function in both systems’ rhetoric and operations.

Yinghong Cheng is Professor of History at Delaware State University, USA.