Where China Meets India
Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Thant Myint-U's Where China Meets India is a vivid, searching, timely book about the remote region that is suddenly a geopolitical center of the world.
From their very beginnings, China and India have been walled off from each other: by the towering summits of the Himalayas, by a vast and impenetrable jungle, by hostile tribes and remote inland kingdoms stretching a thousand miles from Calcutta across Burma to the upper Yangtze River.
Soon this last great frontier will vanish—the forests cut down, dirt roads replaced by superhighways, insurgencies crushed—leaving China and India exposed to each other as never before. This basic shift in geography—as sudden and profound as the opening of the Suez Canal—will lead to unprecedented connections among the three billion people of Southeast Asia and the Far East.
What will this change mean? Thant Myint-U is in a unique position to know. Over the past few years he has traveled extensively across this vast territory, where high-speed trains and gleaming new shopping malls are now coming within striking distance of the last far-flung rebellions and impoverished mountain communities. And he has explored the new strategic centrality of Burma, where Asia's two rising, giant powers appear to be vying for supremacy.
At once a travelogue, a work of history, and an informed look into the future, Where China Meets India takes us across the fast-changing Asian frontier, giving us a masterful account of the region's long and rich history and its sudden significance for the rest of the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Policy analysis, travelogue, and history combine in the latest from former UN diplomat Thant (The River of Lost Footsteps). Focuses on his home country of Burma, and the area encompassed by a diameter of 1,000 miles drawn from the city of Mandalay on the edge of the Shan Plateau, Thant suggests that this corner of the world (with a population of 600 million) is destined to become a bridge between Bengal, Bangladesh, India's North Eastern Provinces, and China's Yunnan province. As China moves down to the coast, the pipelines, refineries, hydro-electric dams, and transmission lines presently under construction are setting the stage. Thant foresees conditions in which both Burma's military rulers and India will seek to balance China's outreach, with a flowering of economic potential as a possible result. Thant's knowledge of Burma's history, peoples, cultures, and kingdoms brings focus to his travels through the area. The constant interplay between his experiences and knowledge of the region make this book a gem, with myriad rare insights.
Customer Reviews
Best of the best book in last quarter of year 2011.
Fully recommend to everyone. Best of the best book among last quarter of year 2011.
Love and expect to have time to write more to Thant Myint-U