Originally published as ‘For China, Age is More than a Number’, India’s World, 9 December 2024.
On one of his state visits to Egypt in the 1990s, then Chinese President Jiang Zemin is said to have discovered that the Egyptians showcased their civilization as being 5,000 years old. On his return, he ordered that Chinese history – until then merely between 3,000 and 4,000 years old according to the prevailing record – claim similar antiquity with the Egyptians.
The story may be apocryphal, but tells us a great deal about how Beijing sees the world, and more importantly, how it sees its own place in it.
Thinking about China in India 