Pascal Couchepin's reading: «The invention of China».»

Each month, we feature a column by one of the personalities who give us the pleasure of alternating between the two. Current affairs, history, politics and philosophy: former Federal Councillor Pascal Couchepin's readings.

For many politicians of my generation, it was fashionable, when addressing Chinese guests, to evoke their country's «5,000 years of history», as if today's China had been born of an unbroken past.

Bill Hayton, in L'invention de la Chine (Editions Saint-Simon), demonstrates the opposite with solid historical arguments. Mr. Xi's China was conceived in the 19th century in the milieu of Chinese exiles in Japan, in the Western concessions of Shanghai, among the opponents of the Manchu Qing dynasty, which was then on its last legs.

The word «China» itself has been the subject of deba