From the National Bureau of Asian Research, an Asia Insight miniseries exploring the geostrategic significance of China’s borderlands, led by Nadège Rolland, Distinguished Fellow for China Studies at NBR.

Episode One: From Empire to Nation

When you look at the People’s Republic of China’s map today, you look roughly at the map of the Qing empire - with the notable exceptions of outer Mongolia, Taiwan, and portions of Siberia. Two hundred years ago, the Qing’s borderlands included the Manchu, Tibetan, Hmong, Mongol and Hui (Turkic-speaking Muslim populations of the western regions). Today, twenty neighbors share a land or a maritime border with China. 

In this first episode, with the help of Professor Nicola Di Cosmo (Institute of Advanced Study) and Maria Adele Carrai (NYU Shanghai), we travel back in time to better understand how the imperial borderlands have been integrated within China’s national territory at the turn of the 20th century.

Materials cited in the recording

• Joseph W. Esherick, How the Qing Became China, in. Esherick et. al. (Eds) Empire to Nation: Historical Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)


• Maria Adele Carrai, Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept since 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)