China and the Irish: Different Stories, Similar Dreams
‘There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! For when he wakes he will move the world’, attributed to Napoleon about China. Chinese civilization stretches back until at least the third millennium BC, the country being ruled by a series of dynasties until the Qing, or Manchu, dynasty was overthrown in 1911. China was proclaimed a republic the following year. After the Second World War the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek was overthrown by the communists under Mao Zedong,…