| Summary/Abstract |
In probing a country’s future prospects, one can do worse than contemplate its past. And nowhere is history more relevant to the future than in China, a nation that has for millennia seen its destiny inextricably connected to the dynastic record of what has preceded. And yet, today the People’s Republic of China's official national narrative—that elusive composite of principles, prejudices, hopes, fears, and dreams that cast the die for how leaders will attempt to project their country in the future—has become so filled with lacunae, biases, and untruths that it reads more like a didactic script than a real historical record.
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