THE HIDDEN MAP OF ASIA
Since ancient times, China and India have
been separated not only by the towering summits of the Himalayas, but
also by a vast expanse of near impenetrable jungle, hostile tribes and remote
inland kingdoms, stretching a thousand miles from what is today Calcutta
across central Burma to the upper reaches of the Yangsi river.
But sometime in the early 21st century, this last great frontier will vanish, the
forests cut down, dirt roads replaced by superhighways, insurgencies
crushed, leaving China and India pressed up against each other as never
before. Though virtually unreported in the West, the implications for the
world are immense. A basic shift in geography – like the opening of the Suez
or Panama canals – may soon create an unprecedented bridge between the
three billion people of South Asia and the Far East.
Part travelogue, part history, and part investigation of today’s fast-moving
developments, THE HIDDEN MAP OF ASIA is a colourful and compelling
exploration of one of the world’s least known crossroads, a region that may
hold the key to Asia’s future.
From medieval Turkish conquerors and Tantric Buddhist masters, to Mughal
princes, Scottish tea-planters and Burmese warlords, the region’s incredibly
varied history and politics extend in every direction. And today, with Burma’s
long-lasting dictatorship at its centre and hundreds of billions of dollars of
newly found oil and gas offshore, it’s also an arena of new and potentially
explosive big-power rivalry.
Timely and engaging, this book will take readers across the strange and fastchanging
world at the very heart of Asia.
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