By MaoOCOs death in 1976, programmes like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution had once more brought China to the brink of total collapse. In a society still overwhelmingly agricultural, MaoOCOs colossal structural changes propelled China to superpower status - but at an enormous human toll. Nationalists brought down the humbled Celestial Empire in 1911, ushering in a long period of discord from which MaoOCOs Chinese Communist Party emerged bloodily triumphant in 1949. _x000D_x000D_Beginning with the waning years of the Qing dynasty, Dillon compellingly recounts the 19th-century period of OCynational humiliationOCO, when China became a virtual colony of the Western powers and Japan. China: A Modern History explores these contrasts in detail, while also highlighting the enduring values which have informed Chinese identity for millennia. China: A Modern History is the definitive guide to this complex contemporary phenomenon._x000D_x000D_Deng XiaopingOCOs 1980s policy of OCyreform and openingOCO, which saw China enter the world market, is only the most recent in a series of dramatic shifts that have transformed Chinese society over the past 150 years.
#Rise of nations vollversion full#
Yet the full implications of ChinaOCOs rapid march to modernity are not widely understood - particularly, the effects of ChinaOCOs meteoric rise on the nationOCOs many ethnic minorities. Barely a century removed from the struggling and out-dated Qing Empire, China has managed to reinvent itself on an unprecedented scale: from Empire, to Communist state, to hybrid capitalist superpower.
China's transformation in the last few decades has been perhaps the most remarkable - and most controversial - development in modern history.