JORGE RODRIGUES SIMAO

China’s rise since the 1980s has shown contemporary and modern China in a new light. The reforms implemented after the passing of Mao Zedong have produced dramatic results. It is still too early to fully evaluate the overall impact of these reforms, but an economy with a sustained double-digit growth rate for some two decades cannot be brushed aside as an accident. Nor can China’s rise be viewed narrowly as an economic phenomenon, for without the aggregate energy and ingenuity of the people, the leadership of the country, or even the structure of the political system, China would not be where it is today. To be sure, there is much to be desired in China’s leadership and political system. Who can say that the nation would not have attained even greater achievements, or that the quality of life for its citizens would not have improved even more, had the mix of ingredients been somehow different?

Furthermore, we must also factor in the historical and cultural contexts. There is much to describe, analyze, and understand about modern China. We had a project – to write about this extraordinary country from 1800 to the present; topics range from the daily life of common folks to the ever-changing structure of the banking system that is part of the engine of China’s recent transformation.

Overall assessment of China’s modern development has shifted dramatically in the past generation, loosely defined as a thirty-year span. Upon Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, the country’s future was in a quandary. The Great Helmsman was gone, leaving the nation in the hands of a mediocre successor who, lacking vision or daring, could do no more than promise to carry on whatever Mao had laid down. This was hardly a comforting message, as the legacy of the late Mao was one of political upheaval. Although the country’s leadership was soon passed on to abler hands, it was still wary of instability even as late as 1989. During June of that year, the outside world speculated on the breakup of the Communist regime as prodemocracy demonstrators with many interrogations brought matters to a head in Tiananmen Square. Today, China is still a country in search of a solution, one that would bring national dignity and a steady political course, as well as prosperity and security for its citizens.

The nation’s quest for these objectives in the past century and a half has been nothing short of a prolonged struggle with no end in sight. A little more than a year before Mao died, another Chinese leader across the Taiwan Strait had also passed on. Chiang Kai-shek, who had finally been given the opportunity to guide his regime’s development under American protection and the benefits of American aid, had begun to produce a vibrant economy in Taiwan by the mid-1970s. Then, with martial law lifted in 1987, Taiwan emerged as a serious model of development, one of the four Asian Tigers. Coincidental with the opening up of the mainland’s economy under Deng Xiaoping’s new policies, Taiwan’s new wealth found fertile ground for investment on the opposite shore. Yet political tensions between the two parties persist, even as their economic relations hum along. Cross-strait relations will surely continue to capture the attention of the world.

Still, the world’s main focus must be trained on the People’s Republic. Since the beginning of new century and millennium, the positive effects of the economic reforms have been sufficiently prolonged to generate confidence among the Chinese people and their political leaders.

China’s rise is not just propaganda hype; it is real. China is now a factor to be reckoned with in practically every aspect of international life. By the time of the April 2009 meeting of the G-20 nations in London, China had risen to star level, even as the world was dazzled by the freshness and the excitement of the new American president, Barack Obama. China’s own new generation of leaders and the political and financial institutions that they helped to build are examined.

The ‘‘rise of China’’ perspective demands that we look at the history of the past two centuries in terms of whether China should be considered a ‘‘latecomer’’ or ‘‘late bloomer.’’ Past attention has been focused on China’s failures-losing its modernization race with Japan, fumbling in its quest for national unity, and taking the wrong turns in its search for political form, a record that makes for a checkered if interesting story. The recent history of China provides a fresh perspective, a new framework with which to view its past as not just a string of failures but also as building blocks or lessons learned on a path to big-power status. Insofar as material or economic transformation is concerned, China’s past failures perhaps should no longer be perceived as such, for as long as there was progress, such failures were nonetheless steps, even if baby steps, toward a higher goal. China has been playing catch-up since the middle of the nineteenth century. It is still catching up, but the gap has narrowed and may even close in the foreseeable future. This is a possibility no one dared envision in times past except in ignorance, as a few did in the nineteenth century, or in moments of extreme euphoria, as when in 1958 Mao promised parity with the West in fifteen years. We will try in some texts to help the reader reconstruct this fresh view of China’s modern past.

Historically, the rise of latecomers has been accompanied by ugly episodes in their march toward modernity. The histories of Germany and Japan come readily to mind. These are stories laden with immense human costs inflicted on the peoples of Germany and Japan, but most importantly, on other peoples around them. China’s rise is not unencumbered with unpleasant developments. What separates China from the examples just mentioned is that its rise took place initially under prolonged foreign encroachments and aggression, and then, after 1949, under extended periods of relative international isolation. The ugly episodes, other than several border wars and clashes, were ones in which the Chinese turned against themselves. The Great Leap Forward and Famine and the Cultural Revolution, each the subject of our studies, are perhaps the greatest examples. Were these human costs inseparable from China’s path toward modernity? Could they have been avoided? From a moral standpoint, one could easily come up with a straightforward answer. But the world has never before witnessed the transformation of a country so extensive, involving a population so huge and a people so steeped in history and culture.

China’s modern trajectory has been and will be different. It goes without saying, therefore, that simple answers will not help us understand the complexity that is China. China overtook Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, though it still has some way to go before it is anywhere near where the U.S. A. economy is now. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, China’s gross domestic product on a per capita basis, though improving, still ranks low in the world. China can best be characterized as an ongoing project. Its development has been pockmarked with contradictions and paradoxes.

Its rise in economic power serves as a constant reminder that it is still in many ways a poor country, where the tallest buildings in the world are constructed by hordes of migrant workers from the countryside. Its capitalist practices serve to highlight its authoritarian rule as the government continues to regulate traffic on the information highway. Its growing military sector, often perceived as a threat to regional stability, seems only to undermine the nation’s desire to provide statesmanlike leadership in global politics. And its fear of social turmoil is countered by policies that tend to provoke dissidence, especially in border regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang. Indeed, China has many dimensions. It is a country that begs to be understood, and yet its leaders are not often its best spokespersons. One needs only to read the entries on ‘‘Poverty’’ or ‘‘Dissidents’’ to peer into China’s underside.

It is our hope our texts will provide reliable and sophisticated renditions of the myriad facets of China. If, for example, China’s national-minority problems seem intractable, highlighted even more by the election of the first African-American president in the United States, it may behoove us to look at the nature of China’s multiethnic communities.

How China’s Muslims or Tibetans do, each bound by a deep religious faith and firmly entrenched in a distinct geographical homeland, render China’s problems different from those in a multiethnic society like the United States? And if China’s ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor is somehow attributable to the nation’s huge population, how should one approach the question of birth planning in China? And if its rampant capitalistic practices are to blame instead, how should such a large and populous society have strategized for development? Many of the country’s contemporary issues have long historical roots. We invite all not only use or read but to find intelligent answers to these and other questions, but also to explore the larger issues and to see the bigger picture using the bibliographies, primary sources, and other tools that are provided in the end of our texts.

Modern and contemporary China is not only a rich mosaic in itself, but, like a diamond, it reveals different and ever-changing facets depending on the angle from which it is perceived. Different people see things differently, and people can disagree. I come from the perspective that diversity itself can be a source of strength and excellence. This conviction, translated into a deliberate policy, result in a great diversity.