The Middle Kingdom

In The Middle Kingdom, respected China expert Jonathan Fenby traces the principal contours of China's political, social and cultural development from the shadowy Xia dynasty of the third and second millennia BCE to the economically supercharged China of Paramount Leader Hu Jintao in the 21st century CE. This book explores the recurring patterns of dynastic renewal, growth, prosperity and collapse that have characterized Chinese history since the era of the 'First Emperor' Shi Huangdi, through the succession of powerful dynasties and emperors that followed him; to the dislocating and traumatic events of China's twentieth century: the nationalist revolution of 1912, successive wars with Japan, the rise of Mao Zedong's Communists and their civil war with Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists, the extremes and excesses of Maoism, and the era of pragmatic economic liberalization that began under Deng Xiaoping and continued under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.This volume includes a chronology of landmark events, and - punctuating the text as a descant to the book's main narrative - a sequence of biographical and cultural capsules focusing on key figures in, and critical cultural facets of the history of China, from the Emperor Hongwu to the nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen, and from the Chinese civil service to the silk industry. In this authorittive and lively narrative, Jonathan Fenby considers the intriguing and pressing questions posed by China's inexorable rise: will its growing economic might translate into a similar level of political and diplomatic leverage, and, if so, what are the implications for the rest of the world?