China preoccupies us; yet its recent past is still relatively unfamiliar. No country has undergone a greater period of sustained and turbulent change than China in the twentieth century, but it has emerged again as a leading global power. It is, therefore, more important than ever to understand the society it has become and its rise to such influence. This timely study uses recent research to explore how China has been transformed from an economic and political backwater at the start of the twentieth century to its current pre-eminent position one hundred years later.