Asian Politics - POSC 353 Resource Guide: China

Trade—domestic and external—has a long history in the Chinese civilization, dating back more than 3,500 years. As early as the Bronze Age, which encompassed the Shang dynasty (ca. 1766–1122 B.C.E.), commercial exchange already existed.

One in five people in the world today lives in just one country – China. This vast country is almost the same size as the whole of Europe, and is the third largest country in the world after Russia and Canada.

This struggle between the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung, which gave birth to the People’s Republic of China, was the culmination of a conflict having its origins in the rivalry between China’s two revolutionary parties, the Nationalists (Kuomintang) and the Communists.

Marxism was introduced into China in the early twentieth century, when there was a strong interest among intellectuals searching for ways of national survival and regeneration among Western ideas of democracy, nationalism, science industrialism, and socialism.

People's Republic of China: The unification of the country, together with a program of reconstruction and deflation, brought considerable economic improvement to the PRC. Although some changes were introduced in agriculture as land reform went into effect, no radical innovations were set in motion, other than overall state planning in industry.