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At the beginning of the 19th century, China, considering itself the most spiritually advanced country on the planet, barred those it deemed "barbarians"—Indians, Arabs, or Europeans—from entering its empire. From Canton and Macau, its only two international ports, cargoes of tea, porcelain, and silk, prized by Westerners, were exported. The Manchu Qing dynasty, in power for two centuries, ruled unchallenged over 400 million subjects belonging to the Han ethnic group.

One China? With the end of the monarchy, the cards were reshuffled. However, the 1911 revolution turned into a nightmare. Instead of Sun Yat-sen's vision of democracy and progress, China descended into chaos and became a laboratory for a wide variety of utopias. Chiang Kai-shek's conservative nationalism cracked down hard on the revolutionaries...

Mao's Cultural Revolution was intended to secure his power and claimed millions of victims. In the West, the "Great Helmsman" is romanticized by many on the left. But instead of socialist ideals, it is ultimately China's economy and its opening to the West that allow the country to rise to superpower status once again. The result is increasing prosperity and turbo-capitalism.