20 From Chairman Mao to the Capitalist Roaders

Lecture 20 From Chairman Mao to the Capitalist Roaders B y the end of the first millennium, china was the most economically developed area of the world. Yet by the middle of the second millennium, Europe surpassed China, which went into a centurieslong period of isolation and decline, followed by foreign conquest, occupation, and humiliation. This history of oppression by foreign powers plays a large part in contemporary Chinese economic, political, and military policy. Today, China is again a major economic power, but its reemergence took almost 1, 000 years to accomplish.