At 68, the People’s Republic of China will continue to exceed expectations

When I was a young boy growing up in China, the country was in turmoil. Internally, China was fighting for the future of the country, disagreeing on what a post-imperial China should look like. Externally, China was dealing with the Japanese threat. The Sino-Japanese war and the Chinese civil war created the landscape of my childhood. In the end, the Japanese were defeated and the Nationalist Party fled to Taiwan, leaving the Communist Party to declare the founding of a “New China”.

With the cold war creating global tension and animosity, and China’s strong memories of its recent victimisation at the hands of Japan and the West, China became increasingly isolated. Mao Zedong tried to wrest the country away from the traditions of its imperial past, ideas he associated with the weaknesses of the Qing dynasty and China’s century of humiliation. This New China needed new ideas. Mao Zedong Thought and Chinese-style communism were used to rally the people.

This new country was not without its faults. Isolationism and authoritarianism allowed for the tragedies of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. When I returned to China in 1972, for the first time since leaving as a young man, I hoped I would find it improved from its war days. The cities I visited, however, appeared even poorer. While the world outside had moved forward and developed, China had not. The country that had once been a pillar of civilisation and scientific discovery, the famed Middle Kingdom, had fallen behind.