Considers four major events in modern Chinese history in the perspective of the rapid changes that were shaping the Chinese society, economy, polity, and sense of place in the world in the 1980s, a time when China was making rapid strides toward becoming more integrated with the outside world.

Roderick MacFarquhar, Kenneth Lieberthal, Joyce Kallgren, Frederic Wakeman

One: 1839: The Proscenium of Late Imperial China; 1: Emperors and the Chinese Political System; 2: The Structure of the Chinese Economy during the Qing Period; 3: Models of Historical Change; 4: The Enlightenment Mentality and the Chinese Intellectual Dilemma; Two: May Fourth Anniversary; 5: The May Fourth Movement as a Historical Turning Point; 6: The Social Agenda of May Fourth; 7: Modernity and Its Discontents; 8: The May Fourth Era; Three: The PRC's First Forty Years; 9: Powers of State, Paradoxes of Dominion; 10: The Pattern and Legacy of Economic Growth in the Mao Era; 11: State and Society in the Mao Era; 12: Chinese Communism in the Era of Mao Zedong, 1949-1976; Four: The Deng Era; 13: The Deng Era's Uncertain Political Legacy; 14: The Lasting Effect of China's Economic Reforms, 1979-1989; 15: The Renegotiation of Chinese Cultural Identity in the Post-Mao Era; 16: Reflections on the Opening of China