This course is designed to introduce students to some of the major events and issues in China's dynamic transformation from the world's oldest and largest bureaucracy to a revolutionary state-and its subsequent evolution to the contemporary political and economic phenomenon we know today. Tracing premodern legacies that have helped shape China, the course covers the decline and fall of the Qing dynasty through the creation of Communist China and the unfolding of the post-Mao era.
Classes center on group discussion.