"China pursues its distinctive path of socialist construction. Long the most prosperous and sophisticated country in the world, China was subjected to the military, economic, and political domination of Western imperialism for over a hundred years. This volume traces the crisis of Old China and revolutionary struggle up to 1949, the development of New China with Mao Zedong, reform under Deng Xiaoping, and the beginning of a new era led by Xi Jinping. China has generated contradictions as well as dramatic growth in education, health care, and other social services. But the process of socialist construction remains an unfinished and ongoing venture, and the future of the revolution is very much a work in progress"--