Throughout much of recorded human history, China has boasted the largest population in the world – and until recently, by some margin. So news that the Chinese population is now in decline, and will sometime later this year be surpassed by that of India, is big news even if long predicted. As a scholar of […]
Jiang Zemin propelled China’s economic rise in the world, leaving his successors to deal with the massive inequality that followed
By the summer of 1989, a series of problems were threatening China’s stability. Soaring inflation was undermining the economy at home while the violent suppression of Tiananmen Square demonstrations had left it largely a pariah state abroad. Yet within a few years the nation rebounded – beginning two decades of high economic growth, membership in […]