Unlike the Western world where the modern era is usually defined as starting from the Renaissance, a movement that was started within Europe, modern China is usually defined as starting from the mid-19th century, when the Chinese were forced to open their doors to trade from Europe. Indeed, Westernization was a central characteristic of China in the past 150 years and modern Chinese history has been one of how to navigate between traditional values and practices and Western ones.

Contemporary China refers to China after 1949, when the Communists, who learned from a certain Western school of thought called Marxism, took over the Chinese government and established the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is sometimes also called mainland China, to differentiate it from Taiwan, where the republican Chinese government fled to after losing the civil war in 1949. Contemporary China has been characterized by two contrasting periods of rule: political radicalization from the 195s to the 1970s, and a gradual reversal back to capitalism after 1978.

Historically, imperial dynasties ruled over a unified China from around 220 B.C. up to 1911. Periodically, the unification would disintegrate for various reasons, but it would invariably be restored. The last dynasty to rule over a unified China was called the Qing (pure) Dynasty (1644-1911), established by the Manchus, an ethnic group. Like most previous foreign rulers in China, the Manchus were much assimilated into the Chinese culture. The Manchus consisted of various tribes that originated from what later became northeastern China (called Manchuria).

In the 18th century, Manchu emperors encountered what later would turn out to be a more formidable foe than rebels or the Han (the majority of ) Chinese whom they ruled over, the Europeans who were beginning to undergo the Industrial Revolution and were looking for overseas markets for their machine manufactured goods. Initially, Manchu emperors tried to ignore these European envoys for trade. But in 1839, China and Europe clashed in a war over opium. The Chinese destruction of British opium, grown in India, (c.f. our drug war today) led to British government retaliation and declaration of war on China. The Chinese defeat by the British led to China's concession of five ports for trade with Britain and indemnities of millions of ounces of silver, as well as many privileges to Britons in China, such as one sided most favored nations status, and extraterritoriality.

The First Opium War(1839-42) was followed by a series of humiliating defeats of China by foreigners in the second half of the 19th century, which finally propelled the Chinese to decide on "self-strengthening." The decision to reform ultimately led many Chinese to identify the Manchu rulers as what obstructed their demand for change. This led to the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty in 1911 and the ushering in of a Chinese republic.

This class will cover contemporary China from 1949 to the present. The focus is on the Communist regime tried to fashion a new way of life and thinking for the Chinese after 1949, the ways the Communist goals were carried out, how these goals affected ordinary people's lives, and an evaluation of the changes after 1978, in terms of how successfully the reform tackled the problems the Communist government had tried to solve and how much the Communist regime changed in the process.