The Great Rejuvenation

Preface to the English edition

It seems that the late 1990s and the turn of the twenty-first century havebrought about three momentous changes in the history of humankind. Each holds profound significance not only for our future and the way of life, but also for a nascent new global order. These changes have significantly altered human behaviour, ways of thinking, and existing perspectives – and they are likely irreversible.

As with every dramatic or revolutionary change, such transformations simultaneously sow the seeds of future turmoil. The world has changed – for better or worse – even as we continually claim to move forward, in search of modernisation and a better life. What is truly new is that this world is becoming increasingly multipolar and may even evolve into a multicivilisational one, despite ongoing processes of unification, integration and globalisation.

The first monumental shift – still underway and continually accelerating – is, of course, the new scientific revolution, known as the information and cyber era. Combined with the tide of globalisation, it is contributing to the compression of time and space, as well as the unprecedented internationalisation of our lives. Unlike our predecessors, we have become ‘globalised’, meaning that a new phenomenon, supported by advanced technologies, has facilitated the exchange of goods, services, knowledge, capital and innovation, completely transforming our daily routines. As a result, we have become a network society (Manuel Castells), the world has become ‘flat’ (Thomas Friedman), and many of us have discovered new and extensive supply chains. Thus, wherever we live, we have become internationalised.

The second process, arguably the best known and most widely described in the available literature, is the so-called ‘unipolar moment’ (Charles Krauthammer) – the unprecedented global domination of the United States of America following the demise of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the previous bipolar, or Cold War, order. This phenomenon, initially defined by Francis Fukuyama as ‘the end of history’ – meaning the total triumph of liberal democracy, the system of checks and balances, and market forces under the umbrella of the neoliberal ‘Washington Consensus’ (John Williamson) – now appears, by the middle of the third decade of the twenty-first century, to be coming to an end. Yet it is important to recall that at the time it was proclaimed that ‘there is no alternative!’ (TINA), as then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously stated. The Western world and civilisation were triumphant – almost in ecstasy – during this era of peak Western influence and dominance, which followed the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern (socialist) Bloc.

However, what is often overlooked in the Western world is that, around the same time in the late twentieth century, a third process – much less known and discussed, both in the West and elsewhere – was set in motion. This was, and still is, the emergence – or rather re-emergence – of China as a new global power centre. An unprecedented process of transformation and reform took place in mainland China, then the most populous country in the world. Initially, and briefly, defined domestically as the ‘Four Modernisations’ (of agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology – a term coined by the late Prime Minister Zhou Enlai), it was soon reframed under the twin terms gaige and kaifang, meaning (economic) reform and opening up to the world. These became shorthand for a pioneering, if at times messy, process that followed a tortuous and winding path. After a period of political anarchy, economic autarky, backwardness, and a closed society, more than four decades of ongoing change have brought about a tremendous transformation. As a result, China has emerged as a new global power centre – in fact an essential player in any future global order (Mastro).

This volume, originally published in Polish after the aforementioned four decades of Chinese transformation – initiated in December 1978 – is an attempt to present and critically evaluate this lesser-known phenomenon as thoroughly as possible. It seeks to answer the question: how did it happen that a dirt-poor country – initially displaying many sub-Saharan or typical Third-World characteristics, underdeveloped, predominantly agricultural (with 84% of the workforce in that sector), with an extremely low standard of living and, moreover, governed by a dictatorial system under Communist Party rule, which had collapsed elsewhere – managed, after just four decades of revolutionary domestic change, to surpass all expectations, both local and foreign, and emerge as a global power second only to the United States? Why did it happen, and how did it happen? And why, as a result, has mainland China become almost indispensable to any contemporary debate concerning the future global order and the future of humankind?

As a political scientist and sinologist, I present in this volume a body of documentation drawn from both Western and Chinese sources, with an additional Central or East European flavour. Akin to Kevin Rudd in his monumental study On Xi Jinping, I aim to uncover, explain and – above all – help Western audiences, who operate within different systems of values and norms, to understand how the internal Chinese discourse has evolved. To this end, I seek to distinguish the official Party language from the actual realities and actions of decision-makers, and to separate ideology from practice. Only then, in my view, can we properly comprehend how China’s current wealth has been generated and attained.

The study is not only deeply embedded in Chinese sources but also enriched by personal experience, as I first visited the People’s Republic in the autumn of 1976, soon after Mao Zedong’s passing, when the campaign to combat the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ (including Mao’s third wife, Jiang Qing) was in full swing. Soon thereafter, in the 1979/1980 academic year, I was in Beijing again, as the first – and one of only two – Polish students from the Sinology Department at the University of Warsaw to study the language after the Cultural Revolution. Later, in the spring of 1989, I was present at Tiananmen Square as a correspondent for the influential Polish weekly Polityka (much later I published a separate volume on the issue of ‘Beijing’s Spring of 1989’). In the early twenty-first century, when I served as Poland’s ambassador to several South-East Asian countries, my visits to China, and sometimes Taiwan, became customary and continue to this day (with the exception of the COVID-19 pandemic). Thus, personal experience and perspective, covering the entire process of the ‘transformation and reform era’ (Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian), are also essential to the work presented here.

Both personal experience and meticulous study of China’s reforms bring me to the conclusion that the entire history of the People’s Republic of China since October 1949 should be divided into three distinctive chapters.

The first, the Mao Zedong era (1949–1976), is ‘revolutionary China’, when the leaders in Beijing were initially, during the 1950s, committed Communists and remained in political alliance with the USSR, which, however, culminated in ideological rupture and even border clashes in the late 1960s. This ideological and political split happened mainly because, starting from the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) and especially during the Cultural Revolution, a period defined as ‘left-wing deviation’, Mao and his companions moved further left. They even attempted to export revolution beyond China, as Julia Lovell has documented, and as Chen Jian confirmed in his extensive biography of the initial father of reforms (the Four Modernizations), long-term Prime Minister Zhou Enlai. It was an era of domestic upheaval, power politics, the dominance of ideology and personal rule, combined with harsh, ruthless dictatorship. As is well known, it led to devastating consequences, especially in domestic life, creating countless personal tragedies. Externally, however, it was a creative time: in 1972, US President Richard Nixon famously visited China, initiating a quasi-bilateral alignment against the USSR. Subsequently, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) emerged not only as a full-fledged member of the UN, replacing the Republic of China on Taiwan, but also as a major player on the international scene. In 1975, China presented a ‘three worlds theory’ at the UN, positioning itself – inter alia – as the leader of the entire Third World. This marked the beginning of the ‘internationalisation’ of the PRC, which later accelerated.

Disastrous failures of the ‘left-wing deviation’ prevailed domestically, however. The harsh and frequently tragic realities of the Cultural Revolution, combined with mass famine following the Great Leap Forward, led the victim of the Revolution, Deng Xiaoping (born 1904) – labelled ‘a second capitalist roader’ in the country – first to dismantle the Maoist faction under the aegis of Hua Guofeng almost immediately after Mao’s death, and later, in December 1978, to initiate a completely new chapter in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, or Party), namely, the above-mentioned gaige/kaifang transformation process. Although gradual and cautious, with the famous formula ‘crossing the river, feeling the stones’ in place, it created an almost entirely different reality and society, but – what remained constant – under the same leadership, or rather dictatorship, of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with changes mostly imposed from above, as Julian Gewirtz confirmed in his two revealing studies on China in the 1980s.

The volume presented here is, first of all, a detailed, multifaceted (policy, economics, ideology, external relations, etc.) study of the Deng Xiaoping Era, defined as a counterproposal to the previous Maoism. This chapter of Chinese history was characterised by a pragmatic approach, bu zhenglun –‘no engagement in theory’ – most famously described by a well-known, enduring motto of Deng himself: ‘No matter if the cat is black or white, if it catches mice it is a good cat’. Combined with another phrase, borrowed from Mao, ‘seeking truth from facts’ (shishi qiushi), it allowed – firstly – a farewell to the lunacies of the Cultural Revolution and, secondly, the embarkation of the whole society and the state on the path to prosperity, initially moderated, of course, but significant and visible from the very beginning.

The Deng era was also, like Mao’s before it, divided into two distinctive chapters. During the first (1978–1989), the leaders in Beijing, like Mikhail Gorbachev later in the USSR, attempted to reform socialism. The process was partially successful, especially in the countryside, but not in the towns, and ultimately led to the student and social upheaval of the Beijing Spring of 1989.

After the fateful decision to use force against protesting students in his own capital, as richly documented in The Tiananmen Papers and many other sources, Deng Xiaoping and his reform agenda found themselves, for almost three years, effectively under siege from the Party’s hardliners. However, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Deng once again chose to act, as he had in late 1978. During his so-called ‘Southern Tour’ (nanxun; Jonathan Chatwin), he rejected both models then promoted to the global community by the lone superpower – the United States – namely, checks and balances or liberal democracy, and the neoliberal, market-dominated Washington Consensus. Instead, he chose a uniquely Chinese solution: rejecting democracy as being unsuitable for Chinese tradition and civilisation, and replacing neoliberal market rules or the so-called ‘invisible hand of the market’ by a Developmental State model (Chalmers Johnson), first developed in Japan and later adopted by the Newly Industrialised Economies (NIEs) of the region – South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and especially, in China’s case, Singapore. Rather than relying on the ‘invisible hand’ of the omnipresent market, this model advocated a combination of market forces and state intervention (or planning). Simultaneously, Deng’s final political will included, among other principles, the Buddhist-in-origin maxim taoguang yanghui – ‘bide your time, hide your strength’. This low-profile approach did not, however, undermine the ultimate goal: to make China strong (again). To this end, Deng cleverly opened the wide, yet often poor and underdeveloped, Chinese market to global trade, capital flows, and the forces of globalisation, drawing clear lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union and his concerns for the future of the CCP.

The pragmatic and technocratic era of Deng Xiaoping was a prolonged one and endured beyond his death in February 1997. The same policy direction was maintained under two subsequent ‘generations of leadership’, as they called themselves – namely, the Jiang Zemin–Zhu Rongji administration (1989–2002) and the Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao tandem (2002–2012). This was the period during which China achieved the first major successes of the reform era: genuine global, transnational – primarily Western – investors finally entered the country following the 1992 opening to globalisation, culminating in China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001. It was also the time when China emerged as a key ‘global workshop’, initiating many supply chains that began on its territory. As a result, by 2010, China had already surpassed Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy – an extraordinary achievement, deeply ingrained in the Chinese national psyche (‘We are better than the Japanese – our former invaders’).

It should not be surprising, then, that when the so-called ‘fifth generation’ of leaders, with Xi Jinping at its core, came to power in late 2012, China once again changed course – abandoning its previous low-profile posture and replacing it with new fortitude, assertiveness, and bold visions. Under the slogans of the Chinese Dream and the Great Rejuvenation of the entire Chinese nation – to be achieved by the centennial anniversary of the PRC (October 2049) – a new primary objective was declared: ‘to enter the centre stage on the globe’, that is, inter alia, to become a powerful country and a flourishing civilisation, distinctive and ‘socialist’ in character, and thus returning to the positions China had been in centuries ago.

Under this ambitious programme, a new chapter in the country’s history has been inaugurated. Even if it remains as an ‘unfinished business’ at the time of this writing, it is evident that a xin shidai, or ‘new era’ of Xi Jinping, has replaced the previous realities. This time, internally, China has returned to ideology – including Marxism – and to harsh dictatorship in the form of sanitised Leninism. Externally, instead of the former low-profile posture and concealment of capabilities, a new, powerful China has emerged, positioning itself as a major power centre and almost directly challenging US dominance (and the ‘unipolar moment’) as a peer competitor. This shift became especially visible after Xi Jinping’s 2013 announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – a bold, geostrategic proposal centred on new Chinese investments, primarily infrastructural in nature. Thus, the time has come to speak and write about China – both within the PRC (Zhang Weiwei) and beyond – as a newly emerging global power and a direct challenge to US dominance, as famously captured by Graham Allison of Harvard University in the term ‘Thucydides Trap’.

On the domestic scene, however, Xi Jinping’s New Era has revived certain features already familiar from the Mao era – among them the supremacy of ideology, the dominance of the Party and politics in all public spheres, one-man rule, and a rigid, all-pervasive dictatorship, combined with widespread surveillance of society and the stirring up of nationalist sentiment. This new ‘patriotic’ impulse from above at times points towards a Sino-centric world resembling the ancient order of tianxia (‘All under Heaven’), as openly articulated by Zhao Tingyang, a scholar from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This vision is partially echoed in Xi Jinping’s recent Global Initiatives – on Development (2021), Security (2022), Civilisation (2023), and Global Governance (2025).

Deng Xiaoping’s legacy has been diluted. Xi Jinping, described by Geremie Barmé as ‘the Chairman of Everything’, has once again centralised power, reaffirmed his political and ideological supremacy, and created numerous strategic concepts now embedded in the corpus of Xi Jinping Thought (Xi Jinping sixiang). Above all, he has placed himself above all institutions, beginning with the CCP itself. During his rule, he has eliminated political rivals (Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, Sun Zhengcai, among others), embraced Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism, and combined them with elements of Confucianism and Legalist (fa jia) traditions.

In remaining faithful to Marxism, Xi Jinping has, to a certain extent, undermined market-oriented reforms – particularly the role of the private sector – by placing ideology and politics above policy. In doing so, he has re-politicised a previously technocratic China, subordinating it again to official ideology and the dominance of the Party. In some instances, he has even revived Maoist-style political campaigns, often under slogans such as the ‘unwavering leadership of the Party’ or the ‘patriotic education’ of youth and society at large. Xi also insists on safeguarding national security and has actively instigated patriotic fervour among Party members, the youth, and the wider public. Yet, as the title of this volume suggests, his overarching goal remains the Great Rejuvenation of China. However, it must be remembered that this is still a process in its early stages, as Xi Jinping’s New Era remains ongoing and its final outcomes are yet to be determined. As a popular Chinese saying goes: ‘Do not judge a man while he is still alive – he still has time … to make mistakes’, just as Mao did in his final years.

What, then, is important for us to note? The pragmatic era of sober calculation and effective governance under Deng Xiaoping and his technocratic, meritocratic successors has come to an end. Symbolically, it was brought to a close – before the eyes of the world – during the 20th CCP Congress, when former General Secretary of the Party and head of state, Hu Jintao, was forcibly escorted from the rostrum. Once again, the CCP and the PRC have returned to the model of a ‘Party of One’ (Chun Han Wong), with the supreme or ‘core’ leader maintaining an iron grip on power. The content of this new phase in China’s policy – at least in its early stages – was the focus of my previous volume, published by the same publisher. When read in conjunction with recently released works, both Western and Chinese, and incorporating Xi Jinping’s own speeches and writings, it offers the reader a fuller assessment of contemporary Chinese policy and reality. Let us, then, refrain from delving further into that process here.

This volume, let me emphasise, is above all a description and as astute an evaluation as possible of the Deng Xiaoping era (1978–2012, and continuing in influence until 2018) – a period somewhat easier to study, as it is now clearly concluded. Alongside several recently published works, such as those by Julian Gewirtz in the West and Cao Yingwang in China, and combined with some already ‘classical’ studies by scholars such as Ezra F. Vogel or Alexander Pantsov and Steven I. Levine, this book may help readers understand what has taken place in China since the late 1970s and why it has happened – as well as what it means for us, wherever we are and whatever our stance on China.

To some extent, it also seeks to address another crucial question: Why has China under Xi Jinping become so assertive and, at the same time, so central to global affairs? And why has Deng’s formerly low-profile approach been so visibly replaced by the expansive global influence of the Middle Kingdom under Xi? In other words, how has China – always a very peculiar, sui generis actor – become an essential part of today’s so-called ‘flat’, globalised world? This volume also introduces, in part, China’s emergence as a major technological player on the global stage, particularly through initiatives such as the Made in China 2025 programme (launched in 2015), already elaborated upon in some important work on this topic (Yasheng Huang, Kevin Rudd, Elizabeth Economy).

‘Without the Communist Party, there is no New China’ – so goes the famous slogan in the People’s Republic of China, widely propagated by the current supreme leader. This volume, however, offers a different guiding motto: Without the sober, pragmatic, and at times visionary ideas – such as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, the ‘one country, two systems’ principle, or the taoguang yanghui formula – and without the ruthlessly implemented policies of Deng Xiaoping, China would not have become the emerging power it is today (Oriana Skylar Mastro, Li Xinshi), nor would it likely be following the path of great rejuvenation as it is now.

Only time will tell whether Deng Xiaoping’s vision of the ‘three-step strategy’, first articulated in 1979, will be fully realised. According to this vision, China faces a century-long process of transformation, with the foremost aim of becoming once again a powerful state and a flourishing civilisation. This historical project is divided into three phases: the first 30 years – the restoration of state power (largely accomplished); the next 30 years – the enrichment of society through the development of a robust middle class (currently under way; Xi Jinping’s stated goal of achieving a ‘moderately affluent society’ by 2035 reflects this); and the final 30 years – the introduction of political reforms, whatever shape they may take.

At present, China appears to be following this trajectory – towards becoming both a flourishing civilisation and a powerful state, poised to assume a prominent role on the global stage. In the New Era under Xi Jinping, these ambitions are articulated openly and frequently (Xi Jinping IV). What the final outcome will be remains uncertain, but what is clear is that China is now larger, more assertive, and more influential than ever before. Without Deng Xiaoping’s ideas and vision, none of this would have been possible. That is why it is essential to examine his now-closed chapter in Chinese policy and history, as the following pages seek to do.

Bogdan J. Góralczyk

Koszewnica – Warsaw, July 2025

Why China?

This book is a moral obligation: to myself, as well as to the reader, and finally to the subject of this research, namely contemporary China and the people who live there. I am writing this text more than 40 years after I first visited the Middle Kingdom as an adult, a student, in the late autumn of 1976. As is the case with this rich and different civilisation, I became infected. After my first escapade, already infected, I went on to study sinology as a second major, as part of which I spent the 1979–1980 academic year in Beijing. Ten years later I was in Tiananmen Square, which I described years later in a book. When later fate threw me into South-East Asia as an ambassador, I went to China more often from there than to my own country. For the Middle Kingdom has throughout this time been growing in strength and becoming increasingly important, firstly for the region and now for the whole world.

Lately, nothing has changed, I go to China at least once a year, and sometimes even more often. What’s more, today’s technology allows for constant, up-to-date contact with Chinese culture, however it is understood. What’s more, we have more visitors from the Middle Kingdom, and if one wants, even sitting in Warsaw you can watch Chinese television or listen to their radio. A good Chinese restaurant is no longer a sensation or a rarity, like the once famous ‘Shanghai’ on Marszałkowska Street in Warsaw. China has opened up and is closer to the world. It is no longer a closed country, but it has certainly remained mysterious due to its difficult, or rather laborious, language, as well as a mentality and culture different from our own.

This text is therefore not a report on a shorter or longer trip, or even a solid report after a research programme of several years. It is about something more, a kind of summary (at this stage) of knowledge about contemporary China and the transformation taking place there, prepared after many years of research, studies, trips, conferences, conversations, debates, arguments and various texts devoted to it. I am writing about a country, or rather a civilisation, with which I have been more or less connected to at every stage of my life, constantly interested in it. I am narrating in the spirit of scientific analysis, but I am also concerned with the form in which this knowledge, in many cases unknown to us or misunderstood, is presented. This is why there will be departures from a strictly scientific argument, whether into the realm of literature or film and popular culture, or – less frequently – personal reflections or memories.

I would like to stress beforehand, however, that this is neither a diary nor a private report, although personal references to some of the issues analysed will be found in the pages of this book, as there is simply no point in trying to be objective in assessing the complicated Chinese reality. All of us who know this country, and indeed this continent and civilisation, a little bit deeper, will have their own interpretation of what is happening there. In our approach to China we are condemned to our own subjectivity, because one, universal China simply does not exist, and by its very nature we can only reach part of it. Sometimes the Middle Kingdom is imposed on us – because of a conference, trip or lecture, sometimes, more frequently, it is selected by ourselves for one reason or another (tourist, research, pointed out by the hosts or not), which is already proof of our selectivity or even voluntarism. So let us not expect a single truth about today’s China, because there is none. However, wherever possible, I will try to present a wide range of views on the given topic, from inside and out, for the reader to choose and evaluate.

In essence, the subject of this study is the People’s Republic of China (PRC), proclaimed on 1 October 1949, and thus the entity commonly referred to as The People’s or Communist China, and often also as mainland China, because there is, after all, another Chinese entity, the island of Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of China. Whereby the research area is narrowed down even further – to the period of reforms and internal transformation, initiated in December 1978.

My aim is to show the dynamics of change and its consequences for China and, because of its size and impact, also for the world. For the China of the last four decades has changed beyond recognition, and the China I met at the beginning is like two different planets, not just realities. How did this transformation, different from all others on the globe, take place and why? What has it brought with it and what else can it bring? These are the most important issues analysed in this volume. China at the threshold of reform was a backward, isolated, autarkic, poor, agrarian country, where ‘real socialism’ was mixed with the challenges typical of a Third-World country. Prior to Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, it was a backward country, systemically and institutionally placed in the communist stow-away. When it embarked on its reforms, no one could have predicted what it is today, where it has become the world’s second largest economy, the largest trading nation on the globe, where they have the largest foreign exchange reserves, and their list of successes is almost endless. How did they get to this point? This is the subject of this volume, along with a descriptive narrative on the course of the ‘transformation with Chinese characteristics’.

The essence of this project is therefore clear – it is an attempt to find an answer to the key question: How did it happen that for four decades a country, or rather a continent, with the character of an agrarian civilisation, backward and with features typical of the Third World, and at the same time under a totalitarian communist regime, transform itself into an efficient organism, more and more openly and with great justification aspiring to the title of a global leader – and not only in economy?

The first research hypothesis behind these strategic questions, on the other hand, is that states grow out of poverty and get back on their feet not on the basis of ideological projects and theoretical concepts, but as a result of applying cold, calculating practice and pragmatism, combined with a sober view and discernment of their own situation, the position of their neighbours and the balance of power in the world. It is not theory but practice that determines success. And in China cold pragmatism, as many studies have shown, is an inherited feature of that civilisation, written into its DNA. Yes, there have been revolutions there, even significant separations from reality, but the situation has constantly returned to the mainstream: practice, pragmatism, soberly keeping one’s feet on the ground, and at the same time prudence and even petty-mindedness in action or behaviour. The Chinese are not dreamers or mystics in the clouds (except perhaps for the Taoists in monasteries), but either sober, common-sense peasants, drawing their knowledge from nature, or thorough and patient bureaucrats, drawing their knowledge from the civilisation’s immense written heritage.

This starting point is complemented by the second hypothesis: there can be no success without effective adaptation to changing conditions and the right people to bring about change. The right impetus must come from leaders and those who think in terms of the long term and the reason of state, and thus the overriding interests of the state, and not those of any party, group or lobby. The PRC of recent decades, I should add at once, has been fortunate in having many leaders, but it would not have achieved such successes it has recorded without the visionary of these reforms, Deng Xiaoping, and then the highly effective state management technocrat Zhu Rongji (read: Chu Zsung-ci). These are politicians who had previously been humiliated and severely personally affected by the ideological and revolutionary experiments of the ‘Mao Zedong era’ (1949–1976), and above all the period of ‘leftist deviation’, which is considered to be the years after the Great Leap Forward, that is, the periodof 1958–1976.

In other words, and this is the third hypothesis, truly effective reforms can only be carried out by people who have perfectly understood what ends in economic voluntarism and revolutionary ideological experiments, entailing anarchy, chaos and ruthless struggle between conflicting parties. The result of revolutionary attempts, experiments and tests is always a regression (civilisational, economic, institutional, often even mental) instead of the expected progress.

In the specific case of the PRC, it is the fourth and last hypothesis, another substantial and important role in the reform programme was still played, especially after 1992, by the local, rich cultural circle and the self-contained, long-lasting civilisation, which has a wide reach and still includes territories and areas beyond mainland China. Examples for the introduction of new mechanisms and solutions were therefore rather their own after 1978, Chinese by nature, and not necessarily imported or imposed from the dominant West at the time, particularly the US ‘unipolar power’ after the collapse of the Cold War.

In order to deal with China, I draw on my personal experience, but also on a vast amount of literature, both available in Poland (it has been getting better lately) and internationally, as well as from China, including Chinese-language literature. When necessary, I use the Internet, of course, as well as multi-media sources. Not wishing to disrupt the flow of the argument and narrative, I keep the footnotes to a bare minimum and dump them to the end of each chapter. The thematic bibliography I have chosen should tell us more about the research background, which is also far from complete in relation to the sources and materials used. I have also used, as is now a requirement, the official transcription of Chinese names and terms, called pinyin, which will not make the reading any easier for non-specialists. China, however, as I would like to emphasise, always requires effort …

In addition to many strictly scientific texts, analyses, articles and reports (see: Bibliography), I have already devoted three books to the Middle Kingdom, of which the closest to the present project is the comprehensive volume published in 2010, China’s Phoenix. Paradoxes of an Emerging Power. The present volume can be treated as a continuation of that project to some extent, although here both the scope of the subject matter and the area of research is broader than before, and in addition, what is more obvious, it is set a few years further, when China once again, as it does almost every decade, underwent significant internal changes, and at the same time grew (or was rather reborn), already without any doubt and without openly questioning this thesis, into a new superpower. From the point of view of their experience and mentality, it is almost self-evident, while for us in the West it comes as a shock: how is it that the world is to be at least partially dominated by the Chinese, in addition, under a communist regime by name?

However, an important reservation must be made at the outset. In the most general terms, we can say this: China first on the path of reform, tried to perfect communism (seven years before Gorbachev, which is important), then, after 1992, it entered globalisation, that is, world markets, which at that time were only capitalist, and transformed itself into a global workshop. And still later, taking advantage of the slump in global (read: Western) markets, after 2008 the country became more self-confident and assertive, especially under the rule of the current so-called fifth generation of leaders headed by Xi Jinping, in power and in control since late 2012.

Now, as I write these words, after four decades of reforms, China is once again (to be precise, as it has always been since the fall of the Empire) dreaming of being the power it has been for centuries; once again it wants to be a centre of civilisation, emanating to the world. Will they succeed? Will they be the new power dictating their terms to others? Will they opt for the status quo, or will they turn out to be a ‘revisionist power’, advocating the undermining of the position of the hitherto hegemon – the USA and the hitherto international order, dominated by the West for the last more than 200 years and commonly referred to as ‘liberal’? Are we facing the emergence or threat of an ‘illiberal order’ and a multipolar world?

These questions, in turn, testify to the fact that this undertaking is quite specific for an author’s work. It encompasses research areas penetrated by political science, economics, contemporary history, international relations, geo-strategy, sociology and even cultural studies. For only such a multidisciplinary approach, in my deep conviction, guarantees a better understanding of the Chinese phenomenon of the last four decades and an explanation of the sources of its successes, which are unquestionable even by its opponents. The latter are, of course, are not in short supply, as a newly emerging power will always encounter resistance from those who have hitherto dominated (this is the so-called Thucydides Trap, about which there will be some discussion in this work).