ABSTRACT
To understand the problems faced by Chinese modernizers, it is important to have some sense of the tradition that provides the focus for their efforts. Many members of the post-1949 leadership had vivid memories of imperial China. While they have passed on, even people who do not hold the empire in living memory have had to deal with its legacy. No chapter-indeed, no multivolume work-can hope to cover the richness and complexity of Chinese civilization adequately. Here, we simply sketch a few of the important points to give students of present-day China a better feel for the context within which the leadership had to operate.
