ABSTRACT
China’s spectacular rise to global prominence is one of the mostremarkable stories of our time. In the first half of the twentieth cen-tury, millions of rural and urban Chinese lived in poverty, struggling to survive in a country that was continually torn by war and domestic upheaval. But, since that time, China has undergone a dramatic transformation. It has embraced the technological advances of recent decades and provided new opportunities for millions of Chinese to improve their lives. A new, growing middle class has signalled the emergence of a Chinese society where access to good education and health care as well as a higher standard of living is becoming the norm, rather than the exception. While problems have accompanied this economic transformation, China has become the world’s second largest economy, and, as a result, China’s future holds unprecedented prosperity for 1.3 billion Chinese.
