Background
China's ancient civilisation dates back to at least 1600 B.C., first under the Shang (1600-1046 B.C.) and then the Zhou (1045-221 B.C) dynasties. China’s imperial era commenced in 220 B.C. under the Qin Dynasty and lasted until its fall in 1912. China oscillated between periods of unity and disunity under a succession of imperial dynasties during that period. Coming to the 19th century, the Qing Dynasty suffered heavily from imperialism, military defeats, and foreign occupation. The Revolution of 1911 saw the end of Qing Dynasty as it collapsed and China became a republic under Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party). However, the republic was beset by division, warlordism, and continued foreign occupation. In the late 1920s, a civil war erupted between the ruling KMT-controlled government led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Mao Zedong. Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China in 1937 as it had already occupied much of northeastern China in the early 1930s. The resulting eight years of warfare devastated the country and cost up to 20 million Chinese lives by the time of Japan’s defeat in 1945. Following the end of the World War II, the Nationalist-Communist civil war continued with renewed intensity and further culminated with a CCP victory in 1949.
Mao Zedong and the CCP officially formed an autocratic socialist system that, while ensuring China's sovereignty, imposed strict controls over everyday life and launched agricultural, economic, political, and social policies - such as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) - costing millions of lives of people. Mao died in 1976. Post Mao era and its subsequent leaders including Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Zhu Rongji, Hu Jintao, and Wen Jiabao focused on market-oriented economic development and opening up the country to foreign trade, while maintaining the dominant rule of the Communist Party. Since these reforms, China is among the world’s fastest growing economies, with real gross domestic product averaging over 9% growth annually through 2018, lifting an estimated 800 million people out of poverty, and dramatically improving overall living standards. China was the second largest economy in the world by 2011. The growth, however, has created considerable social displacement, adversely affected the country’s environment, and reduced the country’s natural resources. Under the leadership of the Xi Jinping, these policies are been continued, but has also maintained tight political controls. Over the past decade, China has also increased its global outreach, which includes military deployments, participation in international organizations, and initiating a global infrastructure investment project in 2013 called the "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI). While many nations have signed on to BRI agreements, others have balked seeing the terms as a form of neo-imperialism or debt-trap diplomacy.
(Source: The CIA World Factbook)