China’s Epic Rise: From Century of Humiliation to Global Superpower

For centuries, one region dominated the world, inventing things that changed the course of history: paper, the compass, the printing press, gunpowder. This place, China, was once the center of the world’s economy and an undisputed superpower. But with the dawn of the 19th century, everything changed.

When the East Met the Industrial West

While China was resting on its historical laurels, something terrifying was happening on the opposite side of the planet. A scientific and industrial revolution was brewing in the West. Factories, weapons, and transportation of all kinds, combined with massive political and military might, allowed Western powers to begin their global domination—piece by piece—until they reached China’s borders.

The mighty China of that era couldn’t keep pace with Western advancement. The price? Astronomical.

The West poisoned, fought, humiliated, and colonized China. From this point, China entered a dark age—one that would last for more than a century. China experienced poverty, famine, and humiliation until one man arrived, marking the beginning of China’s renaissance. As the years passed, China transformed into what it is today: a trade and manufacturing monster, an important political player, and a terrifying nuclear military power.

Simply put, China became a superpower once again.

But China’s journey from poverty and humiliation to dominance and power wasn’t easy. Not at all. It was an epic journey of a country that experienced humiliation and decided to rise from the ashes.

Ancient Glory and the Seeds of Decline

If we were to talk about the very beginnings of China, honestly, this article would be 20-30 hours long. China boasts one of the oldest histories on the planet. Let’s pick a starting point—say, 1800.

At that time, China was a massive empire ruled by the Qing dynasty. It remained a powerful and influential economic force globally, though not as dominant as in previous eras. Still, it was a strong China that had given the world revolutionary inventions like paper (I don’t think I need to explain how paper changed human life), the printing press, the compass, and gunpowder.

The Chinese were also first-class traders. They traded silk, which was a state secret for a long time. Anyone caught smuggling silkworms out of China faced execution. They also traded tea, paper, medicines, and many other goods that made China a global trade hub.

But China had a massive weakness: it lacked military power to protect its trade and population. Why? The answer is complex but can be simplified: China always preferred isolation. It wasn’t interested in looking outward to see what the West was doing or how foreign armies were developing. No, China was a traditional country still fighting with swords and spears and primitive weapons, while what was happening in the West was nothing short of incredible.

The Western Invasion and the Century of Humiliation

By the mid-18th century, Europeans and Americans were living in the beginning of their golden age. The Industrial Revolution was transforming their societies—machines, factories, trains, cars, planes, weapons, bombs—terrifying development.

Because of this rapid advancement, the West needed raw materials in massive quantities. They needed new resources to control to keep factories running and economies growing. The solution? Colonize weaker countries like those in Africa, South America, and Asia—including China, which was economically and commercially strong but militarily weak.

In the 1830s, Britain introduced opium to the Chinese population, making them addicted and devastated. Within a short period, Chinese society was experiencing catastrophic crises due to opium addiction. When the Chinese emperor decided to destroy huge opium warehouses, Britain launched a massive war against China, known as the First Opium War. About 20 years later, Britain and France waged another war against China—the Second Opium War.

During these wars, Britain worked systematically to destroy China militarily, economically, and culturally. Hong Kong was also occupied during the Opium Wars. This marked the beginning of what’s known as China’s “Century of Humiliation.”

From this point, China entered a dark age and endured decades of poverty, humiliation, and colonization. During this period, revolutions against the imperial system erupted, like the Taiping Rebellion, which claimed 20 million lives—a terrifying number. Revolutions continued in China for a long time until the empire finally fell in 1912, and the Republic of China was established. But nothing changed—Chinese people remained in poverty, humiliation, and division.

The Rise of Communism and Mao’s China

Fast-forward to the early 1920s. World War I had ended, and the world had changed dramatically. Empires had fallen, and new countries emerged. One of these new countries was the Soviet Union—the massive superpower established after a long revolution lasting for years.

China was still in a pitiful state, with poverty reaching terrifying levels. Gradually, Chinese people began to be influenced by ideas coming from the Soviet Union—ideas advocating justice for peasants, working class, and the toiling class. In other words, the Chinese were influenced by communism.

China’s story with communism effectively begins in mid-1919, with a group of revolutionary youth that included a school teacher named Mao Zedong (remember this name—he’s important). These young people revolted against the Chinese government because they were tired of the situation China was experiencing: corruption, poverty, and foreign occupation.

During the same period, the communist revolution in Russia was achieving great successes. The philosophy and ideas of Russian communists began to find an echo in China, and from here, the Chinese Communist Party was established.

Initially, the Communist Party was an ordinary party engaged in politics. It allied with another party called the Nationalist Party to take control of power. They succeeded and jointly came to power in 1927. But then the Nationalists turned on the Communists and slaughtered tens of thousands of them.

This was the last straw for the Communists. They decided to leave politics and city life, move to the countryside, and establish an army called the Red Army. From here began the Chinese Civil War.

I won’t go into the details of the Chinese Civil War because it would require a long article. But what matters is that after about 20 years of grinding between the Nationalists and the Communists, the war ended with the Nationalists fleeing to Taiwan and establishing their own state there. The Communists, led by Mao, took control of China and established the People’s Republic of China.

From this moment, China would change forever. It became a communist, socialist state where everything belonged to the state—companies, factories, land, everything. Even people worked for the state and received money from the state. In other words, there was no poverty or wealth—everyone was equal and respected and worshipped the ruling party, which controlled the government, the army, the media, the economy, everything.

I suspect many of you think these things sound beautiful from a distance. Yes, no poverty or wealth, everyone equal, beautiful life. But in reality, the new Chinese system was somewhat harsh and dictatorial.

Leader Mao became sacred to the Chinese people. He was called “The Great Savior,” and it became an obligation for people to read and learn his book, “The Little Red Book.” China also considered itself an atheist state, promoting atheism and occasionally persecuting religious minorities.

So if we summarize what happened, China after the revolution’s success changed radically. It had a new economic system and new politics. Religion was banned, atheism spread, and all this was done in the hope that the country would develop. But this didn’t happen. China was still suffering from poverty, a difficult economic situation, unemployment, and drought. Things were literally catastrophic.

In the early 1960s, China was hit by a famine known as the Great Famine, which killed 40 million Chinese—an absolutely terrifying number. China was living in catastrophic conditions while Western countries were experiencing their golden age after World War II.

The Post-War Western Economic Order

After World War II, the United States, the biggest winner of the war, created a new global economic system. They linked the dollar to gold and made the dollar a reference currency for the entire world. They created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, changing the shape of the world’s economy.

You can read more about the Bretton Woods Agreement, which spread and consolidated the capitalist system that had already been present in America and Europe for a long time. But this particular agreement made it a terrifying system.

Capitalism simply means that everyone can own whatever they want—land, factories, farms, houses, everything. At the same time, citizens can trade, work, and earn as much money as they want. The government doesn’t interfere but takes high taxes.

To simplify, capitalism was the complete opposite of socialism. In socialism, the government controls the economy and distributes wealth to people. In capitalism, people work, trade, manufacture, make money, and give money to the government.

The capitalist system was a major reason for America’s prosperity and development. After World War II, this system worked miracles in some countries devastated by the war, like Germany, France, and Japan. Simply put, capitalism after World War II was like a magic wand.

Deng Xiaoping and China’s Economic Revolution

Who was watching from afar? Socialist countries like China. Remember, China up until the 1960s was a completely collapsed state with terrifying rates of poverty, unemployment, and famine.

You might think the Chinese looked at each other and said, “We’ve been trying the socialist system for a good while—let’s try a capitalist system for ourselves.” I’m joking—it wasn’t that simple.

China, despite seeing the success of the capitalist system, completely rejected it and remained insistent that the economy must be in the hands of the government. But this would change after the death of Mao Zedong.

In the late 1970s, a new leader came to power in China: Deng Xiaoping. This person was more open to the outside world than Mao and had seen how capitalism could lift entire countries out of poverty—countries close to China like Taiwan, Malaysia, and South Korea.

Therefore, the new leader Deng Xiaoping said, “Let’s try this time, for real. But we won’t try to turn China into a capitalist country all at once—we’re a communist country with a one-party system. We’ll try capitalism as a limited experiment.”

This experiment took place in a small town in southern China with no more than 30,000 people at that time, called Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, which was still under British control. Deng Xiaoping simply decided to make Shenzhen a special economic zone with a capitalist system and free market, allowing foreign companies to come and invest.

What happened next was literally a miracle—an economic miracle. It’s enough to say that Shenzhen, which was a small fishing village of 30,000 people, became a huge city full of skyscrapers with a population today of more than 17 million people. A small village 50 years ago now has 17 million people—more than Jordan’s entire population.

Currently, Shenzhen is considered the technology capital of China. It houses headquarters for giant companies like Huawei and DJI and is a fierce competitor to Silicon Valley in America.

After the incredible success in Shenzhen, the idea of special economic zones spread throughout China. China created new zones like Shanghai and Guangzhou, and many others, all of which achieved terrifying economic successes and are today centers of industry, technology, and tourism in Asia, even globally.

The Secret to China’s Economic Miracle

But what was the real idea? Was it just about creating a special economic zone, implementing a capitalist system, telling people to work freely, and expecting an economic miracle? Of course not.

This economic renaissance came after a great effort by the Chinese government, which decided to take bold decisions at the time, open up to the world, and bring in foreign investments. This was not present during Mao’s era, nor did the Chinese dream of doing such a thing.

In truth, China was fertile ground for foreign companies to come and invest because labor in China was cheap, with hundreds of millions of workers—this is simply the dream of any large company or factory owner. Government facilities, cheap labor, and business—perfect.

In the early 1990s, China exploded, and little by little, it began to transform into the world’s factory—literally, this was China’s title at that time and to this day. A large part of the things we use in our daily lives became “Made in China.” Let me check this battery… made in where? Made in China.

By the early 2000s, poverty rates in China had dropped dramatically—about 90% lower than in the 1970s. The Chinese economy became one of the best in the world, and as a natural result, China began to look outward, just like the Europeans did at the beginning of this story.

China’s Soft Power and Global Influence

But China, honestly, didn’t go occupy countries militarily, take their lands, and steal their wealth. Not at all. China began to work on something called “soft power.”

From the beginning of the new millennium, the world started to see Chinese dramas, Chinese movies like Jackie Chan’s films (who among us hasn’t watched them?). Additionally, China began to spread its culture to the world, spreading its language despite the fact that Chinese is considered one of the most complex and difficult languages in history. Currently, there are more than 100 million people who speak Chinese despite not being Chinese.

One of the important parts of Chinese soft power is sports. China literally announced that it was on its way to becoming a superpower through the legendary display it presented at the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008—an amazing show that people still talk about today.

But it’s not all soft power. China has also built, in just a few years, a huge, terrifying army with more than 2 million soldiers—the largest in the world in terms of numbers. This is in addition to the huge arsenal of tanks, missiles, aircraft, and nuclear warheads. China is militarily frightening and would need an article all to itself.

Challenges and Future Prospects

Simply put, China today has become a truly powerful country that everyone takes very seriously—a country that rose from under the rubble and built a huge economy, a strong army, and spread its culture around the world.

But things aren’t always positive. If you look at this chart showing China’s economic growth since 2000, you’ll see that economic growth was excellent—8%, 9%, 10%, 11%, 12%, 14%—until we reached 2012. After that, the Chinese economy began to grow less, and this is honestly due to many reasons.

Some are natural reasons, like the country has already developed and now has factories and companies, so its growth will naturally start to decrease a bit. And there are unnatural reasons, like the population problem. Because of the one-child policy, the number of young people and children in China has become less than expected. So the Chinese government began looking for a solution, and the solution was outside China—specifically in Africa.

China’s African Strategy

After their economy started growing at a lower rate, the Chinese began looking for countries that needed investments. In truth, throughout history, there’s nothing more suitable than investing in African countries—huge countries, high population, untapped wealth.

China said, “Let America be distracted by the Middle East and wars, and we’ll focus on Africa”—focus on Africa in a way that’s not colonial but not innocent either.

China began making investments in Africa worth billions of dollars—roads, railways, ports, airports, schools, hospitals, factories. These investments were made in all African countries without exception. And all this in exchange for what? In exchange for many things, including allowing China to explore for oil and resources, not to mention the great political influence and relationships that China would build with dozens of countries.

And the biggest gain is the spread of Chinese products in the African continent—a huge market.

Some might say, “What China is doing is very good—China is helping African countries and building things they never dreamed would exist in their countries. African countries benefit, and China also benefits—mutual interest.”

That’s correct, but what you don’t know is that these investments aren’t gifts. These investments are in the form of debt or loans, and China knows in advance that this African country will not be able to repay this debt. So in exchange for this debt, China takes over assets in that country, such as taking over a port to always ensure that its trade is going excellently.

China in Africa is acting like a bank—a bank with a lot of money. You want a debt, a loan, a huge amount? I’ll give it to you. If you return my money, fine. If you don’t return it, which is expected, then I need to reserve this project and control it for a long period of time.

This is, by the way, considered a type of colonialism. I’m not criticizing China here at all. China is simply acting as a superpower. If we compare it to other superpowers like Britain and France in the past, or America currently, we will discover that China is much “cuter” compared to them.

The Essence of China’s Rise

This was the story of China in all simplicity and brevity. It’s the story of a country that was once a source of science and inventions but was subjected to occupation and humiliation. Then it lived about a whole century of poverty, hunger, and wars. Then it tried to rise but failed. Then it tried again but failed. Then it tried again and finally succeeded, becoming within a short period a superpower that everyone takes seriously, including the most powerful country in the world.

This is an inspiring story worth exploring further. What we’ve covered today is just a small and concise part of China’s history and renaissance, which is still full of details. China’s transformation offers valuable lessons for developing nations and shows how strategic vision and economic reforms can change a country’s trajectory, turning centuries of humiliation into decades of unprecedented growth.

The world continues to watch as China’s influence expands across continents, reshaping global power dynamics and rewriting the rules of international relations. Whether through trade, technology, or strategic investments, China’s rise represents one of the most significant geopolitical shifts of our era—a story still very much in progress.