China has grown from a simple society of agrarian feudalism to a global economic and military superpower in just seventy years, a feat rivalled only by America’s rise to power in the twentieth century.

In this two-part series that explores China’s role in the modern world, revisit the rise and fall of Dynastic China and the rise of its successor, the People’s Republic of China, a country of free peoples ruled by an authoritarian regime that ‘plays the long game’.