China's rise to its current position as one of the world's biggest economic powers is not actually new. China was one of the most advanced societies and richest economies for much of the last 2000+ years. However, in the latter part of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), a variety of factors (natural disasters, internal rebellions, Western imperialism, Japanese invasion, etc.) led to economic decline and chaos. This ultimately resulted in a revolution that ended the Imperial China and the founding of the Republic of China in 1911.
The new Republic was challenged by disorganization, corruption, Japanese invasion, World War II and civil war with the newly formed Communist Party of China. The Communists ultimately won and established the People's Republic of China in 1949. Although the new government, led by Mao Zedong (毛泽东), initially improved China's economy, several of Mao's plans (including the Great Leap forward and the Cultural Revolution) resulted in a severe economic decline.
After Mao's death, in 1978 Deng Xiaoping began a series of reforms that gradually changed China's strict command economy into more of a free-market system. These reforms resulted in huge economic growth over the past 3 decades and have vastly improved the overall standard of living in China. Over the past 30 years, China's economy has grown at about 10% a year.
The rapid economic growth has spurred many changes - most importantly, over 250 million people have been brought out of abject poverty. Although with its huge 1.3 billion population, there are still many poor Chinese, there is also a growing middle class possibly exceeding the entire population of the United States. At the end of the 1970s, China was one of the poorest countries in the world, but it is now the world's 2nd largest economy and may overtake the United States with the next two decades.
Of course, it remains to be seen how long China can maintain such rapid economic growth, but assuming political stability remains, its likely that growth will continue although eventually at a somewhat slower rate.
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