This book is part of an initiative in cooperation with renowned Chinese publishers to make fundamental, formative, and influential Chinese thinkers available to a western readership, providing absorbing insights into Chinese reflections of late.

Haipeng Zhang and Jinyi Zhai provide us with a history of China's struggle for national independence and prosperity, reflecting the "humiliation" in the "sinking" period and the "struggle" during the "rising" period. After the Japanese aggressions against China had caused more damage to China than all previous invasions, Chinese society not only avoided the continued "sinking", but also laid the foundation for China's modernization and the recent success story to the present day.

Haipeng Zhang, born in 1939, graduated from the Department of History of Wuhan University in August 1964. He entered the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and served as researcher since 1990. Since 2006, he serves as Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is also President of the Association of Chinese Historians and President of the China Sun Yat-sen Research Institute. He is editor-in-chief of the 10 volumes of The General History of Modern China, author of A Study of the Pursuit of the Historical Process of Modern China, Research on the Basic Problems of Chinese Modern History, Research on Modern Chinese History, and many other publications.