Modern China’s ascent to great power status and its geostrategic, political, and economic power and influence, is reverberating in China and the world. This course provides an overview of the history of the fall and rise of modern China from 1839 to the present. It covers the First and Second Opium Wars; the unequal treaties; the Taiping Rebellion; the Sino-Japanese War; the Open Door Policy; the Boxer Rebellion; the Chinese Revolution and the fall of the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty; the political, social and economic instability of the Republic of China; the Chinese Civil War between Chiang Kai shek’s Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Communists; the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and greater China; the China-Japan conflict in World War Two; the Communist victory in 1949; Communist China’s intervention in the Korean War; the Mao Era (the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Sino-Soviet conflict); the Deng Era (economic reform and Tiananmen Square); China’s post-Cold War rise and its assertiveness under Xi Jinping; the Belt and Road Initiative; tensions over Taiwan, Hong Kong, North Korea, and the South China Sea. The course also examines the problematic relationship between China, the United States and Australia from the 1840s to the present.