Every century of human history is unique in its own way. But for us, who are now living, the twentieth century is of particular interest, because to this day we live in the "long" twentieth century, and remain, in the language of Soviet classics-feuilletonists, its "product of the epoch" ("Who is Catherine the Great?" "Product of the epoch"). The term "long nineteenth century" was coined by Western historians of our time, referring to the period from the declaration of independence of the United States to the First World War (1776-1914).1. Some of them, including one of the most authoritative - the Briton E. Hobsbawm, called the" short XX century "of 1914 - 1991, giving the" honor "to the Soviet Union to complete this era with its collapse 2. But, apparently, it is too early, in the jargon of historians, to divide the last segment of the annals of mankind, which, perhaps,can be called the "short XX century". they will call it the "long XX century", including the beginning of the XXI century. If you get rid of the hypnosis of the calendar, especially the beginning of the third millennium, in a certain sense, we still live in the "long XX century", which turned the history of mankind upside down with two world wars, the awakening of the East, the collapse of the last empires, the formation of almost a hundred new states, the modernization of the main part of humanity and the unprecedented rise of innovative breakthroughs, starting from the assembly line and from the atomic bomb to information and communication technologies. When we think about today and tomorrow, we have to turn willy-nilly to the twentieth century. This is also true of China, whose rapid economic and geopolitical rise in recent decades has been the subject of special attention around the world. Contrary to the now common perception that it is "easy" to integrate the country into global processes, especially market ones, it was also long and difficult for China. Success came after more than a century ... Читать далее