China's rise as the world's second-largest economy surely is the most dramatic development in the global economy since the year 2000. Volume II, which spans China's two turbulent centuries from 1800, charts this wrenching process of an ancient empire being transformed to re-emerge as a major world power. This volume for the first time brings together the fruits of pioneering international scholarship in all dimensions of economic history to provide an authoritative and comprehensive overview of this tumultuous and dramatic transformation. In many cases, it offers a fundamental reinterpretation of major themes in Chinese economic history, such as the role of ideology, the rise of new institutions, human capital and public infrastructure, the impact of Western and Japanese imperialism, the role of external trade and investment, and the evolution of living standards in both the pre-Communist and Communist eras. The volume includes seven important chapters on the Mao and reform eras and provides a critical historical perspective linking the past with the present and future.