Staff Writer Jack Ford argues that to understand where China is going, we must understand where it has been. First in a series, this article analyses the historic context of crises which created the modern state of China, and its remarkable adaptability. Our familiar hegemons are resorting to evermore violent means of exacting their will, while the stability of the Western economic system becomes evermore uncertain. Dialectical materialism is a framework through which to understand the world – the belief in the absoluteness of the material world, and that the material world is changed through the unity and struggle of opposing forces. Recent Posts A China Ascendent: Adaptability in Crisis