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treaties signed during the 1800s with most of its neighbors, some of which were colonies of European powers. Chinese resentment over many of these treaties remains high: The period from about 1850 to 1950 is remembered as the “Century of Humiliation,” when foreigners—from the English to the Japanese—exercised control over Chinese politics while China itself lacked the ability to gain independence. The Chinese Climate China’s huge geography creates a wide variety of different climates. The densely populated eastern coastline is a subtropical climate, famously hot in the summertime and relatively mild in the winter, with monsoon rains that power river systems and rice paddy irrigation. By contrast, the southern regions are mountainous and much drier: The fa- mous bamboo forests of the southern mountains are home to pandas, whereas the Tibetan plateau is very arid because the Himalayas block almost all precipitation. The western and north-central regions of China are also dry, part of the large Gobi Desert that stretches all the way to Mongolia. The northeastern region of China, Manchuria, is much colder in the wintertime and receives modest rainfall, making hardy crops like wheat much more practical. China is the world’s largest country by population, the sec- ond-wealthiest country by gross domestic product (GDP), and a leader in many standards of living. It is a nation that has nearly completed industrialization , leading to record economic growth, and is now positioned to be a dominant spender and authority in the twenty-first century. For thousands of years, the Chinese people have had little interest in the outside world, but China today de- sires to be the dominant power inAsia and perhaps the world.This wish has created a natural rivalry with the United States.The two Cold War powers eye each other uneasily while their businesses exchange hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of goods across the Pacific Ocean. Traditional fears of Chinese nuclear weapons

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