Behind the Scenes: China’s Long Revolution, 1900-1950.

It’s here again: release day for another major video. Today (October 17, 2025) my newest deep-dive video went up on my YouTube channel, “China’s Long Revolution, 1900-1950.” I have embedded it below, but at 2 hours and 48 minutes I doubt you’d want to watch it from an email app. As is now customary, here are my thoughts on this video, what it means, how it was made and why I think it’s important.

In the latter case at least, its importance should be self-evident. China is undoubtedly a superpower in today’s world, economically, politically and militarily. If it hasn’t already eclipsed the United States in influence and power, it certainly will at some point in this century. Thus, almost by definition, how China got to be the way it is now is an important subject in modern history. And China’s road to its current form is considerably more convoluted, violent and tumultuous than the recent history of most other countries. At the beginning of the 20th century China was still an archaic autocracy, an imperial dynasty ruled much as it had been for the past 2,000 years. By 1950 it was the People’s Republic of China, something largely new on the world stage, and the groundwork had been laid for the intense rise of China as a nation of power and importance. The story of how China got from Point A to Point B is, I think, vital for anyone who wants to try to understand how the modern world works.