Dirty Deeds

It is hard to overstate the degree to which China has been transformed in recent decades. Between 1959 and 1961, tens of millions of Chinese starved to death in the Great Famine. Today, China boasts the world’s second-largest economy. The country has virtually eliminated severe poverty among its citizens, a burgeoning middle class thrives in ever-expanding cities, and hundreds of Chinese citizens have become billionaires. Human history offers no other socioeconomic shift of equivalent magnitude.

"Dirty Deeds" is from the July/August 2017 issue of Foreign Affairs.

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