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Macabe Keliher is assistant professor of history at Southern Methodist University. His research focuses on state-making and political economy in early modern and modern China. He is the author of The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China (University of California Press, 2019) and is working on three-part history of capitalism in China, exploring developments from 1400 to the present.
Markets have played a central role in the country’s explosive development since the 1980s. But as GDP rose, inequality has soared—a stark turn away from earlier socialist ideals.
Founded a century ago, the Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly defied predictions of its demise.
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