Author(s)

Xiaodong Li, Yuzhong Du

School of Marxism, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China.

500 years ago, the Western Europe began its great voyage and grand rise, meanwhile China fell into its impact-response model with the West after ending Zhenghe’s voyage to the Western seas, which to be exact is the western learning’s east-forward expanding. After failed efforts of learning the Western mainstream democracy-science, China departed from the road of westernization and turned to Marxism’s Sinicization, which made a new China stand up to shook the world. However to lean to the socialism side against capitalism did not succeed enough to build an even more modernized China than Euro-American imperialism, therefore China decided to learn the western capitalism one more time, but this time focusing on how-toes and sciences and technologies for economy rather than democracy for the statecraft, which makes China the second economy and shakes the world second time. But for China, to learn from the West and to rejuvenate itself are two wings for flying high and long, which is the lessons from Chinese 500 years’ falling and re-rising history.

West, China, Learn, Revive, Lesson

Li, X. and Du, Y. (2021) To Learn to Revive: The Lessons of Chinese 500 Years’ Falling and Re-Rising History. Chinese Studies, 10, 53-68. doi: 10.4236/chnstd.2021.101005.