Revolution', Michael Wood observes, 'has been a fact of life in Chinese history'. Between 1850 and 1950, three cataclysmic revolutions shook China to the core, but out of them, today's China emerged. Michael Wood explores the effects of the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion and the two world wars, before ending the story with Mao's death and the boom time of the last thirty years.

Originally released by BBC Worldwide Learning, 2016. Streaming video file encoded with permission for digital streaming by Infobase on November 21, 2019.