Excellent & Passionate review of Modern China History

I just completed the course "The Fall and Rise of China" by Professor Richard Baum at the Great Courses (http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=8370). This is my 30th completed course from this company. My review of this excellent course is below: 

This is one of the best courses at The Great Courses. Partly, this is because Professor Richard Baum is an excellent and passionate presenter. 48 half-hour lectures just pass through in no time at all.

I have been a long-term China watcher - but my knowledge before I watched this course was more 'complete' in the 'ancient' Chinese historical segment and not the modern 20th century one. This course illuminated the latter outstandingly.

Like typical historical courses, this course outlines the modern history of China in a time-chronological manner, from the beginning of the 'fall' of the Chinese dynasties in the late 19th century, to China in the 21st century (this course was done sometime in 2010 and it thus covered China until then). In between, it covered important events in the modern history of China, which included:

- Birth of Chinese communist party (CCP),

- The May 4th movement,

- The fight between the CCP and the opposing Guomindang,

- The Japan invasion,

- The disastrous Great Leap Forward,

- The equally-disastrous Cultural Revolution,

- Post-Mao era and early-Deng Xiao Ping,

- The Tiananment "event" in 1989 and what caused it,

- The roaring China in the 1990s and 2000s, and

- The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

I think this course complemented nicely the other The Great Courses course on China ("From Yao to Mao") which covered more the 'ancient' history of China; this one continues pretty much where that course left of.

I highly recommend this course to anyone who is interested in the modern history of this country, which soon will be the largest country in the world (in GDP terms).