In post-Mao China, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) urged 1,000 citizens to "seek truth from facts" and receive the benefits (and apparent contradictions) of "reform policies". By the time the world entered the 21st century, liberated from Deng's tyranny, China had become an economic issue by that time. The process by which China is at the center of the world's attention is both surprising and important. Along with China, the Portrait of a Nation, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Liu Heung Shing presents the visual history of the People's Republic of China. Taken directly from the archives of 88 national photographers, it presents the events and experiences of more than sixty years of unrest in the People's Republic of China, ranging from its establishment in 1949 to the electrical power system – present tense. maps of China, and biographies of all participating artists.' (First page of this book)