(Editor’s Note: This is a college essay I finished in 2006. It’s one of the better papers I’ve written. I hope you get something from it.)

A revolution of some sort had been due in China since the onset of the decline of the Qing Dynasty. As China’s “old order” became more and more untenable, various rebels and reformers attempted, without success, to halt China’s decline. It took the “right” revolution to renew an ailing nation. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the failure of various reformers, the Communist Revolution finally succeeded in ending the decline because it was truly revolutionary, offered a system to replace Confucianism, and united the nation.