This chapter surveys the history of China from the time of first contact with British traders in the early seventeenth century until the present. It traces the story of English through the era of pidgin English, to English language education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and recent policies in the People’s Republic of China. Since the opening of China in the late 1970s, English has been officially promoted as a key to modernisation. Today, official attitudes to the language seem to be less enthusiastic than the recent past, but, despite this, the popularity of learning English appears to be undiminished among China’s growing middle classes.