Abstract: This article challenges the conventional view that regards material poverty and socioeconomic stagnation the major cause of protest in modern China, disputes the materialist, economically determinist interpretation of Chinese revolutions, and argues that economic prosperity often fuels political discontent in the process of China's pursue of modernization. It sketches three cycles of Chinese history that each starts from a crisis of the existing institutions triggering reforms, through the reforms that create prosperity, to the social conflicts stirred by economic achievements, as those demonstrated in the Cixi reform of the 1900s, the 'New Deal' of the nationalist Nanjing decade, and the recent rise of China as a global power. With the rediscovery of forgotten prosperity, it re-examines the connections between economic conditions, on one hand, and social discontents and political protests on the other.