Even as the world's most populous nation continued its seemingly inexorable economic rise, violence in Tibet and a devastating earthquake in the southwest were just some of the crises that left its people in a more sombre mood.

"It was certainly a more difficult year than China had imagined. It was the Olympic year. The Chinese leaders had been preparing the country for all this glamour," said Joseph Cheng, a China watcher at City University of Hong Kong.

"Now is a time for reconsideration, for pondering, for deliberation... What are the costs that we are paying, and what has gone wrong?

"These are the questions that the Chinese are raising."

Much of the news that hit the front pages in 2008 overshadowed the tectonic shifts in the global economy bringing China back to its former pre-eminence.

It is likely that at some point during the year, China's economy overtook Germany's as the world's third largest, although this remains to be officially confirmed.

China's growing economic muscle made many foreign governments see it as a potential saviour as the global economic crisis struck in the second half of the year.

But an abrupt slowdown in China towards the end of the year showed it still had many economic vulnerabilities and that huge challenges remained in raising the living standards of its 1.3 billion people.

The past year also highlighted that while the world wanted to embrace China economically, many nations still had issues with its communist rulers.

Pent-up emotions about China were released after an uprising broke out in its Himalayan region of Tibet in March, with an international uproar centred on the military crackdown there that followed.

Events came to a head weeks later when China's Olympic torch relay was heckled by pro-Tibet protesters in London, Paris and other major global cities.

China eventually held what was widely celebrated as a spectacular and well organised Olympic Games in August, but scars remained.

"Holding a successful Olympics has been the Chinese people's dream for more than 100 years," said Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at Beijing Institute of Technology and a prominent political commentator.

"But the problems during the Olympic torch relay show that China's rise still cannot be accepted by the Western countries, especially because of its political system."

If anything, the foreign protests boosted nationalist sentiment at home, and patriotic pride ratcheted up in September when China became the third nation to successfully conduct a spacewalk.

In Taiwan, another focus of Chinese nationalism, things looked up for Beijing after a presidential election in March led to a victory for its favourite candidate.

The island, which is culturally Chinese but has ruled itself for nearly six decades, moved to increase economic exchanges, welcomed on the mainland as first steps toward reunification.

In a civilisation that traditionally linked freak weather phenomena to the fortunes of its rulers, the year could hardly have had a less auspicious beginning.

It started out with the worst winter weather in decades, costing numerous lives and causing vital parts of the transportation system to shut down when it could least afford it -- ahead of the massive Lunar New Year travel rush.

This was, however, a precursor of a much more tragic disaster that hit southwest China on May 12 -- the devastating Wenchuan earthquake.

The quake was the worst in China in a generation, with a magnitude of 8.0, and left more than 87,000 people dead or missing.

It triggered goodwill from the rest of the world that, momentarily at least, silenced criticism over Tibet, and China was praised for its timely response to the emergency.

But the quake also exposed ugly sides of life in the people's republic, as a large number of victims in the quake were children, crushed in school buildings that were shoddily built at low cost for maximum profit.

It served as a reminder of greed as a driving force in modern China -- and if extra confirmation was needed, a dire food safety scandal emerged after the Olympics.

At least six babies died, and nearly 300,000 were sickened, after drinking milk formula tainted with the toxic chemical melamine, apparently added to make the powder look richer in protein than it really was.

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