The West faces a huge intellectual challenge. It will never make sense of China until it understands China in Chinese rather than Western terms. Where are we now? Ever since 2017 the West has been going backwards. This is the Great Regression. The longer the West refuses to understand China, the less it will be able to understand the world. The challenge is stark: learn to understand China or become increasingly marginalised. This talk was given at King Henry Vlll School, my old school, in Coventry. I left in 1964 and this was the first time I had returned since then.