Questions tagged [china]
Generally refers to the country referred to as the People's Republic of China, a country in E Asia. With a surface area of 3,691,502 sq. mi. (9,560,990 sq. km). The current Capital is Beijing.
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Are dictatorships inherently unstable because decisions are not made for the good of the country, but for the ruler? [closed]
China's economy is sliding toward collapse due to, among other things like sanctions, inefficiency due to government corruption.
Compare East Germany and West Germany, or North and South Korea. It ...
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Which European country first introduced wristwatches to China and why is it called 手表?
As a native French speaker studying Mandarin Chinese, I couldn't help but notice that the Chinese term for wristwatch, 手表 (hand-show), is quite similar to the French term "une montre" (a &...
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Is the 2024 Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk region the first time since WW2 Russia was invaded?
It's widely claimed that the 2024 Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk region is the first time since WW2 Russia was invaded:
France24:
Ukraine's incursion, the first on Russian soil since World War II
...
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What is the source for Cixi dreaming on the train?
There is a persistent narrative that Cixi (Empress Dowager of the Qing Dynasty) dreamt badly on her first train voyage and therefore banished trains to a place far from Beijing. This was made a film ...
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How has the PRC/CCP explained this statement by Mao about Taiwan? [closed]
Mao (1936, as quoted by Edgar Snow):
It is the immediate task of China to regain all our lost territories, not merely to defend our sovereignty south of the Great Wall. This means that Manchuria must ...
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When did the Great Leap Forward famine become widely known? Was it not widely known c. 1975?
Gale Johnson (1975):
For the entire twentieth century to the present, there have probably been between 12 million and 15 million famine deaths
As late as c. 1975, was the Great Leap Forward famine ...
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Was there a famine in China in 1906–07 that killed 20–25 million?
Wikipedia has a page on this but its "factual accuracy is disputed":
This Chinese famine was directly caused by the 1906 China floods (April–October 1906) ...
Two modern commentaries ...
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When, and in what manner, did horizontal writing in East Asian languages switch from right-to-left to left-to-right?
East Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese) imported the Western style of horizontal writing as contact with the West increased, but it was always still written in the traditional ...
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Is there any modern research/publication in English about Qianlong Emperor's brutal regime?
Qianlong era used to be called a golden age of China. But now we Chinese people have a more objective view of this period, we know it was NOT a golden age of China, as one of a famous scholars 张宏杰 ...
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Did anyone in the US consider the early rapprochement with China as an opportunity to escalate the Vietnam War?
This answer explains why the USA didn't initially invade North Vietnam with ground forces: it was China's unambiguous red line for getting involved like they did in Korea.
However, that was 1965. ...
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How was China involved in World War one? [closed]
Much is known about World War one and the countries and their colonies which participated in it.
India, as I know sent more than a million troops to aid Britain and her allies in 'The Great War'.
But ...
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What caused the fall of the Zhou dynasty? [closed]
The Zhou dynasty was the longest dynasty, yet in the end they created the Warring States Period why?
I have read Wikipedia:Zhou, but I don't understand it well.
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Why do the obverse and reverse of this coin refer to different provinces?
These coins were historically minted at the Nanking mint in Kiangnan province but the obverse of this coin appears to reference the "Zhejiang" mint. I've not been able to locate any other ...
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Was silent reading or reading aloud the norm in pre-modern (esp. Tang through Ming eras) China?
Many scholars argue that in ancient Greco-Roman culture, reading aloud was the norm, as seen in examples like Augustine's Confessions, where Augustine sees someone reading silently and sees this as ...
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Have Chinese (and surrounding) cultures traditionally heated their milk?
I’ve spoken with many middle aged Chinese people who have reported that for as long as they can remember, even growing up on a farm, they would never drink milk, even their own cattle’s, without first ...
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Why are there no pandas in historical Chinese art?
Something seemingly anomalous within China’s historical record is the lack of giant pandas within almost any art until the 20th century. I found a paper in Polish, but with an English abstract which ...
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(Why) did the PRC not [ever] recognize the incorporation of the Baltic states into the USSR?
I'm aware that the relationship between the PRC and the USSR was rocky at times, but it seems a little odd the PRC never recognized the three Baltic states as part of the USSR, that is according to ...
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Did either Chinese government (Beijing or Taipei) operate an administrative structure in the Kowloon Walled City at any time between 1898 and 1994?
The Kowloon Walled City was a 6-acre enclave in Hong Kong that was accepted by the British authorities during the time of British rule over Hong Kong as being under de jure Chinese sovereignty. One of ...
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Why did China and some other communist countries boycot the 1980 Summer Olympics?
The 1980 Summer Olympics was held in Moscow, Soviet Union.
Many countries boycotted the games initiated by the United States for Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
But there were some communist ...
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Did Diaochan really love Lü Bu?
I am watching a series on Three kingdoms (2010), were it is shown that, Diaochan was really in love with Lü Bu, it was only Wang Yun, who schemed an act of proposing her daughter as a bride to Dong ...
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How did the Ten Attendants gain power in the imperial palace?
How did the Ten Attendants group became powerful?
My reasoning as follows:-
Eunuchs were used as a servants for royal family. So, they don't have any power other than that, neither being respected by ...
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Was there the potential for additional alternate supply routes to China toward the end of World War II?
For most of the war, the Allies airlifted a trickle of supplies to China from Assam (India) to Kuming (China) over the (Himalayan) "Hump", enough to keep China in the war. In the winter of ...
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Did China colonize any countries? [closed]
A lot of Asian countries used to use the Chinese alphabet to write such as Japan or Vietnam, were there any countries actually colonized by China that is not apart of modern day China?
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What does "new royal power centers" mean?
I'm reading The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence, and he said in the first chapter, talking about the context of 1600 A.D.:
Rulers in Europe, India, Japan, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire ...
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Are there cases where a civil war divided a country unevenly but stably, like China and Taiwan?
The Chinese Civil War split the Republic of China into the victorious People's Republic of China and the defeated Republic of China (Taiwan).
This split appears to have been extremely one-sided, with ...
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How did Mao regain and consolidate power after the Great Famine?
Mao Zedong's position had weakened after the Great Famine, and in the period during and leading up to the Cultural Revolution, he regained and consolidated his power. I am interested in getting a ...
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How did Larry Wu-tai Chin's leak in Oct. 1970 — of a classified document — allow China "to alter [...] volume of anti-U.S. rhetoric in the press"?
In the course of his nearly forty-year espionage career, [Larry Wu-tai] Chin [金无怠] supplied the PRC with information on U.S. intelligence requirements and foreign policy initiatives relating to China, ...
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What did modern China do with food sold to the state?
I understand that communes, later, "production units", and eventually, households sold food to the state at a set price. If the state wants to pay a lower-than-market price for food, do they ...
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To what extent has ideographic script contributed to the unification of China？
The different languages of Europe are, by Chinese standards, just successive variants of one language. But the phonetic alphabet is so flexible that the same set of letters can spell almost any ...
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Did the Joseon dynasty ask the Ming/Qing emperors for permission to crown a new king?
Since they were vassals of Ming and Qing dynasties, did the Joseon kings ask permission for their coronation?
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What became of the daughter of Cixi‘s photographer?
„Princess“ DerLing has written several books on Empress Dowager Cixi. Her brother Xunling took the only photographs of Cixi known to me. But on some of the pictures from 1903 (example below) a little ...
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Was Ottawa, Canada the origin of the "Free Tibet" movement that became world famous in the 80's and 90's?
Free Tibet as a slogan became world-famous starting from 1986-1987
And the only reference I can find as to the sparks that ignited the movement are a demonstration in Ottawa in 1986, where Tibetans ...
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Why did China hate dogs? Why were dogs abject creatures in China?
I quote page 240 in Yuan-tsung Chen's 2008 Return to the Middle Kingdom | One Family, Three Revolutionaries, and the Birth of Modern China. This quote flummoxes me! I have a pet dog! I live in a ...
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How does the "conspiracy theory" work in China and for what purpose? [closed]
I am Chinese and have been surrounded by the "conspiracy theory" that the U.S. has been intending to destroy China for a long time.
Proponents of this theory
cite the Plaza Accord as ...
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Did the Chinese aim guns above ships in 19th century?
I have read some things that don't seem true about the Chinese opposing English and other western forces during the 19th century and early 20th. What seems to be true is that China was very aware of ...
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What was Hunanese cuisine like before chili peppers were imported to China?
Today, chilis are strongly associated with Hunanese cuisine, which is regarded as the spiciest Chinese regional cuisine. However, Chinese recipe books didn't start mentioning chilis until the 1790s, ...
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In Shanghai before World War II what were relations like between the Europeans living there and the local Chinese?
My Uncle has been telling me a lot about my great grandfather. He was in the merchant marine and, before World War II, he was stationed in Shanghai which at the time had a large European population. ...
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Did (other) PRC or Soviet leaders give 3+ hour congress speeches?
Fidel Castro is well-known for giving 4- or even 7-hour speeches. Xi Jinping gave a 3h 20min communist party congress speech. How does the latter compare to typical PRC or Soviet leaders speeches at ...
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After the First Opium war, Why didn't Britain demand large amounts of territory from China?
The first Opium war was a total British victory. With such a total British victory, and with the expansionist ideals that existed in Britain, forcing China into an unconditional surrender seemed to be ...
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Did Harry Dexter White obstruct a proposed $200 million loan to Nationalist China in 1943 as a U.S. Treasury department official?
Another example of White acting as an agent of influence for the
Soviet Union was his obstruction of a proposed $200 million loan to
Nationalist China in 1943, which he had been officially instructed ...
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What led Chiang Kai-shek to do a U-turn against the Japanese?
The Japanese feel that Western countries are unfair in imposing the status quo on Japan and calling it “peace.” Their whole conception
of diplomatic machinery and collective security is that it is ...
user39013
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How did the First Emperor of Qin "burn the books" prior to the invention of paper?
The first emperor of China, Qin Shihuang, is recorded as burning books (among other things). At the same time, the invention of paper is generally ascribed to the Han Dynasty, i.e., the dynasty after ...
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Did Deng Xiaoping really break his leg playing billiards?
I am reading the biography of Deng Xiaoping by Ezra Vogel. In the biography, it mentions that Deng Xiaoping once broke his leg playing billiards. I personally find that highly unlikely. Billiards is ...
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How fast and how far could one travel, by means of horse relay posts, in ancient China in 1500CE?
I'm trying to find out how people used to travel by horse, when they had to go to a very distant territory.
I have done research on horseback riding, horses and relay stations.
I found out that the ...
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Why is it said that the Qin dynasty was the first to unite China?
I have often heard that the Qin dynasty was the first to unite China. For example, Wikipedia says:
Qin Shi Huang, or Shihuangdi, was the founder of the Qin dynasty, and first emperor of a unified ...
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Why did Filipinos form the guards of the Ever Victorious Army?
The Ever Victorious Army was formed under the Chinese imperial authority and the commercial counters in Shanghai. It was formed by Frederick Ward, an American. During a time (I could not identify the ...
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Have sanctions ever stopped a nation from starting or continuing a war?
I am asking about nations that would be considered “Great Powers”. It is my understanding that the U.S. oil embargo on Imperial Japan did nothing to stop Japan’s war in China and actually caused them ...
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How exactly did the government work with very large empires? [closed]
In planning my fictional worlds, I have come to wonder how exactly large empires worked, the main question being, how did they manage to keep control over such a large space in a manner that allowed ...
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What did the US state department do in the Chinese Civil War from 1945–1949?
James J. Drummey writes in The Real McCarthy Record:
It was also during the mid-to-late Forties that communist sympathizers
in the State Department played a key role in the subjugation of
mainland ...
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Are Chinese and Iranian "blocky" writing styles related?
Both China and Iran have character styles that are characterized by being (at least approximately) based on a square raster and by "filling up the plane" in the sense that if you take any ...
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