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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What taxes were legally required to be paid in silver in Qing China?
Background
It is often argued that the following mechanism heavily contributed to the commencement of the Opium trade between the Qing and British Empires (you are welcome to correct my understanding)...
4
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1answer
236 views
Did Cao Cao really say the greatest traitor resembled an honest man?
The greatest traitor has always resembled an honest man and the
greatest falsehood comes across as truth.
Righteousness and evil cannot be discerned by their appearance.
People have ...
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Were there violence before July 3 and July 4 during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests?
Were there violence before July 3 and July 4 during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests? I heard the protests were peaceful, but I learned recently that there were a lot of soldiers who got injured, so ...
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1answer
156 views
How did the the Soviet-China near-war in 1969 affect the supply of arms to North Vietnam?
This is a bit of what I am looking for:vietnamwar/chinese-and-soviet-involvement/, but it seems incomplete.
Specifically, as the Soviets increased their aid to North Vietnam, where did Soviet weapons ...
6
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1answer
510 views
Why did sailing ships so often employ Chinese cooks?
During the age of sail, it was common for Western ships to employ Chinese cooks. I don't have any numbers except that there are pages and pages of relevant results from search queries including "...
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3answers
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Why do all my history books divide Chinese history after the Han dynasty?
I will be teaching middle school World History this year. I surveyed seven different textbooks from different publishers and notice, unlike all other histories of other regions in the world, Chinese ...
7
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1answer
323 views
Did the Portuguese get anything in return when they handed back Macau?
In 1999, Portugal fully returned Macau to China. However, did they get something for giving Macau back to China, or was it just a sign of good faith and decolonization in general?
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0answers
111 views
What was China's claim line in the Aksai Chin before the 1962 war?
The original mutually agreeable boundary seems to have been the McCartney-MacDonald line since the late 1890s. In the 1910s and 1920s China seems to have accepted even the Johnson line, by publishing ...
3
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1answer
229 views
Why weren't the New Territories ceded to the British?
Note New Territories is abbreviated to NT. Here's an overview of the UK's acquisition of HK -
The handover of Hong Kong was in 1997 so it's safe to discuss the
PRC's land policy in Hong Kong. But ...
0
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1answer
194 views
Did America help the Chinese nationalists to repel the communist advance?
As an answer said in this subject (What are some major military successes the Soviet Union achieved against the Western World?), it seems that the politics of USA had a great issue on the help of ...
3
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0answers
76 views
Was Kerala part of Vijayanagara Empire under Deva Raya II
This question is in the context of my previous question.
Wikipedia article on Deva Raya 2 mentions that he defeated the ruler of Quilon, and also that Zamorin paid tribute to Deva Raya 2. But Kingdom ...
4
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3answers
244 views
Was Kingdom of Cochin the only kingdom in South Asia to be a protectorate of (any empire of) China?
The Wikipedia article on the Kingdom of Cochin says:
The kingdom of Cochin was the only kingdom in South Asia to be a
protectorate of China. The King of Cochin received special treatment,
...
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2answers
166 views
How did laborers travel from China to Malaya in the early 19th century?
There was a wave of Chinese emigration to Malaya beginning in the early 19th century. Those who emigrated were mostly laborers seeking to work in tin mines, rubber plantations, and other agricultural ...
5
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1answer
242 views
Why is ancient chinese rocket so decorated?
This picture doesn't make sense. Who would want to carve a head statue just for a rocket that will blow up?
How does it work?
5
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1answer
90 views
What title did the merchants permitted to deal with Canton's 13 Factories carry?
What I know:
During the period leading up to the Opium Wars, trade into China from Europe was locked down to 13 buildings in Canton known as the 13 factories. European merchants were only permitted to ...
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2answers
216 views
How did Qing China keep in contact with other places?
Imperial China received diplomatic missions from other places whenever those places decide to send a mission (for example: Japanese missions to Imperial China). These missions were irregular, and were ...
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2answers
414 views
Has anyone recently seen Chinese old customary greeting pose?
This may be a personal question ( meaning, coincidentally the conduct of the question has not happened in my life. ).
Fist and Palm Salute ( English ) is the traditional Chinese greeting pose, ...
34
votes
1answer
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Why did the Republic of China retract its simplified Chinese characters?
The image below shows part of the list of simplified Chinese characters introduced by the Republic of China Department of Education in 1935. They were retracted in 1936, so China continued to use ...
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1answer
243 views
Why were the Yellow River dyke repairs delayed?
In 1938, in a desperate bid to slow the Japanese advance, Chinese forces breached the Yellow River dykes at Huayuankou, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and displacing millions more. The ...
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1answer
127 views
What were Stilwell's plans had his coup succeeded?
Joseph Stilwell, the caustic American Chief of Staff assigned to Chiang Kai-Shek, famously clashed with his superior over the prosecution of war in the China-Burma-India theatre. Things came to a head ...
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2answers
212 views
What anti-Japanese guerrilla units were active in Manchuria from 1944-1945?
I am writing a historical fiction novel with a North Korean protagonist joining anti-Japanese guerrilla forces in Manchuria in 1944.
I understand that major anti-Japanese resistance in Manchuria was ...
2
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1answer
429 views
Why did China begin persecuting Falun Gong after tolerating the movement for nearly a decade?
My Question:
Why did China begin persecution of Falun Gong midway through 1999 following nearly a decade of tolerating the movement?
Freedom House - The Battle for China's Spirit ...
6
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1answer
121 views
During the Míng Dynasty could local authorities make laws?
I have been unable to find how much, if any, authority was had for the creation of local laws in Míng China. Was it allowed to create local laws at the town, city, or provincial level in Míng China? ...
4
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1answer
289 views
Where is an image of the oracle bone that describes the nova?
(Related to my previous question)
Does anyone have a link to an image of the oracle bone that has this specific inscription:
The inscriptions include the oldest observation of a nova (1300BCE) ‘A ...
3
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1answer
225 views
What are the best resources for studying oracle bone inscriptions?
Can someone please recommend the best resources for studying Chinese oracle bone inscriptions?
Rather than general or specific information about oracle bones, I'm looking for collections or catalogs ...
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4answers
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Were Russians in the cold war era USA discriminated against for their ethnicity?
As a Chinese living in the western world, I am a little bit concerned about the next decades where there might be a war or a series of conflicts between the rising Chinese power and the current world ...
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3answers
780 views
Did the United States taxpayer fund the development of China's backbone fighter plane?
I was reading this article which came out today(12/10/18)..
China's J-10 Fighter Now Has Something In Common with the F-22, Su-57 and Su-35 which reports China has added advanced thrust vectoring to ...
8
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1answer
728 views
Why did the British take Hong Kong instead of any other of the later treaty ports?
The aftermath of the first Opium War declared that Hong Kong and the island of Kowloon should be ceded to the UK as a port for refitting ships and storing cargo. It also meant there was easy access ...
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1answer
333 views
What did Zhang Zuolin say after his train blew up?
Zhang Zuolin was an early 20th century Chinese warlord of Manchuria. He was fatally wounded by the Japanese Army on June 4, 1928, using a bomb laid beneath tracks where his armoured train travelled ...
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3answers
549 views
Did China's life expectancy at birth rise 30.5 years from 1960 to 1980? If so, what were the particular changes made to their society's structure?
I have been reading The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy by Minqi Li. The author reads like a fan of Mao and is succeeding in convincing me I need to dig deeper in to the ...
6
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1answer
164 views
Was 'Jade Mirror of the Four Unknowns' published in 1303, and how do we know?
Wikipedia gives the date for Chinese mathematician Zhu Shijie's Jade Mirror of the Four Unknowns (四元玉鉴, Siyuan yujian) as 1303, citing
Elman, Benjamin A. (2005). On their own terms science in China, ...
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2answers
228 views
Besides the US in 1958, has there been a post-WWII show of force by any military in the Taiwan Strait (excluding Taiwan and China)?
CNN's article US Vice President Pence set to inflame China tensions: 'We will not be intimidated' describes an upcoming speech by US VP Pence and the existence of a proposed military exercise in ...
2
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1answer
159 views
How frequently did the KMT use telegrams to communicate; from where (roughly) and to whom?
This answer to the Chinese Language SE question Historical: How was Chinese written in telegrams and early computers? says (in part):
Following is a telegram code "dictionary" used by Japan ...
14
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2answers
563 views
Why is Russian far east less populated than Chinese north east regions?
I was comparing the Russia's Far Eastern zone with the equivalent Northeast China. Anyway the two regions have many difference but by comparing regions at the same latitude I found vast difference to ...
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2answers
692 views
Why didn't Japan attack communist China in WW2?
We can see after the fact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) nourished through the Sino-Japanese War while the Nationalist Army arguably depleted their resources.
The CCP had a strategy of not ...
2
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1answer
291 views
What really happen to 100k people in Changban? [closed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Changban
The story is filled with so many things that do not make sense.
Liu Bei is on the run from Cao Cao.
Somehow, he managed to persuade 100k civilians ...
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0answers
130 views
Why was Wang Zhiming apparently pardoned, unlike other Christian victims of the Cultural Revolution?
Wang Zhiming is a particularly famous Christian martyr of the Cultural Revolution in China – he is one of ten martyrs of the 20th century to have a statue above the Great West Door of Westminster ...
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1answer
10k views
Did Chinese emperors wear a rectangular hat with suspended gems?
The mythical Jade Emperor is sometimes depicted as wearing a mortarboard hat with strings of jewels suspended from its edges:
According to Shen Yun's post:
Hanging from the front and back of the ...
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1answer
204 views
Could someone become Empress in China more than once?
I read a fictional story before where an empress was wrongly accused of black magic. The emperor loved her so much but the investigation didn't go deeper because the ministers were trying convince the ...
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1answer
406 views
Why did the Chinese not use military power to force out early Portuguese, Dutch and English trade encroachments?
From what I understand, during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the Chinese were more advanced in trade and warfare than the Portuguese and Dutch who tried to (and eventually succeeded in) take over ...
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1answer
2k views
Why didn't China vote in UNSC Resolution 344?
According to this Wikipedia article, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 344 in 1973 with 10 votes from non-permanent members and 4 abstentions from the permanent members France, ...
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1answer
248 views
What were the American-equipped armies of Nationalist China equipped with?
During the latter years of WWII, the US equipped and trained a number of Chinese (Kuomintang) armies to fight the Japanese. Initially the Chinese armies were greatly inferior, armed with bolt-action ...
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5answers
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Did China ever consider a phonetic writing system?
I was surprised to learn the following about the Japanese and Korean languages:
Japanese used a lot of Chinese characters in their language and had no phonetic system, until around the year 800 when ...
12
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1answer
505 views
Did any Chinese scholars propose a heliocentric model?
After this related question, I now want to ask about the heliocentric model. Did any Chinese scholars propose a heliocentric model of the universe? The time period I'm interested is any time before ...
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3answers
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Before European influence circa 1600, did any Chinese believe the Earth was spherical, and did they ever try to measure it?
The Pythagorans, Aristotle, and Eratosthenese believed the Earth was spherical. Eratosthenes made a measure based on shadows at two cities on the same meridian. An Indian mathematician, Aryabhata, ...
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1answer
257 views
After the Mongol Empire fell, did China really turn away from math and physics?
I came across this from the Wiki article on Chinese Mathematics:
After the overthrow of the Yuan Dynasty, China became suspicious of knowledge it used. The Ming Dynasty turned away from math and ...
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1answer
195 views
Are there any archeological finds or primary source drawings of the Chinese bamboo-copter or rotary fans?
Bamboo-copter was a toy in China, dated to 400 BC. A Rotary Fan also existed in China around 180 AD. I'm interested in both of those things, as they work on the exact same principle.
Do we have any ...
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1answer
909 views
Did the first emperor of China die of mercury poisoning?
Did the first emperor Qin Shi Huang die of mercury poisoning? If so, how do we know? I've seen lots of claims that he did (and claims that he didn't), but no citation explaining what primary source ...
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1answer
219 views
Why was China so underdeveloped until not so long ago? [closed]
A few decades ago, China was at most considered a country starting to develop itself, but usually even a third world country. If a person 30 years ago would have heard that China nowadays would be a ...
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0answers
124 views
What were the incentives for war during the Warring States Period?
I've been reading about the Warring States Period in Li Feng's 'Early China', and I don't know if I missed a passage but I can't seem to figure out why the period was so violent.
I've been searching ...
