151-537: The Militia ( Chinese : 民兵 ; pinyin : Mínbīng ) or Militia of China ( Chinese : 中国民兵 ; pinyin : Zhōngguó Mínbīng ) is the militia part of the armed forces of China , the other two parts being the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the People's Armed Police (PAP). The Militia is under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and serves as an auxiliary and reserve force for
302-464: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
453-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
604-505: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
755-595: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
906-611: A catastrophic drop in agricultural output; consequently, food shortages became widespread. According to demographic studies, the famine caused an estimated 15 to 45 million deaths, with rural areas being the hardest hit. Ashton et al. (1984) highlight, “During the period 1958-62, about 30 million premature deaths occurred in China: deaths that occurred earlier than they would have on the basis of mortality trends for more normal years.” During this rapid expansion, coordination suffered and material shortages were frequent, resulting in "a huge rise in
1057-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
1208-549: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
1359-700: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
1510-503: A halt to the backyard steel furnaces so as not to dampen the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses. The program was only quietly abandoned much later in that year. On the communes, a number of radical and controversial agricultural innovations were promoted at the behest of Mao. Many of these innovations were based on the ideas of now discredited Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko and his followers. The policies included close cropping, whereby seeds were sown far more densely than normal on
1661-564: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
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#17328474567991812-548: A national conference of the Party, Mao declared that China "would catch up with and surpass the most powerful capitalist countries in several dozen years", and in October, Mao announced that he would complete the building of a socialist state in 15 years. In the late 1950s, China's socio-political landscape experienced significant rural reforms and the aftermath of previous policies aimed at collectivization rather than individualism. Before
1963-757: A permanent security threat. It was, however, the Korean War of 1950-53 that provided the impetus for the integration of the militia with the PLA proper. In June 1950, a “Department for People's Armament” (人民武装部, pinyin Rénmín Wǔzhuāngbù ) was created as part of the Central Military Commission, which was responsible for recruiting, organizing and training the people's militia formations. This department set up branches in administrative divisions below province or region level, and it assigned all able-bodied men between
2114-538: A relatively linear progression of development and a worldwide revolution beginning with the most developed countries. At the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the country was one of poorest in the world. The Great Leap Forward attempted to defy the conventional understanding of the time required for economic development. Through rapid industrialization, it aimed to close the gap between China's developmental stage and its political aspirations. In March 1955, at
2265-511: A result of the famine. Author Yan Lianke also claims that, while growing up in Henan during the Great Leap Forward, he was taught to "recognize the most edible kinds of bark and clay by his mother. When all of the trees had been stripped and there was no more clay, he learned that lumps of coal could appease the devil in his stomach, at least for a little while." The agricultural policies of
2416-538: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
2567-490: A semi governmental structure where activities in the countryside could manage what went on in there. People's commune took care of every aspects of people's lives: health care, job employment, food, housing, finance, defense, culture, education, political affairs and entertainment. People in the communes were united with the saying: Exceeding the UK, catching the USA, created by Mao to energize
2718-503: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
2869-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
3020-610: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
3171-563: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
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#17328474567993322-596: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
3473-771: Is a " one institution, two names " co-located with the General Office of the NDMC. With the passage of the 2022 Reservist Law, the Militia was formally separated from the PLA Reserves. The formal tasks of the Militia remain those defined by Article 22 of the Law of the People's Republic of China on National Defense : the Militia, under the command of military organs, shoulders the tasks of preparations against war and defense operations, and assists in maintaining public order. According to Article 36 of
3624-689: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
3775-1215: Is a subset of China's national militia. The CMM trains with and supports the People's Liberation Army Navy and the China Coast Guard in tasks including: In the South China Sea , the CMM plays a major role in controversial maritime activities to achieve China's political goals. Maritime Militia funding and associated paramilitary training led to a reversal of the downward trend of the Chinese commercial fishing fleet. This Maritime Militia fueled expansion has led to an increase in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing . [REDACTED] Communist Party / [REDACTED] Soviet Republic ( [REDACTED] Red Army ) → Liberated Area ( [REDACTED] 8th Route Army , New Fourth Army , etc. → [REDACTED] People's Liberation Army ) → [REDACTED] People's Republic of China Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
3926-485: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
4077-595: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
4228-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
4379-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
4530-484: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
4681-472: Is to be human. To share joy, grief, and pain is humanizing." Failure to participate in the CCP's political campaigns—though the aims of such campaigns were often conflicting—"could result in detention, torture, death, and the suffering of entire families". Public struggle sessions were often used to intimidate the peasants into obeying local officials; they increased the death rate of the famine in several ways. "In
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4832-557: Is too much diversity and dynamism in the country for one work to capture ... rural China as if it were one place." Mahoney describes an elderly man in rural Shanxi who recalls Mao fondly, saying "Before Mao we sometimes ate leaves, after liberation we did not." Regardless, Mahoney points out that Da Fo villagers recall the Great Leap Forward as a period of famine and death, and among those who survived in Da Fo were precisely those who could digest leaves. The failure of agricultural policies,
4983-496: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
5134-497: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
5285-540: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
5436-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
5587-735: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
5738-707: The Central Military Commission was transformed into the “ National Defense Mobilization Commission ” (国家国防动员委员会, Pinyin Guójiā Guófáng Dòngyuán Wěiyuánhuì ), which is dually subordinate to the State Council and the CMC. As of 2024, the chairman of the commission has always been the Prime Minister. The Popular Mobilization Commission has branch offices in every district. After the 2015 reform ,
5889-468: The Great Chinese Famine the largest or second-largest famine in human history . The Great Leap Forward stemmed from multiple factors, including "the purge of intellectuals, the surge of less-educated radicals, the need to find new ways to generate domestic capital, rising enthusiasm about the potential results mass mobilization might produce, and reaction against the sociopolitical results of
6040-556: The Kinmen Crisis of 1958, Mao became convinced that China could not rely on the USSR as an ally in case of war with the US and the Republic of China . The expansion of the militia became even faster. By January 1959, the total militia manpower had grown to 220 million out of a population of 653 million, that is to say, almost every single man and woman of military age. This degree of mobilization and
6191-525: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
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6342-516: The Long March : "mass mobilization, social leveling, attacks on bureaucratism, [and] disdain for material obstacles". In the absence of material development inputs, Mao sought to increase development through voluntarism and organizational advantages brought about by socialism. Mao advocated that a further round of collectivization modeled on the USSR 's " Third Period " was necessary in the countryside where
6493-680: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
6644-637: The Military Service Law of the People's Republic of China , the Militia's tasks are specifically: The militia is organized into regional militia corps in every theater command of the PLA, which in turn oversee militia divisions and subordinate formations, and is further subdivided into specialty militia units. It is overseen by the National Defense Mobilization Commission , which can order the deployment of its personnel during either peacetime and wartime contingencies, according to
6795-579: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
6946-642: The Socialist Education Movement in 1963 and the Cultural Revolution in 1966 in order to remove opposition and re-consolidate his power. In addition, dozens of dams constructed in Zhumadian, Henan , during the Great Leap Forward collapsed in 1975 (under the influence of Typhoon Nina ) and resulted in the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure , with estimates of its death toll ranging from tens of thousands to 240,000. Classical Marxist theory hypothesized
7097-484: The Soviet 's development strategy." Mao ambitiously sought an increase in rural grain production and an increase in industrial activity. Mao was dismissive of technical experts and basic economic principles, which meant that industrialization of the countryside would solely be dependent on the peasants. Grain quotas were introduced with the idea of having peasants provide grains for themselves and support urban areas. Output from
7248-515: The Soviet Union . Together, taxation and compulsory purchases accounted for 30% of the harvest by 1957, leaving very little surplus. Rationing was also introduced in the cities to curb 'wasteful consumption' and encourage savings (which were deposited in state-owned banks and thus became available for investment), and although food could be purchased from state-owned retailers the market price was higher than that for which it had been purchased. This too
7399-518: The civilian auxiliaries in the US than the traditional mass militia built around villages or work units. Private companies, which may already have contractual relationship with the state, are also a source of new type militias. Qihoo 360 , a Chinese cybersecurity company that has been involved several times in detecting foreign state actors cyberattacks on Chinese systems, set up a network security militia unit within its personnel and using its resources. State Owned Enterprises also have accelerated
7550-473: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
7701-591: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
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#17328474567997852-785: The "Conscription Law of the People's Republic of China" (中华人民共和国兵役法, Pinyin Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó Bīngyìfǎ ) was passed by the 1st National People's Congress . Article 58 of the law specified the militia's duties, which included responsibility for public security and the protection of the means of production. The implementing regulations stipulated that the Department for People's Armament set up offices at lower levels, in townships and street districts. Militia units were set up not only in every community, but also in every large work unit ( danwei ), state owned companies and economic facilities like mine complexes and oil fields. It
8003-652: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Great Leap Forward The Great Leap Forward
8154-869: The CMC created the “ National Defense Mobilization Department ” (中央军委国防动员部, Pinyin Zhōngyāng Jūnwěi Guófáng Dòngyuánbù ) in which border protection and civil defense competencies have been pooled. The National Defense Mobilization Department is the bureaucratic arm of the National Defense Mobilization Commission, the head of the NDCM being the secretary of the commission. The Main Office of the National Defense Mobilization Commission (国家国防动员委员会综合办公室, Pinyin Guójiā Guófáng Dòngyuán Wěiyuánhuì Zōnghé Bàngōngshì )
8305-636: The Central Committee ejected Peng as defense minister in August under the pretext of collaborating with the Soviet Union. Lin Biao was appointed as his successor on September 17, 1959. Like Mao, Lin was a supporter of the People's War concept, but he was also an experienced field general. He was aware of the limitations of a poorly trained militia armed with only light weapons. Lin reduced the militia size, and changed
8456-516: The Chinese economy had improved and the Ministry of Finance still decided to include the fiscal surplus of the previous fiscal year as credit funds in the 1953 budget revenue to cover the current year's expenditures. As a result, budget expenditures were expanded and so was the size of the budget. At that time, only the Soviet expert Kutuzov warned the Chinese fiscal authorities not to use the fiscal surplus of
8607-487: The Chinese were exporting food to Africa and Cuba during the famine. He said during the news conference on 23 May 1962, "Well, there has been no indication of any expression of interest or desire by the Chinese Communists to receive any food from us, as I have said at the beginning, and we would certainly have to have some idea as to whether the food was needed and under what conditions it might be distributed. Up to
8758-401: The Common Militia. With tensions rising with the US, the CMC met May 27 to July 22, 1958, to discuss paths to military strengthening. Peng Dehuai attempted to modernize the PLA, work more closely with the USSR , and build the militia as a reserve force for the PLA. Mao Zedong preferred to emphasize People's war and the militia was expanded under the slogan "Everyone is a Soldier". After
8909-594: The Great Leap Forward were accelerating the construction of waterworks on the North China Plain during the 1957-1958 winter and next the development of people's communes and crude forms of rural industrialization. Some Great Leap Projects had lots of long-term value to China's economy and continued to benefit China after The Great Leap Forward ended. Some of the projects included bridges, railroads, canals and reservoirs. However, some of these projects were completed quickly, resulting in errors and delays that did more harm than good. The Great Leap Forward campaign began during
9060-409: The Great Leap Forward, during the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in 1962, which led him to launch the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Despite the harmful agricultural innovations, the weather was very favorable in 1958 and the harvest was also good. However, the amount of labor which was diverted to steel production and construction projects meant that much of the harvest was left to rot because it
9211-695: The Great Leap Forward, reflecting the government’s belief that collectivization and large-scale projects would boost agricultural and industrial outputs. The communes were meant to centralize farming and labour, supposedly leading to increased efficiency and output; still, in reality, and practice, these measures often disrupted traditional farming practices and led to decreased productivity. Dali Yang stated, "The initial stages of collectivization brought chaos and inefficiency, with agricultural productivity often declining". Before 1949, peasants had farmed their own small pockets of land and observed traditional practices—festivals, banquets, and paying homage to ancestors. It
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#17328474567999362-437: The Great Leap Forward, the Chinese government initiated land reforms that redistributed land from landlords to peasants, but these reforms still needed to attain the expected agricultural productivity. The early 1950s saw the establishment of agricultural cooperatives, yet these changes brought mixed outcomes. However, the push towards rapid industrialization and the establishment of people’s communes in rural areas were central to
9513-550: The Great Leap [Forward] was a very expensive disaster". The CCP studied the damage that was done at various conferences from 1960 to 1962, especially at the " Seven Thousand Cadres Conference " in 1962, during which Mao Zedong ceded day-to-day leadership to pragmatic moderates like Chinese President Liu Shaoqi and Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping . Acknowledging responsibilities for the Great Leap Forward, Mao did not retreat from his policies; instead, he blamed problems on bad implementation and "rightists" who opposed him. He initiated
9664-490: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
9815-399: The PLA. It is one of the largest militias in the world. The role of the militia in the PRC has varied over the years. During the Chinese Communist Revolution , the CCP emphasized grassroots mobilization to develop the militia. Largely composed of peasants, the militia had diverse roles including protecting villages, implementing land reform , and opposing external threats. During the 1940s
9966-492: The Second Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee, "go all out, aim high, and build socialism with greater, faster, better, and more economical results" ( simplified Chinese : 鼓足干劲、力争上游、多快好省地建设社会主义 ; traditional Chinese : 鼓足幹勁、力爭上游、多快好省地建設社會主義 ) was adopted as the "General Line for Socialist Construction" in China. In 1955, Mao had already expressed his belief that socialist construction should achieve "greater, faster, better, and more economical" results. These led to
10117-434: The United States in industrial output in the next 15 years through peaceful competition. Mao Zedong was so inspired by the slogan that China put forward its own one: to catch up with and surpass the United Kingdom in 15 years. As with its approach to agriculture, the Chinese government attempted to compensate for its inability to invest in industry with mass mobilizations to increase human labor inputs. The initial projects of
10268-406: The Western powers. Mao had become convinced that China should follow its own path to communism. According to Jonathan Mirsky , a historian and a journalist who specialized in Chinese affairs, China's isolation from most of the rest of the world, along with the Korean War , had accelerated Mao's attacks on his perceived domestic enemies. It led him to accelerate his designs to develop an economy where
10419-406: The ages of 18 and 35 who were not already serving in the People's Liberation Army to a people's militia unit. In addition to their regular professional activities, the militia cadres had to complete 30 days of training, which they had to complete within a year; the ordinary militia members underwent 15 days of basic training. The militia did not, however, receive a formal legal basis until 1955, when
10570-460: The ages of sixteen and thirty were considered ideal candidates for the militia. Peasants were working long hours, all year round, even contributed their own cooking utensils to be melted as a source of production. The consequences of the Great Leap Forward were devastating, leading to one of the most severe famines in human history. The policies that diverted labour from agriculture to industrial projects, such as backyard steel furnaces, resulted in
10721-401: The basis for determining the amount of grain which would be taken by the State, supplied to the towns and cities and exported. This barely left enough grain for the peasants, and in some areas, starvation set in. A 1959 drought and flooding from the Yellow River in the same year also contributed to the famine. During 1958–1960 China continued to be a substantial net exporter of grain, despite
10872-409: The central treasury tight again. This drew the attention of Zhou Enlai, Li Xiannian and others, and at a state meeting held on June 5, 1956, proposals were made to curb impetuousness and rash advances, revise the 1956 national economic plan, and cut capital construction investment. Such was the anti-"rash advance" movement. The excess of the first five-year plan gave the nation great confidence, and at
11023-610: The chaos. The Gang of Four also attempted to build up the urban militia as an alternative to the PLA, but the urban militia failed to support them when Hua Guofeng and other moderate military leaders deposed them. In 1979, China fought a short war with Vietnam over Vietnamese involvement in Cambodia. 200,000 PLA soldiers were supported by several thousand "front support militiamen" (支前民兵, pinyin Zhīqián Mínbīng ) from Guangxi and Yunnan provinces, who carried ammunition and food to
11174-483: The commune system of their traditional means of being able to rent, sell, or use their land as collateral for loans. In one village, once the commune was operational, the Party boss and his colleagues "swung into manic action, herding villagers into the fields to sleep and to work intolerable hours, and forcing them to walk, starving, to distant additional projects." Edward Friedman, political scientist, Paul Pickowicz, historian, and Mark Selden , sociologist, wrote about
11325-483: The completion of the first 5 Year Economic Plan in 1957, Mao had come to believe that the path to socialism that had been followed by the Soviet Union was not appropriate for China. He was critical of Khrushchev's reversal of Stalinist policies and he was also alarmed by the uprisings that had taken place in East Germany , Poland and Hungary , and the perception that the USSR was seeking " peaceful coexistence " with
11476-602: The country, but the provinces which had adopted Mao's reforms with the most vigor, such as Anhui , Gansu and Henan , tended to suffer disproportionately. Sichuan , one of China's most populous provinces, known in China as "Heaven's Granary" because of its fertility, is thought to have suffered the highest number of deaths from starvation due to the vigor with which provincial leader Li Jingquan undertook Mao's reforms. There are widespread oral reports, though little official documentation, of cannibalism being practiced in various forms as
11627-588: The countryside that came with the rapid economic growth distorted the basis of the traditional militia. In the “Guidelines for Militia Work” (民兵工作条例, Pinyin Mínbīng Gōngzuò Tiáolì ) issued by the State Council and the Central Military Commission on December 24, 1990, it is further specified in Article 11: Companies or battalions of the People's Militia were to be set up in the countryside, with villages as
11778-672: The creation in June 2020 of five new militia units in Tibet, which recruited local skilled Tibetans into specialized, highly trained and equipped special-mission groups including an air patrol, a communications team, a high altitude climbing team, and a fast reaction team. The participation of skilled locals in this sort of militias is hoped to provide both cohesion-reinforcing civilian involvement, and an skilled force in aerial reconnaissance, intelligence collection, rescue operations, “countermeasure actions”, and stability maintenance. These new units resemble more
11929-446: The decline in food output, took little or no action. The major changes which occurred in the lives of rural Chinese people included the incremental introduction of mandatory agricultural collectivization . Private farming was prohibited, and those people who engaged in it were persecuted and labeled counter-revolutionaries . Restrictions on rural people were enforced with public struggle sessions and social pressure, and forced labor
12080-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
12231-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
12382-650: The dynamic of interaction between the Party and villagers: Beyond attack, beyond question, was the systemic and structured dynamic of the socialist state that intimidated and impoverished millions of patriotic and loyal villagers. The authors present a similar picture to Thaxton in depicting the party's destruction of the traditions of Chinese villagers. Traditionally prized local customs were deemed signs of " feudalism " to be extinguished. "Among them were funerals, weddings, local markets, and festivals. The Party thus destroyed much that gave meaning to Chinese lives. These private bonds were social glue. To mourn and to celebrate
12533-461: The end of the civil war, was devastated, and in response to the severe conditions, there was resistance among the populace. The effects on the upper levels of government in response to the disaster were complex, with Mao purging the Minister of National Defense Peng Dehuai in 1959, the temporary promotion of Lin Biao , Liu Shaoqi , and Deng Xiaoping , and Mao losing some power and prestige following
12684-566: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
12835-438: The end of the year approximately 25,000 communes had been set up, with an average of 5,000 households each. The communes were relatively self-sufficient co-operatives where wages and money were replaced by work points. The commune system was aimed at maximizing production for provisioning the cities and constructing offices, factories, schools, and social insurance systems for urban-dwelling workers, cadres, and officials.And also
12986-579: The existing collectives would be merged into huge people's communes. An experimental commune was established at Chayashan in Henan in April 1958. Here for the first time, private plots were entirely abolished and communal kitchens were introduced. At the Politburo meetings in August 1958, it was decided that these people's communes would become the new form of economic and political organization throughout rural China. By
13137-504: The first Five Year Plan. Millions of Chinese became state workers as a consequence of this industrial investment: in 1958, 21 million were added to non-agricultural state payrolls, and total state employment reached a peak of 50.44 million in 1960, more than doubling the 1957 level; the urban population swelled by 31.24 million people. These new workers placed major stress on China's food-rationing system, which led to increased and unsustainable demands on rural food production. Those between
13288-685: The first case, blows to the body caused internal injuries that, in combination with physical emaciation and acute hunger, could induce death." In one case, after a peasant stole two cabbages from the common fields, the thief was publicly criticized for half a day. He collapsed, fell ill, and never recovered. Others were sent to labor camps . About 7% of those who died during the Great Leap Forward were tortured to death or summarily killed. Benjamin Valentino notes that "communist officials sometimes tortured and killed those accused of failing to meet their grain quota". However, J. G. Mahoney has said that "there
13439-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
13590-451: The focus to more in-depth training over quantity. Every people's commune had to have a militia company (连) with around 200 personnel. This added up to around 5 million men and women. The militia naturally became entangled in the continuous conflict and fighting of the Cultural Revolution , and became deeply fragmented in the complex factional struggle of the times. Like everything else in China, training and organizational quality decayed in
13741-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
13892-462: The frontlines, removed the wounded to the field hospitals, and fought in some minor engagements. Militia members also handled logistical tasks including transporting food and supplies, and building roads, trenches, and bridges. The fact that the militiamen were dressed in civilian clothes and many spoke Zhuang rather than Mandarin resulted in several cases of friendly fire. In the Reform and Opening era,
14043-550: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
14194-495: The incorrect assumption that seeds of the same class would not compete with each other. Yang provides data on the failure of close planting techniques, which reduced yields in Anhui province from 400 jin per mu to less than 200 jin per mu due to overcrowded plants competing for nutrients and sunlight." Deep plowing was encouraged on the mistaken belief that this would yield plants with extra large root systems. Moderately productive land
14345-471: The industrial activities such as steel was also supposed to be used for urban growth. Local officials were fearful of Anti-Rightist Campaigns and they competed to fulfill or over-fulfill quotas which were based on Mao's exaggerated claims, collecting non-existent "surpluses" and leaving farmers to starve to death. Higher officials did not dare to report the economic disaster which was being caused by these policies, and national officials, blaming bad weather for
14496-770: The instructions by the Chairman of the Central Military Commission , who, as also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party , is overall supreme commander-in-chief of the armed services of the People's Republic. As of 2023, there are 20 listed types in the NDMD survey of available militia units. These give an idea of the very large number of possible missions expected from militia units: The list then describes 419 militia unit functional categories divided in those 20 types. As that need for mass warfare has dissipated,
14647-581: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
14798-516: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
14949-424: The means and modes of production. Some wealthier families who refused to join a People's commune might be labeled as rightists. Escape was also difficult or impossible, and those who attempted were subjected to "party-orchestrated public struggle", which further jeopardized their survival. Besides agriculture, communes also incorporated some light industry and construction projects. Harvests did increase. However this
15100-592: The means to make significant capital improvements in agriculture. Viewing human labor as an underutilized factor of production , the government intensified the mobilization of masses of people to increase labor inputs in agriculture. In November 1957, party leaders of communist countries gathered in Moscow to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution . Soviet Communist Party First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev proposed not only to catch up with but exceed
15251-473: The militia and its role in a possible war with the USSR became a focus of debate. On May 31, 1984, a new conscription law was passed by the National People's Congress, where the tasks of the militia were defined in more detail in Article 36: 1) Serve as a training service as preparation for war. 2) Provide border protection 3) Maintain public safety. The need for free-moving labor and the massive migration from
15402-626: The militia served as a support force for the PLA. After the 1949 foundation of the PRC, the CCP used the militia to reconstruct the country (in particularly the devastated railway system), to maintain Law and order in the countryside, and for defense of the borders and coast. One of the problems the militia attempted to solve was the large number of Kuomintang troops (estimated to be around 400,000) that had been discharged but had not returned to their homes. Some of these resorted to banditry to survive, and all represented
15553-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
15704-505: The movement of farmers from agricultural to industrial work, and weather conditions suppressed the food supply. At the same time improvements in medicine, infant mortality, and average life expectancy promoted by the Patriotic Health Campaign led to a greatly increased need for food. The shortage of supply clashed with an explosion in demand, leading to millions of deaths from severe famine. The economy, which had improved since
15855-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
16006-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
16157-555: The need for more specialized support forces capable to assist in modern system warfare, and help in Military Operations Other than War has increased. In particular after 2017 and the call to "Perfect National Mobilization" there has been a concerted effort to recruit a "new-type militia force system” ( 新型民兵力量体系) which mainly involves inducting into militia work people with specialized and professional skills from China's modern economy, and specialized enterprises. Cases such as
16308-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
16459-490: The people and their work ethics by reducing the influence of Western Countries and reinforce his leadership legitimacy. Citizens in rural areas who criticized the system were labeled "dangerous". Later on, as more and more families link together to form people's communes, peasants started to lose individual identities, since families were from vastly different communities with different cultures views, political views, family and financial background, which created conflict regarding
16610-720: The period of the Second Five Year Plan which was scheduled to run from 1958 to 1963, though the campaign itself was discontinued by 1961. Mao unveiled the Great Leap Forward at a meeting in January 1958 in Nanjing . The Great Leap Forward was grounded in a logical theory of economic development and represented an unambiguous social invention. The central idea behind the Great Leap was that China should "walk on two legs", by rapidly developing both heavy and light industry, urban and rural areas, and large and small scale labor. The hope
16761-511: The present, we have had no such indication." But Kennedy said that the US provided food for about half a million refugees in British Hong Kong. With dramatically reduced yields, even urban areas received greatly reduced rations; however, mass starvation was largely confined to the countryside, where, as a result of drastically inflated production statistics, very little grain was left for the peasants to eat. Food shortages were bad throughout
16912-552: The previous year, however, it was not heeded by the Ministry of Finance. In that year, the gross industrial and agricultural output grew by 21.3%, while the capital construction budget increased by 50% compared to the previous year, which led to an imbalance between production and demand. Such was the "small rash advance" (小冒進) at the start of the first five-year plan period. The issue had caused widespread social controversy. The faction of Li Xiannian , Chen Yun and others did not think it
17063-885: The proliferation of "folk furnaces". Mao was shown an example of a backyard furnace in Hefei , Anhui , in September 1958 by provincial first secretary Zeng Xisheng . The unit was claimed to be manufacturing high quality steel. Moreover, the experience of the intellectual classes following the Hundred Flowers Campaign silenced those aware of the folly of such a plan. According to his private doctor, Li Zhisui , Mao and his entourage visited traditional steel works in Manchuria in January 1959 where he found out that high quality steel could only be produced in large-scale factories using reliable fuel such as coal. However, he decided not to order
17214-402: The proportion of the harvest collected by the state to insure against further disasters. Moderates within the Party, including Zhou Enlai , argued for a reversal of collectivization on the grounds that claiming the bulk of the harvest for the state had made the people's food-security dependent upon the constant, efficient, and transparent functioning of the government. In 1957, Mao responded to
17365-413: The race to please superiors and win plaudits—like the chance to meet Mao himself—intensified. The state was later able to force many production groups to sell more grain than they could spare based on these false production figures. The ban on private holdings severely disrupted peasant life at its most basic level. Villagers were unable to secure enough food to go on living because they were deprived by
17516-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
17667-400: The re-emergence of "rash advances", which further led to the reintroduction of policies and tendencies that had previously been overturned. Those who opposed Mao's policies were accused of not upholding the tenets of the "class struggle" under people's cult of Mao . Regarding agriculture, the Chinese government recognized the country's dilemma of feeding its rapidly growing population without
17818-485: The regime would get maximum benefit from rural taxation. The Anti-Rightist Campaign started on June 8th, 1957. The main goal was to purge "rightists" from the CCP and China altogether. It was believed that approximately 5 percent of the population was still "rightists" (Political conservatives sabotaging the revolution). In the early years of the New China, due to the lack of experience in financial and economic work, it
17969-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
18120-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
18271-455: The setting up of militia units (by creating or recreating People's Armed Force Departments (人武部) within the structure of the enterprise). The shift from large-scale militias to specialized units since 2016 has entailed reducing the size of the militia and focusing on increasing its quality. As the new militia speciality formations were being activated, 27.8% of cadre militia ( 基干民兵) has been demobilized from service. China Maritime Militia (CMM)
18422-505: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
18573-557: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
18724-639: The smallest unit. In the cities, platoons, companies, battalions and regiments of the people's militia were to be set up within urban danwei , be them companies or public institutions, or within the street district as the smallest territorial unit. Technical troop detachments should be set up in the cadre militia units in accordance with the need for preparation for war and the available equipment. In particular, anti-aircraft battalions and regiments should be set up at important civil defense facilities in cities, in transport hubs, and other areas requiring protection. People's militia training centers were to be set up in
18875-453: The start of the Great Leap, China's industrial output would surpass that of the UK. In the August 1958 Politburo meetings, it was decided that steel production would be set to double within the year, most of the increase coming through backyard steel furnaces. Major investments in larger state enterprises were made: 1587, 1361 and 1815 medium and large-scale state projects were started in 1958, 1959 and 1960 respectively, more in each year than in
19026-400: The tensions which existed in the Party by launching the Hundred Flowers Campaign as a way to promote free speech and criticism. Some scholars have retroactively concluded that this campaign was a ploy designed to allow critics of the regime, primarily intellectuals but also low ranking members of the party who were critical of the agricultural policies, to identify themselves. By the time of
19177-404: The time people realized, it was too late to correct statistics without angering Mao. The Great Leap Forward sought to revive folk technologies, including in the area of steel production. China's steel industry faced a shortage of imported iron and calls to increase production of "native iron" had begun in 1956. By mid-1958, the Chinese state began promoting indigenous metallurgical methods and
19328-609: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
19479-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
19630-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
19781-474: The various districts progressively, provided with the necessary training material and equipment by the General Staff of the PLA. The militia members were to be compensated for the loss of earnings during training, farmers would be compensated by the municipal administration, workers and employees in the cities were to be compensated by their employers. On November 29, 1994, the Department of People's Armament at
19932-413: The wage bill, largely for construction workers, but no corresponding increase in manufactured goods". Facing a massive deficit, the government cut industrial investment from 38.9 to 7.1 billion yuan from 1960 to 1962 (an 82% decrease; the 1957 level was 14.4 billion). partly due to misreporting, or corruption at every level of the government where they'd overreport harvest and steel production, by
20083-410: The widespread famine which was being experienced in the countryside, as Mao sought to maintain face and convince the outside world of the success of his plans. Foreign aid was refused. When the Japanese foreign minister told his Chinese counterpart Chen Yi about an offer of 100,000 tonnes of wheat which was going to be shipped away from public view, he was rebuffed. John F. Kennedy was also aware that
20234-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
20385-531: The workforce depletion that training this mass force caused was a contributing factor to the disastrous famines of the Great Leap Forward . At a four-week Politburo meeting in July 1959, Defense Minister Peng Dehuai , concerned about the operational capability of the People's Liberation Army due to food shortages, voiced strong criticism of the Great Leap Forward. Mao admitted to making mistakes, but then ensured that
20536-508: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
20687-429: Was a common practice to include the fiscal surplus of the previous year in the budget of the current year. Because of the low level of budgeting in the fiscal sector and inaccurate estimates of economic development, revenues and expenditures were underestimated. However, no problems arose because the government usually managed to end the fiscal year with a surplus. In 1953, when China entered the first five-year plan period,
20838-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
20989-434: Was abolished and all households were forced into state-operated communes. Mao demanded that the communes increase grain production to feed the cities and to earn foreign exchange through exports. Apart from progressive taxation on each household's harvest, the state introduced a system of compulsory state purchases of grain at fixed prices to build up stockpiles for famine-relief and meet the terms of its trade agreements with
21140-472: Was also exacted on people. Rural industrialization, while officially a priority of the campaign, saw "its development ... aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward". The Great Leap was one of two periods between 1953 and 1976 in which China's economy shrank (the other being the Cultural Revolution ). Economist Dwight Perkins argues that "enormous amounts of investment only produced modest increases in production or none at all. ... In short,
21291-483: Was an economic and social campaign within the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1958 to 1962, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Party Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into an industrialized society through the formation of people's communes . Millions of people died in mainland China during the Great Leap, with estimates based on demographic reconstruction ranging from 15 to 55 million, making
21442-526: Was appropriate to continue this practice, but they also had opponents. Li Xiannian finally decided to hold a collective meeting to discuss the issue, and after listening to the views of all parties, he decided to abolish the practice. Nevertheless, the controversy over the use of the fiscal surplus persisted, which brought another reckless "rash advance" to China's economic development in 1956. At that time, China lacked consideration in three areas: capital construction, employee wages and agricultural loans, making
21593-629: Was at this time that the main difference between "Cadre Militia" (基干民兵, pinyin Jīgàn Mínbīng ), i.e. the members of the core group of the people's militia, and the “common militia” (普通民兵, pinyin Pǔtōng Mínbīng ) was set up. The cadre militia should mainly be former members of the People's Liberation Army under the age of 28 having completed their obligatory national service duty, and women could only serve in separate women's departments of this cadre militia. All other men between 18 and 35 were assigned to
21744-405: Was because of exceptional weather, not, which a lot of officials mistook, as the result of hard work of the peasants, creating further complications. (106) This lead to famine in the countryside since they were required to reach set harvest goal, leaving not enough food for themselves. Mao saw grain and steel production as the key pillars of economic development. He forecast that within 15 years of
21895-541: Was done in the name of discouraging excessive consumption. Besides these economic changes, the CCP implemented major social changes in the countryside including the banishing of all religious and mystic institutions and ceremonies, replacing them with political meetings and propaganda sessions. Attempts were made to enhance rural education and the status of women (allowing them to initiate divorce if they desired) and ending foot-binding , child marriage and opium addiction. The old system of internal passports (the hukou )
22046-481: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
22197-406: Was introduced in 1956, preventing inter-county travel without appropriate authorization. Highest priority was given to the urban proletariat for whom a welfare state was created. The first phase of collectivization resulted in modest improvements in output. Famine along the mid-Yangzi was averted in 1956 through the timely allocation of food-aid, but in 1957 the Party's response was to increase
22348-521: Was left unplanted based on the belief that concentrating manure and effort on the most fertile land would lead to large productivity gains per-acre. Altogether, these untested innovations generally led to decreases in grain production rather than increases. Meanwhile, local leaders were pressured into falsely reporting ever-higher grain production figures to their political superiors. Participants at political meetings remembered production figures being inflated up to 10 times their actual production amounts as
22499-515: Was not collected in some areas. This problem was exacerbated by a devastating locust swarm, which was caused when their natural predators were killed as part of the Four Pests Campaign . Although actual harvests were reduced, local officials, under tremendous pressure to report record harvests to central authorities in response to the innovations, competed with each other to announce increasingly exaggerated results. These results were used as
22650-887: Was realized that Mao's policy of using a state monopoly on agriculture to finance industrialization would be unpopular with the peasants. Therefore, it was proposed that the peasants should be brought under Party control by the establishment of agricultural collectives which would also facilitate the sharing of tools and draft animals. This policy was gradually pushed through between 1949 and 1958 in response to immediate policy needs, first by establishing "mutual aid teams" of 5–15 households, then in 1953 "elementary agricultural cooperatives" of 20–40 households, then from 1956 in "higher co-operatives" of 100–300 families. From 1954 onward peasants were encouraged to form and join collective-farming associations, which would supposedly increase their efficiency without robbing them of their own land or restricting their livelihoods. By 1958, private ownership
22801-494: Was to industrialize by making use of the massive supply of cheap labour and avoid having to import heavy machinery. The government also sought to avoid both social stratification and technical bottlenecks involved in the Soviet model of development, but sought political rather than technical solutions to do so. Distrusting technical experts, Mao and the party sought to replicate the strategies used in its 1930s regrouping in Yan'an following
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