Intro to China Quiz #2 Terms

Opium Wars

Two wars between Qing China and Britain/Western Powers (#1), fought in 1839-42 and 1856-60 (#2) over British opium sales and demands for open trade (#3). China lost and ceded Hong Kong in the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, and a slide shows the British steamship Nemesis destroying Chinese warships in 1841 (#4).

Semi-colonialism

When foreign powers seize partial control over a government and use it to enrich their own region, as Britain did in China (slide) (#1). China was never fully colonized, but foreign powers held treaty ports and extraterritorial concessions, like those shown on the 1925 Shanghai map (slide) (#2). Mao Dun’s Spring Silkworms shows the damage, as cheap foreign goods drove down what peasants earned (slide) (#3), and Fanon-style “colonized sense of self” ideas are applied to it (#4).

Settler colonialism

When a power controls a territory and moves its own people there to take land (slide) (#1). The lecture example is Japan (slide) (#2), which sent settlers into Manchuria after the 1931 invasion (#3). Dehumanizing propaganda, like the 1945 film Momotaro: Sacred Sailors (slide), helped justify it (#4).

Extractive colonialism

When a colonizer takes resources and labor out of a place without mainly settling it (#1). A slide shows Chinese workers mining coal for the Japanese in Fushun, Liaoning (#2). Foreign powers also took wealth from China through unequal treaties, indemnities, and railway and mining concessions (#3), which contrasts with settler colonialism, where the aim is land (#4).

Yuanmingyuan

The Old Summer Palace, was a Qing imperial garden northwest of Beijing (#1). British and French forces looted it and burned it in 1860 during the Second Opium War (#2). A slide shows its ruins and a French exhibition of the spoils (#3), and it is a symbol of “national humiliation” in Chinese memory (#4).

Black Skin, White Masks

A 1952 book by Frantz Fanon (#1), a psychiatrist from Martinique (#2). It argues that colonized people absorb the colonizer’s view of them, producing an inferior sense of self (#3). The slide pairs it with a still from Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution to show a colonized sense of self in China (#4).

Marxism

The theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, laid out in the 1848 Communist Manifesto (#1). It holds that history is material and shaped by who owns the means of production (slide) (#2), and that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (slide) (#3). A Chinese translation of the Manifesto appeared in 1920 (slide), and the CCP was founded in 1921 (#4).

Proletariat vs. Bourgeoisie

_________ is the working class, which owns no means of production and sells its labor (#1). _________ is the owning class that controls factories and capital (#2). Marx argued that religion, nationalism, and law are tools the owning class uses to manipulate workers (slide) (#3), and ended the Manifesto with “You have nothing to lose but your chains” (slide) (#4).

Sino-Soviet split

The breakdown of the China-USSR alliance (#1) that followed their 1950 treaty (#2). It was driven by Khrushchev’s 1956 denunciation of Stalin and disputes over leading world communism (#3), and the Soviets pulled their advisers in 1960 (#4). A slide shows Soviet-style architecture in a Chinese museum as a sign of the earlier closeness.

Great Leap Forward

Mao’s campaign of 1958-62 (#1) to rapidly industrialize and collectivize China (#2). Peasants were organized into communes and smelted steel in backyard furnaces (slide) (#3). The campaign caused the Great Famine (#4).

Marxist historiography (timeline of phases)

The idea that history moves through fixed stages (#1): primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, then communism (#2). A slide shows a simplified version of this timeline (#3). The CCP applied it to China, calling the pre-1949 country “semi-feudal, semi-colonial” (#4).

Maoism

Mao Zedong’s adaptation of Marxism-Leninism (#1) that put the peasantry, not the urban proletariat, at the center of revolution (#2). It developed during the Long March and the war against Japan, as with the Communists in rural Shanxi (slide) (#3). The ideal citizen became the “peasant, worker, soldier” (slide) (#4).

Talks at Yan’an

Mao’s May 1942 speeches on literature and art (#1) given at the CCP base in Yan’an (#2). They opened with the question “literature and the arts for whom?” (slide) (#3) and answered that art must serve the masses and the revolution (#4).

Elevation vs. popularization

_______ means raising the quality of art for a refined audience, while _________ means spreading art widely among the masses (#1). Mao used the images of “pinning flowers on brocade” (adding beauty to what is already good) and “hauling charcoal in the snow” (meeting urgent needs) (slide) (#2). He said popularization was the more pressing task (slide) (#3). The slide shows 1950s textbooks and health posters as examples of popularization (#4).

Socialist realism

An art style that began in the Soviet Union in the 1930s (#1) and shows workers and peasants in realistic but uplifting ways (#2). China used it after Yan’an (#3), as in the 1951 film The White-Haired Girl, where Xi’er mourns her father (slide) (#4).

Revolutionary Romanticism

An artistic mode paired with realism that idealizes heroes and the revolutionary future (#1). Mao-era writers were urged to combine “revolutionary realism” with it from about 1958 (#2). The 1972 model opera version of The White-Haired Girl (slide) is in this style (#3), and Xi’er and the villagers make a gesture of defiance and strength (slide) (#4).

Rectification

The Yan’an campaign of 1942-44 (#1) to correct thinking and enforce discipline inside the Party (#2). It used criticism, self-criticism, and punishment, including of writers like Wang Shiwei (#3). The slide shows later victims, including Li Lili and Peng Dehuai, who was criticized in 1966 after clashing with Mao over the Great Famine (slide) (#4).

Hierarchy

The ranking of people by status or power (#1). A slide shows the Party’s top tier (Mao, Zhou Enlai, Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and others) (slide) (#2). Cadres got better food and clothing even in a movement for equality (#3). The slide’s point is that “inverted hierarchies are hierarchies” (slide), since putting workers and peasants on top still left a ranking (#4).

Wang Shiwei

A writer in Yan’an (#1) who criticized in 1942 how food and clothing were graded by rank (slide) (#2). He noted that cadres got a “private kitchen” while sick comrades had no noodle soup (slide) (#3). He was denounced in the Rectification campaign and executed in 1947 (#4).

Class background

A person’s official class label, such as poor peasant or landlord (#1), assigned based on family before 1949 (#2). It was inherited, which meant it shaped schooling and jobs (#3). Yu Luoke, whose statue is on the slide, argued against this and was executed in 1970 (#4).

The Sent-Down Movement

Sent urban educated youth to live and work in the countryside (#1), beginning in earnest in December 1968 (#2). Its goals were to be “re-educated” by peasants and to relieve urban unemployment (#3). Around 17 million youth took part, such as the educated youth tapping rubber in Guangdong around 1973 (slide) (#4).

Laogai (reform through labor)

The PRC’s system of prison labor camps (#1) set up in the 1950s (#2). It held criminals and political prisoners, including people sentenced for speaking against the Party, as at the Shaping camp (slide) (#3). The slides link it to Masanjia, where Sun Yi smuggled out an SOS letter in Halloween decorations (slide), and to prison labor under racial capitalism (#4).

Lei Feng

A PLA soldier who died in an accident in 1962 (#1) and was made into a model of selfless devotion (#2). The slide shows him reading Mao’s essays at the wheel of his truck as a “proletarian virtue” (slide) (#3). He is still commemorated each March 5, and there are Lei Feng memorial halls in Fushun and Changsha (slide) (#4).

Big-character posters

Large handwritten wall posters (#1) used to attack officials and teachers, especially in the Cultural Revolution from 1966 (#2). Nie Yuanzi’s poster at Peking University in May 1966 helped spark the movement (#3). The slide notes many targeted mid- and low-rank Party members, showing how cadres were challenged (slide) (#4).

Great Famine

A mass starvation in 1959-61 (#1) caused largely by Great Leap Forward policies (#2). Estimates of deaths range from about 15 to 45 million (#3), and the slides use Yang Jisheng’s Tombstone and the idea of “bare life” to discuss it (slide) (#4).

Wind of Exaggeration

The practice of officials reporting inflated harvest numbers (#1) during the Great Leap Forward (#2). The state then took grain based on those false figures, leaving villagers without food (#3). The slide’s “Sputnik field” of crops planted far too close together (slide), and its Chayashan Commune quotes (slide), show the pressure to claim success (#4).

Edema

Swelling caused by severe malnutrition (#1) and was a common sign of starvation in the famine (#2). A slide quotes a Sichuan health bureau report of 35,373 cases and 574 deaths in one week in January 1960 (slide) (#3), with Renshou County worst hit (slide) (#4).

The Spark

An underground journal made in 1960 by university students in Gansu (#1) that criticized the Great Leap and the famine (#2). The students were arrested and branded counter-revolutionaries (#3). The slides show its first page, from Hu Jie’s documentary (the slide dates it to 2019) (slide), and Wu Wenguang’s 2016 Memory Project (#4).

The Gang of Four

Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen (#1), leaders of the Cultural Revolution (#2). They were arrested in October 1976, shortly after Mao died (#3). A slide shows their trial and Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, who was convicted in 1981 (slide) (#4).

Postsocialism

describes a society that still has a socialist state but where socialist beliefs no longer organize everyday life (#1). A slide quotes Huang Ziping on how the system of meaning behind the revolution “collapsed” (slide) (#2). The slides show postsocialist public space, like card-playing in a square and internet cafes (slide) (#3), and Maoist kitsch, such as a Mao cigarette lighter (slide) (#4).

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

The Party’s official label for its mix of one-party rule and markets (#1), a phrase Deng Xiaoping used from 1982 (#2). It lets the Party keep socialist language while adopting capitalist practices (#3). It was the framework for the reforms that began in 1978 (#4).

Black Cat / White Cat

This is a saying of Deng Xiaoping’s (#1) that it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice (#2). It expresses pragmatism over ideology (#3), and Deng had used it as early as 1962, which was held against him in the Cultural Revolution (#4).

Deng Xiaoping

Became China’s paramount leader after Mao’s death (#1). He launched Reform and Opening in 1978 (#2) and created Special Economic Zones like Shenzhen, where a slide shows his billboard (slide) (#3). He also ordered the army to clear Tiananmen Square in 1989 (#4).

“To Get Rich is Glorious”

This slogan is commonly attributed to Deng Xiaoping, though the attribution is debated (#1). It captures the 1980s break with Maoist egalitarianism (#2) and the new celebration of wealth (#3). The slides’ “Moralizing Wealth” section, drawn from West of the Tracks, discusses how people reckoned with it (slide) (#4).

Reform and Opening

The economic shift launched in December 1978 (#1). It included breaking up the communes, creating Special Economic Zones, and welcoming foreign investment (#2). It brought rapid growth but also inequality (#3), and 1980s life changed fast, as the slides show with perm crazes and public notice boards (slide) (#4).

Suzhi

Means “quality,” meaning a person’s supposed cultural and moral level (#1). Slides give “low suzhi” examples like being loud in public or believing in feng shui (slide) (#2). It was used in slogans like “Control the Increase of Population, Increase the Suzhi of the Population” (slide) (#3), and often marks rural people and migrants as inferior (#4).

SOE (State-Owned Enterprise)

Enterprises owned by the state (#1) that dominated the economy before the reforms (#2). They offered secure “iron rice bowl” jobs (#3). A slide shows the Shenyang Smelting Plant and Wang Bing’s film West of the Tracks (2000) (slide), about the decline of these industries and the layoffs of the 1990s (#4).

Danwei (work unit)

was a socialist-era workplace that organized daily life (#1). It supplied housing, healthcare, and other benefits (#2), and also tied workers to Party monitoring (#3). The slides show a fenced housing compound in Nantong as an example of the layout (slide), and the system faded with market reform (#4).

Getihu (individual entrepreneur)

self-employed small business owners (#1) who were allowed in the early 1980s (#2). The slides show a woman selling popsicles in 1983 and a man selling pirated DVDs (slide) (#3). They contrast with rich entrepreneurs like Ma Mingzhe, CEO of Pingan Insurance (slide), under the title “who sinks and who swims” (#4).

The Bargain

The implicit deal that the Party provides prosperity and stability in exchange for political quiet (#1). It took shape after the 1989 crackdown (#2). Slides illustrate it with Valentino in Tiananmen Square in 1992 (slide) (#3), and ask “Who is the Bargain for?” using the 2011 Wukan protests (slide) (#4).

Li Wenliang

A Wuhan doctor (#1) who warned colleagues about a new virus in a December 30, 2019 WeChat post (slide) (#2). Police reprimanded him, and he died of COVID in February 2020 (#3). The slides show flowers left at his hospital and a memorial in Central Park in New York (slide) (#4).

Wukan

A fishing village in Guangdong (#1) where villagers protested in 2011 (slide) (#2) over local officials selling off village land (#3). The protests led to rare village elections in 2012, though the leader was arrested in 2016 (#4).

Chunyun 春运

The Spring Festival travel rush (#1), which is the largest yearly human migration in the world (#2). Migrant workers return home for Lunar New Year (#3). The slides open with the chunyun scene from the documentary Last Train Home (slide) (#4).

Hukou 戶口

The household registration system (#1), codified in the 1950s (#2). It classifies people as rural or urban (#3) and limits migrants’ access to city schools, healthcare, and welfare. A slide compares it to the Russian propiska and shows informal “banzheng” hukou-fixing services (slide) (#4).

Left-behind Children

Rural kids whose parents migrate for work (#1). They are raised mostly by grandparents or relatives (#2), and the numbers are in the tens of millions (#3). They are tied to the hukou system, which keeps migrant parents from bringing children to the city, and to the unpaid care work called reproductive labor (slide) (#4).

Just-in-Time Urbanization

When large cities admit migrants only when the labor market needs them (slide) (#1). Cities avoid the costs of producing, housing, and supporting workers (slide) (#2). Migrants who fit a state-determined need get access to benefits like public education and social insurance (slide) (#3). The aim is to deploy labor “at as low a cost as possible” while avoiding overpopulation and unrest (slide) (#4).

How to Win Friends and Influence People

This is a 1936 self-help book by Dale Carnegie (#1) that taught persuasion and social skills for success (#2). It was a huge seller in China (#3), and the slide’s line “What are we selling? We are selling ourselves” sums up its logic (slide) (#4).

The Weakness of Humanity

Renxing de ruodian (《人性的弱点》) is the Chinese title of How to Win Friends and Influence People (#1). It literally means roughly “the weaknesses of human nature” (#2), which shifts the emphasis from friendship toward exploiting people’s weaknesses (#3). The slides use the book to show Chinese readers rejecting the virtues Chinese tradition had preached (slide) (#4).

Shanzhai

means “mountain stronghold” and refers to knockoff goods (#1), such as cheap copies of brand-name phones, especially from Shenzhen (#2). A slide quotes “I Think Copying is Very Important” (slide) (#3), which shows how copying can be defended as creative and practical (#4).

The Prosperity Gospel

The belief that faith brings wealth and success (#1). It grew out of 20th-century American evangelical Christianity (#2), and a slide shows preacher Joyce Meyer advertising a prayer retreat (slide) (#3). In China it parallels the hunger for success in MLM sales and the gaokao, which the lecture calls “gospels” (slide) (#4).

Chuanxiao

pyramid selling or multi-level marketing (#1), banned in China in 1998 (#2). A slide shows a Perfect China conference of 3,000 salespeople under the banner “Back to the Source; Start from the Heart” (slide) (#3). The lecture treats it as a kind of religion, tied to a sense that traditional morality had broken down (slide) (#4).

Gaokao

China’s national college entrance exam (#1), held each June (#2). One score largely decides university admission (#3). The slides show students studying and parents praying for results in 2018 (slide), and Zachary Howlett’s view of it as a rite of passage (slide) (#4).

Neoliberalism as economic policy

means free markets, privatization, and deregulation (#1), championed by thinkers like Milton Friedman (#2). A slide quotes Friedman on competition protecting consumers and workers (slide) (#3). In China it appears in the 1990s restructuring of SOEs and in the Special Economic Zones (#4

Neoliberalism as “sophisticated common sense”

This idea treats neoliberalism as a way of thinking, not just policy (#1). Wendy Brown (2015) argues it turns political life into economic terms (slide) (#2). The slides take examples from Wallace’s Seeking Facts and Hiding Truth, like Super Girl and Voice of China (slide) (#3), and show it in figures like Du Lala, who treats her career like a market (slide) (#4).

Metricization

turning qualities into numbers (#1), such as scores, rankings, or votes (#2). The gaokao reduces a student to one score (#3). Slides on Meituan delivery workers show every route and schedule optimized for profit, and Super Girl ran on audience votes (slide) (#4).

Interpellation

a concept from Louis Althusser (#1) in which ideology “hails” individuals and makes them into subjects (#2), like a police officer calling “Hey, you!” and the person turning around (#3). The slides’ examples of self-optimizing figures, like Meituan workers and diaosi “losers,” show people taking on these roles (slide) (#4).