Brill’s Encyclopedia of China

In China, grains are defined to include "cereals" (rice, wheat, and maize) and a wide variety of other "inferior" food crops, including barley, oats, rye, sorghum, and millet. Tubers (potatoes and sweet potatoes), soybeans, broad and red beans, and peas are normally also categorized as grain crops. The grain sector has always been the cornerstone of Chinese agriculture. Even after the Chinese economy has long ceased to be driven by the farm sector, with the population enjoying a large surplus in…

Although artistic prints were widespread and much loved in China, the graphic arts did not originally belong to the high arts. Creation was not the task of the woodcut maker and the printer, the faithful reproduction of works by painters and calligraphers was. Graphic arts were a means to produce images and texts in greater volume at lower costs. Accordingly, their distribution was not limited to the elite, as with painting. The graphic arts found an audience at all levels of society and were us…

The first British ships to reach Chinese waters arrived off the southeast coast in 1637. The British were latecomers to China, although they had links with Japan from about 1600. The Portuguese had established a position at Macau in the 1550s and other Europeans followed. The Britons reception was unfriendly, but they persevered and trade began. By the end of the 17th century, the East India Company, founded in 1600, had set up a factory, or trading house, in Guangzhou. The Company, in theory, had a monopoly of Britain's China trade. Attempts to establish diplomatic contacts failed. I…

The Great Leap Forward was the first great disaster of the Maoist era. Emerging suddenly in late 1957, this unprecedented developmental strategy marked a rejection of both the cautious policies of "opposing rash advance" and the Soviet economic model. By early 1958, Mao Zedong had raised this mass campaign to the level of political "line", and a flurry of untested schemes and wild targets ensued. The resultant economic dislocation was not repaired when Mao called for a "cooling down" in the fall…

Yue Guangzhou 121 counties, 44 cities 93.04 million inhabitants 178,000 km² 523 inhabitants/km² The province of Guangdong, about half the size of Germany, is situated in the central south of China. Its neighboring provinces are Hainan (which was part of Guangdong until 1988), Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Fujian. In the south, it borders on the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau . The province has a 3,000 km coastline. Administratively, a series of additional small islands in the South C…

Gui Nanning 109 districts, 21 cities 47.19 million inhabitants 236,700 km² 199 inhabitants per km2 The Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, formerly Guangxi province, is situated in the southwest of China along the Gulf of Tonkin. In the southwest, it shares a border of 1020 km with Vietnam. In the northwest, it borders on Yunnan, in the northeast on Hunan, and in the southeast on Guangdong. In 1958, it was granted the special status of an autonomous region owing to its high proportion of national minorities. Imp…

Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong and its economic, political, and cultural center. Its citizens constitute 9.4% of the provinces' population. About 70% of the provincial capital's 7.6 million inhabitants (2006) do not work in agriculture. 6 million residents live within the borders of the eight municipal districts, the rest in four cities at county level (Conghua, Huadu, Panyu, Zengchen). Its location both at the center of the province and along the northern reaches of the populous and e…

1. Guanxi as a Social Concept Guanxi, or "social relations", are an important concept in the everyday life of the Chinese. Such relations help (and have helped in the past) to assert both individual and group interests. This concept is based on a specific view of society. According to the interpretation of many Chinese, society is primarily a hierarchical order that consists of a network of relations. Whereas many Europeans consider the appearance and behavior of others to be important, many Chinese g…

Qian Guiyang 88 counties, 13 cities 37.57 million inhabitants 176,100 km² 213 inhabitants per km2 The province of Guizhou is situated in southwestern China. Important cities include the centrally located provincial capital Guiyang and the prefecture-level cities Zunyi, Tongren, Kaili, Duyun, Anshun, Xingyi, and Bijie. The territory slopes downwards from the Tibetan Plateau towards the east. Parts of the Tibetan Plateau belong to Guizhou, with altitudes ranging from 1500 to 2800 m). The central high plateau lies at a height of about 1000 m,…

The Zhongguo Guomindang (GMD; often translated as Kuomintang/KMT), or National People's Party, was founded in August 1912 and was reorganized successively in 1914, 1919, and 1924. The GMD formed the government of the Republic since 1928, and even after its escape to Taiwan in 1949 and the democratic reforms since 1986, it was able to keep its status as ruling party. The GMD represents the only example of a revolutionary Leninist cadre-party which was able to transform into a democratic party and s…