Brill’s Encyclopedia of China

In 1949, the Chinese Communists inherited a small electronics industry comprising less than 1% of China's industrial production. Under Mao's leadership, the electronics industry was developed with help from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. This sector supported the Chinese military, as well as supplied basic consumer products such as radios and televisions. The technological level of these facilities was low by global standards, however, and production was primarily for domestic use. With the opening policies of Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s, Hong Kong companies be…

Elites are the groups in a society who for a prolonged period of time play a leading role in the bureaucracy, economy, and cultural life. They are aware of this role and interact through internal networks. "Elites" is a modern Western term without a traditional Chinese equivalent. During the development phase of the Chinese state the elite functions lay with the clan of the ruler of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, who gave self-administered feudal tenures to male relatives. As these tenures became more independent and autonomous and increasing…

Encyclopedias in the European meaning of the word never existed in traditional China. Nevertheless, since the 2nd century BCE there were handbooks with encyclopedic features which systematically collected information about certain areas of knowledge, depending on the context in which they were written. Since the 11th century bibliographers have summarized these works under the term leishu (books structured according to captions). Chinese bibliography adheres to the convention of designating the Huanglan ( Reference Materials for the Emperor, 3rd century) as the first wo…

China is truly an energy superpower in the world system, being the second largest consumer and the third largest producer of primary commercial energy. On a per-capita basis, however, China's primary energy consumption is about half of the world average and less than one-tenth of the US average. Its spectacular economic growth results in growing energy consumption. Thus, the shortage of indigenous energy and petroleum is certain to grow, leading to a large requirement of energy imports, which in…

The history of engineering in China can be divided into four phases. The first phase (1870-1919) was largely influenced by the confrontation with the superior military technology of the Western colonial powers. As early as 1862, the Qing government responded to the technological challenge of the West by founding schools whose task it was to train both personnel and translators to translate relevant materials in different areas of military technology. The first Chinese technical school modeled on…

China has a tradition of government interference with and control of enterprises. In the 19th century, the first modern enterprises were set up by high officials of the Qing dynasty and by Chinese overseas. Western, Japanese, and Chinese enterprises developed under difficult conditions in the first half of the 20th century, because of the heavy exactions of competing warlords and the Guomindang government, insecurity, and wars. After 1949, the Communist government froze the assets of most foreig…

Entertainment in China has always held an ambivalent status due to moral and political concerns. Culturally speaking it sits uneasily within a tradition that allows only modest entertainment for the ruler who supposedly should set the model for all behavior. Prone to be associated with moral decadence and excessive living, entertainment has always come under the control of local as well as central governments. Entertainment is defined here as a socially mediated and often public activity. The am…

The history of modern Chinese enterprises and entrepreneurs can be traced back to the first flourishing of merchant capitalism at the end of the Ming dynasty (16th to early 17th centuries). When the Europeans settled at the Chinese coast 300 years later, they had to take into account the strength of, and the cohesion between, these merchants. The merchants financed and controlled regional and interregional trade as well as craftsmanship, which developed in rural homes and specialized urban works…

Scarcity of resources in relation to its population numbers, as well as disparities in its economic development, are confronting China with environmental impact in several dimensions at the same time. To the "traditional" environmental problems of an underdeveloped and overpopulated agrarian society - deforestation, erosion, desertification, water shortage - have been added "modern" environmental damages due to release of harmful substances (environmental protection), during the second half of the 20th century as a consequence of industrialization. 1. "Traditional" Envi…

1. Origins within the International Context Environmental protection as a political area of its own began in China in the early 1970s. The trigger was not the actual presence of ecological pressures (environmental damage) but the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, which simultaneously marked China's return to the international stage. Along with the concept of "environmental problems", the Chinese delegation brought back from Stockholm the model of a supra-sector bureaucratic-tec…