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Simplified Chinese Character

Simplified Chinese character

Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. The other set is Traditional Chinese characters. Simplified Chinese characters are the Chinese characters officially simplified by the government of the People's Republic of China in an attempt to promote literacy. This character set is used for most Chinese-language printing in Mainland China and Singapore whereas traditional characters are used in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities. Simplified characters are gradually gaining popularity among many overseas Chinese communities as more mainland Chinese are emigrating from their homeland.

Origins and history

Mainland China

Although associated with the People's Republic of China (PRC), character simplification predates 1949. Cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed (they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty (221 - 206 BC), though early attempts at simplification actually resulted in more characters being added to the lexicon). In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. In many world languages, literacy has been promoted as a justification for spelling reforms. The People's Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. In the 1950s and 1960s, while confusion about simplified characters was still rampant, an elusive set of transitional characters (which basically mixed simplified parts with yet-to-be simplified parts of characters together) appeared briefly, then disappeared. Within the PRC, character simplification became associated with the leftists of the Cultural Revolution, culminating in a second round of character simplifications (known as erjian 二简, or "Second round simplified characters", which were promulgated in 1977. It was poorly received, and in 1986 the authorities retracted the second round completely, at the same time making six revisions to the first round of simplified characters (including the restoration of three characters that had been simplified in the First Round: 叠, 覆, 像). Although no longer recognized officially, second round characters do occasionally occur in handwritten signs, as many people learned second round simplified characters in school. Simplification initiatives have been aimed at eradicating the ideographic system and establishing Hanyu Pinyin as the official written system of the PRC, but the reform never gained quite as much popularity as the leftists had hoped. After the retraction of the second round of simplification, the PRC has stated that it wishes to keep Chinese orthography stable and does not appear to plan any further reforms in the future nor restore any characters that have already been simplified. People unfamiliar with how the PRC deals with simplified versus traditional characters erroneously claim that the PRC permits only simplified characters and has "banned" traditional characters. Although the PRC does view Traditional characters in domestic published material in the same way as errors or misprints, the Law of the People's Republic of China on National Language and Common Characters explains that traditional characters are not banned altogether on mainland China; instead, their usage is relegated to certain aspects and purposes. In Mainland China, traditional characters are used mainly for ceremonies, cultural purposes (e.g. calligraphy), decoration, and commercial purposes such as shopfront displays and advertisements, though the latter is technically discouraged. The PRC also tends to print material intended for Taiwanese, people in Hong Kong and Macao, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, the PRC prints versions of the People's Daily in traditional characters and both the People's Daily and Xinhua websites have versions in traditional characters using Big5 encoding. Other examples include milk from a mainland company which is for distribution in Hong Kong, for example, has traditional characters printed on it instead of simplified. Also, as part of the one country, two systems model, the PRC has not attempted to convert Hong Kong or Macau into using simplified characters.

Singapore and Malaysia

Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification, eventually arriving at the same set of simplified characters as Mainland China. The first round, consisting of 498 Simplified characters from 502 Traditional characters, was promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 1969. The second round, consisting of 2287 Simplified characters, was promulgated in 1974. The second set contained 49 differences from the Mainland China system; those were removed in the final round in 1976. Singapore has also followed Mainland China in the six revisions to its set of Simplified characters in 1986. Malaysia promulgated a set of Simplified characters in 1981, which were also completely identical to the simplified characters used in Mainland China.

Method of simplification

Simplified Chinese characters were developed in one of 5 or so ways, here we list : #By reducing the number of brush strokes of a character, either by logical revision or by importing ancient, simpler variants or obscure forms. (e.g. 葉 maps to 叶; 萬 maps to 万)¹ #Combining several complicated characters into one, simpler character (a process known as "Character Conflation"). (e.g. 隻, a measure word for certain animals) and 衹 (variant form of "only") conflate to 只, a previously existing character. Note that the traditional character 只 merely replaces these two lesser used characters in Simplified. #Giving a new meaning to a traditional character with small number of strokes. [E.g. 丰(beauty) becomes used as 豐 (richly) and 余 (I) becomes used as 餘 (remain)]. This is especially common when the character with fewer strokes is very rare or is no longer used. Note that in the case of the simplification of 餘 into 余, confusion may be raised when classical Chinese texts are printed in simplified characters, as 余 is used as the first-person pronoun in classical Chinese. For example, a phrase like 獨餘余一人(only I am left alone) will become 独余余一人 when simplified. ¹In rare instances, simplified characters actually became one or two strokes more complex than their traditional counterparts due to logical revision. An example of this is 搾 mapping to the previously existing variant form 榨. Note that the "hand" radical on the left (扌), with three strokes, is replaced with the "tree" radical (木), with four strokes. However, one of the primary goals of the character simplification is to reduce the number of strokes if possible. Historically, characters which represented an object often appeared instead as a character for an abstract idea, while the original meaning was re-formed by making the idea even more concrete. An example of this is 然 which originally had the meaning "to burn", but its meaning changed to the prepositional "thus" while "to burn" gained the additional semantic unit of 火—燃.

Distribution and use

Mainland China and Singapore generally use simplified characters. They appear very sparingly in printed text produced in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities, although they are becoming more prevalent as China opens to the world. Conversely, the Mainland is seeing an increase in the use of traditional forms, where they are found aesthetically appealing and often used on signs and in logos. For persons learning Chinese as a foreign language, instruction varies greatly: most universities on the west coast of the United States teach the Traditional character set, most likely due to the large population of Chinese-Americans who continue to use the Traditional forms. (The largest Mandarin Chinese Program in North America, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, switched to Simplified at least a decade ago, even though the majority of ethnic Chinese at that time were Traditional users.) In places where a particular set is not locally entrenched—for example, Europe, and some of the east coast of the US—instruction is swinging towards Simplified, as the economic importance of the Mainland increases, and also because of the availability of cheap high-quality textbooks printed in Mainland China. For overseas Chinese going to Chinese school, which character set is used depends very much on which school one attends. Not surprisingly, parents will generally enroll their children in schools that teach the script they themselves use. Descendants of Hong Kong people and people who emigrated before the simplification will therefore generally be taught Traditional (and in Cantonese), whereas children whose parents are of more recent Mainland origin will probably be taught Simplified. In all areas, most handwritten text will include informal character simplifications, and some characters (such as the "Tai" in Taiwan: traditional 臺 simplified 台) have informal simplified forms that appear more commonly than the official forms, even in print. In December 2004, Beijing's educational authorities [http://beijing.qianlong.com/3825/2004/12/08/118@2411471.htm threw back a proposal] from a Beijing CPPCC political conference member. The proposal would have called for elementary schools to teach traditional Chinese characters in addition to the simplified ones, but to use simplified characters exclusively. The conference member pointed out that most mainland Chinese -- especially the youth of today -- have difficulties with traditional Chinese; rather than discouraging it, the characters should be taught so that they can understand them; this is especially important in dealing with non-mainland communities such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau where traditional Chinese is used. The proposal would also make it easier for Chinese on the mainland to read older text before simplification. The educational authorities slammed the recommendation, saying that it did not fit in with the "requirements as set out by the law". The authorities also claimed that the proposal could potentially complicate the curricula by adding excess content. Despite this, junior school dictionaries published in mainland China are on sale in bookshops showing both simplified and their traditional counterparts. Some traditional character publications other than dictionaries are published on mainland China, for domestic consumption. Moreover, it is possible for residents in Guangdong to receive Chinese language television in Cantonese from Hong Kong (though the politically sensitive issues in news and other current affairs programs may be censored). The use of traditional form characters is flourishing in Hong Kong, and through such encounters, mainlanders are exposed to the use of traditional characters in television subtitling.

Pros, Cons, and Problems

The effect of Simplified Characters on the language remains controversial decades after their introduction:

Pros

- Proponents praise the simplification because they believe it allows less educated people to read. Literacy rates since simplification have risen steadily in rural and urban areas. Opponents argue that the literacy rates of Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan compare favorably, so simplification seems not to correlate with the improvement. Some have suggested that the greater etymological coherence of the traditional set might even pose an advantage when learning how to write.
- Fewer strokes gives a less cluttered appearance, preventing an overflow of useless information and thus making reading and writing easier and faster. Opponents claim that the simplifications make distinct characters more similar to each other in appearance, giving the "shape recognition" mechanism of the reading part of the brain less unique clues. Note, however, that some might say the same about traditional characters.
- Simplified characters are easier to view, for example on web pages. See the comparisons between simplified and traditional characters above.

Cons

- Opponents complain that by merging many characters into one and hence offering new meanings to a traditional character, simplified characters jeopardise the study of ancient literature by creating a discontinuity between modern texts and literary texts. However, proponents argue that the amount of spoken and written deviation from Classical Chinese and the modern vernacular is a greater factor, and has already brought about incompatibility with ancient texts. They also claim that the discontinuity brought about by the sporadic merger of characters is minimal.
- Some opponents have complained about the sheer difficulties posed by having two concurrent writing systems. Translating an entire document written using simplified characters to traditional characters, or vice versa, is not a trivial task. For human translators, simplified Chinese characters can look vastly different from their traditional counterparts to the extent that the two have no signs of simplification and instead appear completely irrelevant to each other. Proponents claim that this poses no problem to anyone who has had some reading experience with both systems. For computer automated translation, one simplified character may equate to many traditional characters, and vice versa. Some knowledge of the context of the word usage is required for correct mapping; but it has been difficult for computers to work with word usage perfectly. As a result, direct computer mapping from simplified to traditional is not trivial and requires sophisticated programming. (This line of reasoning is used both by traditional Chinese advocates opposed to simplification, and simplified Chinese advocates opposed to the continued use of traditional characters.)
- As computers are increasingly used to write text, the speed advantage of writing fewer strokes becomes less relevant.

Problems

- Character simplification merged some characters that do not have the same pronunciations in Standard Mandarin. For example, 尽 is a merger of 儘 jǐn and 盡 jìn; 只 is a merger of 隻 zhī and 祇 zhǐ; 发 is a merger of 發 fā and 髮 fà. Other characters that were merged are pronounced identically in Standard Mandarin, but not in other varieties of Chinese, such as 松, a merger of 松 and 鬆, which are pronounced identically in Standard Mandarin but differently in Cantonese.
- The Chinese characters used in modern Japanese have also undergone simplification, but generally to a lesser extent than with Simplified Chinese. Reconciling these different character sets in Unicode became part of the controversial process of Han unification. Not surprisingly, some of the Chinese characters used in Japan are neither 'traditional' nor 'simplified'. In this case, these characters cannot be found in Traditional/Simplified Chinese dictionaries.
- In Hong Kong, a majority of secondary school students are fond of writing in simplified Chinese characters, particularly in examinations, for the sake of the 'quickness' of writing. However, this is generally frowned upon, as there are teachers who believe that Simplified Chinese is an "inferior" system of writing, designed for uneducated people (which bears some truth). Also, some teachers admit that quite a few simplified Chinese characters were derived illogically.
- In addition to those practical considerations, many minds link simplified characters with the idea of communism and traditional characters with anticommunism. This often hampers rational debate about the relative merits of the two systems.
- Teachers of international students often recommend learning both systems. Their experience is that students who start with Traditional characters understand Simplified forms without much difficulty, while students who begin with Simplified characters tend to have more trouble when they encounter Traditional forms.

Computer encoding

In computer text applications, the GB encoding scheme most often renders simplified Chinese, while Big5 most often renders traditional characters. Although neither encoding has an explicit connection with a specific character set, the lack of a one-to-one mapping between the simplified and traditional sets established a de facto linkage. Since simplified Chinese conflated many characters into one and since the initial version of GB, known as GB 2312-80 contained only one code point for each character, it is impossible to use GB 2312-80 to map to the bigger set of traditional characters. However, it is theoretically possible to use Big5 code to map to the smaller set of simplified character glyphs, however there is little market for such a product. Newer and alternative forms of GB have support for traditional characters. In particular, mainland authorities have now established GB 18030 as the official encoding standard for use in all mainland software publications. The encoding contains all of the characters of Unicode 3.0. Since Big-5 and GB characters are both included in Unicode, the GB 18030 encoding contains both simplified and traditional characters, including characters found in Japanese and Korean encodings. Unicode deals with the issue of simplified and traditional characters as part of the project of Han unification by including code points for each. This was rendered necessary by the fact that the linkage between simplified characters and traditional characters is not one-to-one. While this means that a Unicode system can display both simplified and traditional characters, it also means that different localization files are needed for each type.

External links

- http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/hanzi/index.html
- [http://www.cjk.org/cjk/c2c/c2cbasis.htm The Pitfalls and Complexities of Chinese to Chinese Conversion]
- [http://xahlee.org/lojban/simplified_chars.html a list of non-trivial Simplified Chars (and their traditional form)] Category:Chinese language Category:Logographic writing systems ko:간체자 ms:Tulisan Cina Mudah ja:簡体字

Chinese language

The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, Pinyin: Hànyǔ, 华语/華語, Huáyǔ or 中文, Zhōngwén) forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the people in the world speak some form of Chinese as their native language, making it the language with the most native speakers. The terms Chinese language and Chinese can both refer to spoken Chinese or written Chinese. Spoken Chinese is tonal. Regional variation between different variants/dialects is comparable to that of, for instance, the Romance language family; many variants of spoken Chinese are different enough to be mutually incomprehensible (see Is Chinese a language or family of languages? below). For spoken Chinese, there are between six and twelve main regional groups (depending on classification scheme), including Mandarin, Cantonese, Fujianese and Hakka. However, variants of spoken Chinese almost always use the same written form (with occasional dialect-specific characters, such as in Cantonese). Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, united Chinese writing in the 3rd century BC by setting standard written forms for which there had previously been many regional variations. Before the 20th century, the common written form was Literary Chinese (Classical Chinese), which no one spoke as a mother tongue. In the early 20th century, the baihuawen movement pushed the birth of the new written form, Vernacular Chinese, based on dialects of Mandarin. In the meantime, dialect-specific characters have contintued to develop primarily in Cantonese, but also occasionally in other dialects. The Chinese language, spoken in the form of Standard Mandarin, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore (together with English, Malay, and Tamil). Chinese—de facto, in spoken form, Mandarin—is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (alongside English, Arabic, French, Russian, and Spanish). Spoken in the form of Standard Cantonese, Chinese is one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese). Among Chinese diaspora, Cantonese is the most common language one can hear in Chinatowns, thanks to early immigrants from Southern China. However, the rise of Northern and Taiwanese immigrants has led to the increase in the use of Mandarin and various Min dialects. Min The terms and concepts used by Chinese to separate spoken language from written language are different from those used in the West, because the political and social development was different in China compared to Europe. Whereas Europe fragmented into smaller nation-states after the fall of the Roman Empire, whose identities were often defined by language, China was able to preserve cultural and political unity through the same period, and maintained a common written language throughout its entire history, despite the fact that its actual diversity in spoken language has always been comparable to that of Europe. As a result, Chinese makes a sharp distinction between "written language" (wén; 文) and "spoken language" (yǔ; 语/語). The concept of a distinct and unified combination of written and spoken forms of language is therefore much stronger in the West than in China.

Spoken Chinese

Chinese spoken language The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main groups, in order of population size are:
- Mandarin 北方 or 官話/官话 (shown in the map as divided into East and West groups, but also includes the Jianghuai and Huguang areas depicted in the map)
- Wu 吳/吴 (Shanghainese)
- Cantonese 粵/粤
- Min Family 閩/闽, further divided into 5 to 7 subdivisions, all mutually unintelligible.
- Xiang 湘
- Hakka 客家
- Gan 贛/赣 In parentheses above are the culturally dominant or representative dialects of each language or dialect group today. Chinese linguists have recently distinguished 3 more groups from the traditional seven:
- Jin 晉/晋 from Mandarin
- Hui 徽 from Wu
- Pinghua 平話/平话 from Cantonese There are also many smaller groups that are not yet classified, such as: Danzhou dialect, spoken in Danzhou, on Hainan Island; Xianghua (乡话), not to be confused with Xiang (湘), spoken in western Hunan; and Shaozhou Tuhua, spoken in northern Guangdong. See List of Chinese dialects for a comprehensive listing of individual dialects within these large, broad groupings. There is also Standard Mandarin, the official standard language used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, and Singapore. Pronunciation of Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect, which is the dialect of Mandarin as spoken in Beijing, with vocabulary largely based on dialects of Mandarin, and grammar and syntax on vernacular Chinese. The governments intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. It is therefore used in government, in the media, and in instruction in schools. There is much controversy around the terminology used to describe the subdivisions of Chinese: some people call Chinese a language and its subdivisions dialects, while others call Chinese a language family and its subdivisions languages. Although Dungan is very closely related to Mandarin, not many people consider it "Chinese", because it is written in Cyrillic and spoken by people outside China who are not considered Chinese in any sense. It is common for speakers of Chinese to be able to speak several varieties of the language. Typically, in southern China, a person will be able to speak Standard Mandarin, the local dialect, and occasionally a more general regional dialect, such as Cantonese. Such polyglots frequently code switch between Standard Mandarin and the local dialect, depending on the situation. A person living in Taiwan, for example, may commonly mix pronunciations, phrases, and words from Standard Mandarin and Taiwanese, and this mixture is considered socially appropriate under many circumstances. In Hong Kong, it is not unusual for people to speak Cantonese and English, and sometimes Mandarin. In the sense that the written language is based on Standard Mandarin and the dialects are mostly spoken but not written, the situation in China is a complex and interesting case of diglossia.

Is Chinese a language or a family of languages?

Spoken Chinese comprises many regional and often mutually unintelligible variants. Linguistically, the situation is comparable to that of Romance languages, which are mutually unintelligible but all derive from Latin and so share many common underlying features. However, the socio-political context of Chinese language is quite different from that of European languages. In Europe, political fragmentation gave rise to independent states roughly the size of Chinese provinces. This generated a political desire to create separate cultural and literary standards to differentiate nation-states and standardize the language within a nation-state. In China, a single cultural and literary standard (Classical Chinese and later, Vernacular Chinese) continued to exist while the spoken language continued to diverge between different cities and counties, much as European languages diverged, due to the scale of the country, and the obstruction of communication by geography. For example, mountainous South China displays more linguistic diversity than the flat North China. In parts of south China, a major city's dialect may be marginally intelligible to close neighbours. For instance, Wuzhou is about 120 miles upstream from Guangzhou, but its dialect is more like Standard Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou, than is that of Taishan, 60 miles southwest of Guangzhou and separated by several rivers from it (Ramsey, 1987). The diverse Chinese spoken forms and common written form comprise a very different linguistic situation from that in Europe. In Europe, linguistic differences sharpened as the language of each nation-state was standardized. For example, a farmer on the French side of the border would start to model his speech and writing after Paris while his neighbour on the Spanish side after Madrid. The use of local speech became erroneous. In China, standardization of spoken dialects was weaker, and mostly due to cultural influence. Although, as with Europe, dialects of regional political or cultural capitals were still prestigious and widely used as the region's lingua franca, their linguistic influence depended more on the capital's status and wealth than entirely on the political boundaries of the region. China's linguistic situation is more similar to India's. Although India was historically not as unified as China, parts of it speaking multiple languages have long been united in various states, and many of its languages were not standardized until the last few decades through political centralization. Like Classical Chinese, Sanskrit long played a role as common written language. Unlike Classical Chinese, its descendants are recognized as separate languages, 18 of which are official national languages. Many Chinese languages do not have sharp boundaries. As with many areas that were linguistically diverse for a long time, it is not always clear whether the speech of a particular area of China should be considered a language in its own right or a dialect of another. The Ethnologue lists a total of [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90151 14], but the number varies between seven and seventeen depending on how strict the intelligibility criterion is. For Chinese people, regional linguistic differences are less important than cultural or nationalistic similarity. They generally consider Chinese a single language, partly because of the common written language. They refer to dialects as the speech of a location, for example Beijing dialect is (北京話/北京话), the speech of Beijing, and Shanghainese is (上海話/上海话), the speech of Shanghai. Often laypeople are not aware that various "dialects" are categorized into "languages" based on mutual intelligibility, though in areas where language varies greatly (such as the southeast) people do group dialects into categories like Wu or Hakka. There is a tendency to regard dialects as equal variations of a single Chinese language, even though many parts of north China are quite homogeneous in language, unlike parts of south China. As with the concept of Chinese language itself, the divisions among dialects are mostly geographical rather than based on linguistic distance. For example, Sichuan dialect is considered distinct from Beijing dialect in the same way that Cantonese is, although linguists consider Sichuan dialect and Beijing dialect Mandarin dialects, unlike Cantonese. The idea of single language has major political overtones, and explains the amount of emotion over this issue. The idea of Chinese as a language family may suggest that China consists of several different nations, challenge the notion of a single Han Chinese "race", and legitimize secessionist movements. This is why some Chinese are uncomfortable with it, while supporters of Taiwan independence tend to be strong promoters of Min- and Hakka-language education. Furthermore, for some, suggesting that Chinese is more correctly described as multiple languages implies that the notion of a single Chinese language and a single Chinese state or nationality is backward, oppressive, artificial, and out of touch with reality. However, the links between ethnicity, politics, and language can be complex. Many Wu, Min, Hakka, and Cantonese speakers consider their own varieties as separate spoken languages, but the Han Chinese race as one entity. They do not regard these two positions as contradictory, but consider the Han Chinese an entity of great internal diversity. Moreover, the government of the People's Republic of China officially states that China is a multinational state, and that the term "Chinese" refers to a broader concept Zhonghua Minzu that incorporates groups that do not natively speak Chinese, such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongols. (Groups that do speak Chinese and are considered "ethnic Chinese" are called Han Chinese.) This is seen as an ethnic and cultural concept, not a political one. Similarly, on Taiwan, some supporters of Chinese reunification promote the local language, while some supporters of Taiwan independence have little interest in the topic. And the Taiwanese identity incorporates Taiwanese aborigines, who are not considered Han Chinese because they speak Austronesian languages, predate Han Chinese settlement, and are culturally and genetically linked to other Austronesian-speaking peoples such as Polynesians.

Written Chinese

The relationship among the Chinese spoken and written languages is complex. It is compounded by the fact that spoken variations evolved for centuries, since at least the late Han Dynasty, while written Chinese changed much less. Until the 20th century, most formal Chinese writing was done in wényán (文言), translated as Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese, which was very different from any spoken variety of Chinese, much as Classical Latin differs from modern Romance languages. Since the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the formal standard for written Chinese was changed to báihuà (白話/白话), or Vernacular Chinese, which, while not completely identical to the grammar and vocabulary of dialects of Mandarin, was based mostly on them. The term standard written Chinese now refers to Vernacular Chinese. Chinese characters are morphemes independent of phonetic change. Thus, although the number one is "yi" in Mandarin, "yat" in Cantonese and "tsit" in Hokkien, they derive from a common ancient Chinese word and still share an identical character ("一"). Nevertheless, the orthographies of Chinese dialects are not completely identical. The vocabularies of different dialects have diverged. In addition, while literary vocabulary is mostly shared among all dialects, colloquial vocabularies are often different. Colloquially written Chinese usually involves "dialectal characters" which may not be understood in other dialects or characters that are considered archaic in standard written Chinese. Cantonese is unique among non-Mandarin regional languages in having a widely used written colloquial standard with a large number of unofficial characters for words particular to this variety of Chinese. By contrast, the other regional languages do not have such widely-used alternative written standards. Written colloquial Cantonese has become quite popular in online chat rooms and instant messaging, although for formal written communications Cantonese speakers still normally use standard written Chinese. Also, in Hunan, some women wrote their local language in Nü Shu, a syllabary derived from Chinese characters. The Dungan language, considered a dialect of Mandarin, is also nowadays written in Cyrillic, and was formerly written in the Arabic alphabet, although the Dungan people live outside China.

Chinese characters

The Chinese written language employs Chinese characters (漢字/汉字 pinyin: hànzì), which are logograms: each symbol represents a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). They are not just pictographs (pictures of their meanings), but are highly stylized and carry much abstract meaning. Only some characters are derived from pictographs. In 100 AD, the famed scholar Xushen in the Han Dynasty classified characters into 6 categories, only 4% as pictographs, and 82% as phonetic complexes consisting of a radical element that indicates meaning, and a phonetic element that arguably once indicated the pronunciation. All modern characters derive from Kaishu. There are currently two standards for Chinese characters. One is the traditional system, essentially a streamlined styling of Kaishu, still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. The other is the simplified system adopted during the 1950s Chinese Cultural Revolution in Mainland China. The simplified system requires fewer strokes to write certain radicals and has fewer synonymous characters. Singapore, which has a large Chinese community, is the first and only foreign country to recognize and officially adopt the simplified characters. Singapore Various written styles are used in Chinese calligraphy, including zhuanshu (篆書, "seal-script"), caoshu (草書, "grass script" or "haste script"), lishu (隸書, "official script") and kaishu (楷書, "standard script"). Calligraphers can write in traditional and simplified characters, but they tend to use traditional characters for traditional art. As with Latin script, a wide variety of fonts exist for printed Chinese characters, a great number of which are often based on the styles of single calligraphers or schools of calligraphy. There is no concrete record of the origin of Chinese characters. Legend suggests that Cangjie, a bureaucrat of the legendary emperor Huangdi of China about 2600 BC, invented Chinese characters. But archaeological evidence, mainly the oracles found in the 19-20th centuries, only dates Chinese characters to the Shang dynasty in 1700 BC. The vast majority of oracle bone inscriptions were found in Yinxu of the Shang Dynasty, although a few Zhou dynasty-related ones were also found. The forms of the characters in the inscriptions changed over the 200 to 300 years, and scholars date the inscriptions of the Shang to the ruler by the content, particularly from the name of the diviners who inscribed the shell or bone artifacts. Contemporaneous with the end of Shang and Western Zhou periods are the bronze inscriptions. Over the last century, a great many ancient bronze artifacts have been unearthed in China which contain dedicational texts of the Zhou aristocrats where the characters show similarities and innovations compared to the oracle inscriptions. It is said that during the reign of Zhou King Xuan (宣王 827-782 BCE), the form of written characters was revised, and these became refered to as the "greater seal script" or dazhuan.

History

Most linguists classify all of the variations of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family and believe that there was an original language, called Proto-Sino-Tibetan, similar to Proto Indo-European, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended. The relations between Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages are an area of active research, as is the attempt to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan. The main difficulty in this effort is that, while there is very good documentation that allows us to reconstruct the ancient sounds of Chinese, there is no written documentation of the division between proto-Sino-Tibetan and Chinese. In addition, many of the languages that would allow us to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan are very poorly documented or understood. Categorization of the development of Chinese is a subject of scholarly debate. One of the first systems was devised by the Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren in the early 1900s. The system was much revised, but always heavily relying on Karlgren's insights and methods. Old Chinese (), sometimes known as 'Archaic Chinese', was the language common during the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC), texts of which include inscriptions on bronze artifacts, the poetry of the Shijing, the history of the Shujing, and portions of the Yijing (I Ching). The phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters also provide hints to their Old Chinese pronunciations. The pronunciation of the borrowed Chinese characters in Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean also provide valuable insights. Old Chinese was not wholly uninflected. It possessed a rich sound system in which aspiration or rough breathing differentiated the consonants, but probably had no tones yet. Work on reconstructing Old Chinese started with Qing dynasty philologists. Middle Chinese () was the language used during the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (7th through 10th centuries AD). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by the 切韻 'Qieyun' rhyme table (601 AD), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by the 廣韻 'Guangyun' rhyme table. Linguists are confident of having a reconstructed how Middle Chinese sounded. The evidence for the pronunciation of Middle Chinese comes from several sources: modern dialect variations, rhyming dictionaries, foreign transliterations, "rhyming tables" constructed by ancient Chinese philologists to summarize the phonetic system, and Chinese phonetic translations of foreign words. However, all reconstructions are tentative; for example, scholars have shown that trying to reconstruct modern Cantonese from the rhymes of modern Cantopop would give a very inaccurate picture of the language. The development of the spoken Chinese languages from early historical times to the present has been complex. The language tree shown below indicates how the present main divisions of the Chinese language developed out of an early common language. Comparison with the map above gives some idea of the complexities left out of the tree. For instance, the Min language that is centered in Fujian Province contains five subdivisions, and the Mandarin dialects (Beifanghua) also contains nine, such as Yunnan hua and Sichuan hua.

Cantopop

Most northern Chinese people, in Sichuan and in a broad arc from the northeast (Manchuria) to the southwest (Yunnan), use various Mandarin dialects as their home language. The prevalence of Mandarin throughout northern China is largely due to north China's plains. By contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China promoted linguistic diversity. The presence of Mandarin in Sichuan is largely due to a plague in the 12th century. This plague, which may have been related to the Black Death, depopulated the area, leading to later settlement from north China. Until the mid-20th century, most southern Chinese did not speak any Mandarin. However, despite the mix of officials and commoners speaking various Chinese dialects, Nanjing Mandarin became dominant at least during the officially Manchu-speaking Qing Empire. Since the 17th century, the Empire had set up orthoepy academies () to make pronunciation conform to the Qing capital Beijing's standard, but had little success. During the Qing's last 50 years in the late 19th century, the Beijing Mandarin finally replaced Nanjing Mandarin in the imperial court. For the general population, although variations of Mandarin were already widely spoken in China then, a single standard of Mandarin did not exist. The non-Mandarin speakers in southern China also continued to use their regionalects for every aspect of life. The new Beijing Mandarin court standard was thus fairly limited. This situation changed with the creation (in both the PRC and the ROC) of an elementary school education system committed to teaching Mandarin. As a result, Mandarin is now spoken fluently by a majority of people in mainland China and on Taiwan. In Hong Kong, the language of education and formal speech remains Cantonese, but Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential.

Influence on other languages

Throughout history Chinese culture and politics has had a great influence on unrelated languages such as Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese. Korean and Japanese both have writing systems employing Chinese characters (Hanzi), which are called Hanja and Kanji, respectively. The Vietnamese term for Chinese writing is Han Tu. It was the only available form to write the Vietnamese until the 14th century, used almost exclusively by Chinese-educated Vietnamese elites. From the 14th till late 19th century, Vietnamese was written with Chu Nom, a modified Chinese script incorporating sounds and syllables appropriate for native Vietnamese speakers. This is now completely replaced by a modified Latin script that incorporates a system of diacritical marks to indicate the tones, as well as modified consonants. Vietnamese language has mixed with multiple elements similar to Cantonese in regard to the specific intonations and rather sharp consonant endings. However, there is a slight influence from Mandarin due to the sharper vowels and, along with Mandarin, have the "kh" sound that missing from other Asiatic languages. In South Korea, the Hangul alphabet is generally used, but Hanja is used as a sort of boldface. (In North Korea, Hanja has been discontinued.) Since the modernization of Japan in the late 19th century, there has been debate about abandoning the use of Chinese characters, but the practical benefits of a radically new script have so far not been considered sufficient. Languages within the influence of Chinese culture also have a very large number of loanwords from Chinese. 50% or more of Korean vocabulary is of Chinese origin and the influence on Japanese and Vietnamese has been considerable. 10% of Philippine language vocabularies are of Chinese origin. Chinese also shares a great many grammatical features with these and neighboring languages, notably the lack of gender and the use of classifiers. The Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese languages seem to retain sounds of Classical Chinese that are otherwise only found in southern China.

Sounds

:For more specific information on phonology of Chinese see the respective main articles of each spoken variety. The phonological structure of each syllable consists of a nucleus consisting of a vowel (which can be a monophthong, diphthong, or even a triphthong in certain varieties) with an optional onset or coda consonant as well as a tone. There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where the nasal sonorant consonants and can stand alone as their own syllable. Across all the spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda, but syllables that do have codas are restricted to , , , , , , or . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Mandarin, are limited to only two, namely and . Consonant clusters do not generally occur in either the onset or coda. The onset may be an affricate or a consonant followed by a semivowel, but these are not generally considered consonant clusters. The number of sounds in 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 multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 10 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 the use of tones in Chinese are the five tones of Standard Mandarin applied to the syllable "ma". The tones correspond to these five characters:
- "mother" — high level
- "hemp" — high rising
- "horse" — low falling-rising
- "scold" — high falling
- question particle — neutral .

Romanization

Romanization is the process of transcribing a language in the Latin alphabet. There are many systems of romanization for the Chinese languages; this is due to the complex history of interaction between China and the West, and to the Chinese languages' lack of phonetic transcription until modern times. Chinese is first known to have been written in Latin characters by Western Christian missionaries of the 16th century, but may be written down by Western travelers of missionaries of earlier periods. At present, the most common romanization system for Standard Mandarin is Hanyu Pinyin, also known simply as Pinyin. Pinyin is the official Mandarin romanization system for the People's Republic of China, and the official one used in Singapore (see also Chinese language romanisation in Singapore). Pinyin is also very commonly used when teaching Mandarin in schools and universities of North America and Europe. Perhaps the second-most common system of romanization for Mandarin is Wade-Giles. This system was probably the most common system of romanization for Mandarin before Hanyu Pinyin was developmed. Wade-Giles is often found in academic use in the U.S., and is widely used in Taiwan. Here are a few examples of Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles, for comparison: Regardless of system, tone transcription is often left out, either due to difficulties of typesetting or propriety for audience. Wade-Giles' extensive use of easily-forgotten apostrophes adds to the confusion. Thus, most Western readers will be much more familiar with Beijing than they will be with Běijīng, and with Taipei than with T'ai²-pei³. Regardless of romanization, the words are pronounced the same. Learning a system of romanization requires occasional deviations from the learner's own language, so, for example, Hanyu Pinyin uses "q" for very different values than an English speaker would probably be used to; the sound represented is similar to the English "ch", but is further back. This is a cause of confusion but is unavoidable, as Mandarin (and any language transcribed) will have phonemes different from those of the learner's own. On the other hand, this can be beneficial, since the learner knows immediately that he will have to learn a new pronunciation. Often with languages like Spanish, the pronunciation is similar enough to English that a learner will often revert to his habitual pronunciation when he sees the letters in Spanish words. There are many other systems of romanization for Mandarin, as well as systems for Cantonese, Minnan, Hakka, and other Chinese languages. Also there are at least two systems of cyrillization of Chinese. The most widespread is the Palladius system.

Morphology

Chinese morphology is strictly bound to a set number of syllables with a fairly rigid construction which are the morphemes, the smallest building blocks, of the language. Some of these single-syllable morphemes can stand alone as individual words, but contrary to what is often claimed, Chinese is not a monosyllabic language. Most words in the modern Chinese spoken varieties are in fact multisyllabic, consisting of more than one morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. The confusion arises in how one thinks about the language. In the Chinese writing system, each individual single-syllable morpheme corresponds to a single character, referred to as a zì (字). Most Chinese speakers think of words as being zì, but this view is not entirely accurate. Many words are multisyllabic, and are composed of more than one zì. This composition is what is known as a cí (詞), and more closely resembles the traditional Western definition of a word. However, the concept of cí was historically a technical linguistic term that until only the past century, the average Chinese speaker was not aware of. Even today, most Chinese speakers think of words as being zì. This can be illustrated in the following Mandarin Chinese sentence (romanized using pinyin): :Jīguāng, zhè liǎngge zì shì shéme yìsi? :激光, 這兩個字是甚麼意思? :激光, 这两个字是什么意思? The sentence literally translates to, "Jī 激 and guāng 光, these two zì 字, what do they mean?" However, the more natural English translation would probably be, "Laser, this word, what does it mean?" Even though jīguāng 激光 is a single word, speakers tend to think of its constituents as being separate (Ramsey, 1987). Old Chinese and Middle Chinese had many more monosyllabic words due to greater variability in possible sounds. The modern Chinese varieties lost many of these sound distinctions, leading to homonyms in words that were once distinct. Multisyllabic words arose in order to compensate for this loss. Most natively derived multisyllabic words still feature these original monosyllabic morpheme roots. Many Chinese morphemes still have associated meaning, even though many of them no longer can stand alone as individual words. This situation is analogous to the use of the English prefix pre-. Even though pre- can never stand alone by itself as an individual word, it is commonly understood by English speakers to mean "before," such as in the words predawn, previous, and premonition. Taking the previous example, jīguāng, jī and guāng literally mean "stimulated light," resulting in the meaning, "laser." However, jī is never found as a single word by itself, because there are too many other morphemes that are also pronounced in the same way. For instance, the morphemes that correspond to the meanings "chicken" 雞/鸡, "machine" 機/机, "basic" 基, "hit" 擊/击, "hunger" 饑/饥, and "sum" 積/积 are also pronounced jī in Mandarin. It is only in the context of other morphemes can an exact meaning of a zì be known. In certain ways, the logographic writing system helps to reinforce meaning in zì that are homophonous, since even though several morphemes may be pronounced the same way, they are written using different characters. Continuing with the example, we have: For this reason, it is very common for Mandarin speakers to put characters in context as a natural part of conversation. For example, when telling each other their names (which are often rare, or at least non-colloquial, combinations of zì), Mandarin speakers often state which words their names are found in. As a specific example, a speakers might say 名字叫嘉英，嘉陵江的嘉，英國的英 Míngzi jiào Jiāyíng, Jiālíngjiāng de jiā, Yíngguó de yíng "My name is Jiāyíng, the Jia of Jialing River and the Ying in England." The problem of homonyms also exists but is less severe in southern Chinese varieties like Cantonese and Taiwanese, which preserved more of the rimes of Middle Chinese. For instance, the previous examples of jī for "stimulated," "chicken," and "machine" have distinct pronunciations in Cantonese (romanized using jyutping): gik1, gai1, and gei1, respectively. For this reason, southern varieties tend to employ fewer multisyllabic words. There are a few morphemes in Chinese, many of them loanwords, that consist of more than one syllable. These words cannot be further divided into single-syllable meaningful units, however in writing each syllable is still written as separate zì. One example is the word for "spider," zhīzhū, which is written as 蜘蛛. Even in this case, Chinese tend to try to make some kind of meaning out of the constituent syllables. For this reason, the two characters 蜘 and 蛛 each have an associated meaning of "spider" when seen alone as individual characters. When spoken though, they can never occur apart.

Loanwords

Most Chinese words are formed out of native Chinese morphemes, including words describing imported objects and ideas. However, direct phonetic borrowing of foreign words has gone on since ancient times. Words borrowed from along the Silk Road in ancient times include 葡萄 "grape", 石榴 "pomegranate" and 獅子 "lion". Other words were borrowed from Buddhist scriptures, including 佛 "Buddha" and 菩薩 "bodhisattva". Foreign words continue to enter the Chinese language by transcription according to their pronunciations. This is done by employing Chinese characters with similar pronunciations; characters in this case are usually taken strictly for their phonetic values. For example, "Israel" becomes 以色列 (pinyin: yǐsèliè). The Chinese characters used here literally mean "using-colour-rank", or "ranking using colour", but the sense is automatically ignored because it is understood that the characters are used for their phonetic values only. Characters which are used nearly exclusively in the transcription of foreign words are present in Chinese; many of these characters date back to Middle Chinese when they were used to translate Sanskrit phonemes. For example, 斯 sī and 爾 ěr, which are Classical Chinese words for "this" and "you", are never used in their original senses (except in a limited number of idiomatic expressions) and more often used to transcribe the sounds /s/ and /l/ in foreign words. Nevertheless, this method tends to yield somewhat strange results, and is therefore overwhelmingly used to transcribe foreign names only. A rather small number of direct phonetic borrowings have survived as common words, including 幽默 yōumò "humour", 邏輯 luójí "logic", 時髦 shímáo "smart, fashionable", 麥克風 màikèfēng "microphone", and 歇斯底里 xiēsīdǐlǐ "hysterics". It is much more common to use existing Chinese morphemes to coin new words in order to represent imported concepts, such as technical expressions. Any Latin or Greek etymologies are dropped, making them more comprehensible for Chinese but introducing more difficulties in understanding foreign texts. For example, the word telephone was loaned phonetically as 德律風 (Standard Mandarin: délǜfēng) during the 1920s, but later 電話 (diànhuà "electric speech"), built out of native Chinese morphemes, became prevalent. Other examples include 電視 (diànshì "electric vision") for television, 電腦 (diànnǎo "electric brain") for computer; 手機 (shǒujī "hand machine") for cellphone, and 藍牙 (lányá "blue tooth") for Bluetooth. Occasionally half-transliteration, half-translation compromises are accepted, such as 漢堡包 (hànbǎo bāo, "Hamburg bun") for hamburger. Sometimes translations are designed so that they sound like the original while incorporating Chinese morphemes. This is often done for commercial purposes, for example 奔騰 (bēnténg "running leaping") for Pentium and 賽百味 (sàibǎiwèi "better-than hundred tastes") for Subway restaurants. Another important source came from a related writing system, kanji, which are Chinese characters used in the Japanese language. The Japanese used kanji to translate many European words in the late 19th century and early 20th century. These words are called wasei-kango in Japanese (和製漢語 literally Japanese-made Chinese), and many of these words were then loaned into Chinese. Examples include lìchǎng (立場, たちば, stance), zhéxué (哲學, てつがく, philosophy), chōuxiàng (抽象, ちゅうしょう, abstract), guóyǔ (國語, こくご, national language), zhǔyì (主義, しゅぎ, -ism) and làngmàn (浪漫、ロマンス、romance). Some of these terms were coined by the Japanese by giving new senses to existing Chinese terms or by referring to expressions used in classical Chinese literature. As a result, these terms are virtually indistinguishable from native Chinese words: indeed, there is dispute over some of these terms as to whether the Japanese or Chinese coined them first. As a result of this to-and-fro process, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese continue to share many terms describing modern terminology, in parallel to a similar corpus of terms built from Greco-Latin terms shared among European languages.

Grammar

In general, all spoken varieties of Chinese are isolating languages, in that they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure) rather than morphology (changes in the form of the word through inflection). Because they are isolating languages, they make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood. Chinese features Subject Verb Object word order, and like many other languages in East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic-comment construction to form sentences. Even though Chinese has no grammatical gender, it has an extensive system of measure words, another trait shared with neighbouring (but not related) languages like Japanese and Korean. See Chinese measure words for an extensive coverage of this subject. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction, pronoun dropping (and the related subject dropping), and the use of aspect rather than tense. Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess various differences. See Chinese grammar for the grammar of Standard Mandarin (the standardized Chinese spoken language), and the articles on other varieties of Chinese for their respective grammars.

References

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External links

Dictionaries

- [http://www.dict.cn Free Online Chinese - English Dictionary] 1,000,000 English and Chinese words
- [http://www.zhongwen.com Zhongwen.com:] Chinese to English dictionary and other resources presented in English; searchable by English meanings; Chinese text displayed as graphics (i.e. does not require any Chinese font)
- [http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=chardict MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary]
- [http://www.chineselanguage.org/CCDICT/index.html Chinese Characters Dictionary]: supports Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Hakka etc.
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Chinese-english/ Chinese - English Dictionary]: from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition
- [http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/chinese-french-dictionary.html Chinese - French Dictionary] search Chinese, pinyin or French
- [http://www.mandarintools.com/cedict.html CEDICT] Chinese-English Dictionary Project
- [http://www.online-dictionary.biz/english/chinese Chinese dictionary] Free Chinese-English-Chinese dictionary
- [http://stardict.sourceforge.net Stardict] free (GPL) multilanguage dictionary including simplified/traditional Chinese for Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.) and win32
- [http://cdict.giga.net.tw English-Chinese Translation Dictionary]: Chinese-English-Chinese Online Dictionary (Taiwan-based; simplified characters not recognised)
- [http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/wordsearch.php CantoDict]: Cantonese-English Dictionary Project

Resources for students of Chinese

- [http://www.chinese-forums.com Chinese Forums:]Discussion of Chinese language and culture with some very knowledgable participants, mostly intermediate or advanced learners of Chinese but also many native speakers / overseas Chinese.
- [http://www.oneaday.org Oneaday.org] One Chinese idiom a day (simplified and traditional characters) with pinyin transliteration and English translation.
- [http://www.shufawest.us/language/tonedrill.html Mandarin Tone Drill] Testing your knowledge of Mandarin tones.
- [http://www.mandarin123.com/pronunciation.html Mandarin Tone Quizzes] Useful practices on Mandarin tones.
- [http://www.pinyinpractice.com/tones.htm Pinyin Practice] Pinyin practice for Mandarin learners in all level

Pinyin

Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pīnyīn) literally means "join (together) sounds" (a less literal translation being "phoneticize", "spell" or "transcription") in Chinese and usually refers to Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (汉语拼音, literal meaning: "Han language pinyin"), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard Mandarin. Pinyin was approved in 1958 and adopted in 1979 by the government in the People's Republic of China. It superseded older transcriptions like the Wade-Giles system (1859; modified 1912) or Bopomofo. Similar systems have been designed for other Chinese spoken variants and non-Han minority languages in the PRC. Since then, pinyin has been accepted by the Government of Singapore, the Library of Congress, the American Library Association, and most international institutions as the preferred transcription system for Mandarin. In 1979 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese. It is important to maintain the distinction that pinyin is a romanization and not an anglicization; that is, it is equally applicable for transcription into any language that uses a Roman alphabet, but that the precise pronunciation need not match that of any of these languages. For example, the sounds indicated in pinyin by b and p are distinguished from each other (by aspiration) in a manner different from that of both English (which has voicing and aspiration) and of French (which has voicing alone). Other letters, like j or q indicate a combination of sounds that do not correspond to any exact sound in English. Some of the transcriptions in pinyin such as the ang ending, do not correspond to English pronunciations, either. Pinyin has also become a useful tool for entering Chinese language text into computers.

Pronunciation

The primary purpose of pinyin in Chinese schools is to teach Mandarin pronunciation. Many in the West are under the mistaken belief that pinyin is used to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know, but this is incorrect as many Chinese do not use Mandarin at home, and therefore do not know the Mandarin pronunciation of words until they learn them in elementary school through the use of pinyin. Pinyin uses the Roman alphabet, hence the pronunciation is relatively straightforward for Westerners. A pitfall for English-speaking novices is, however, the unusual pronunciation x, q, c and z (and sometimes i) and the unvoiced pronunciation of d, b, g, j. More information on the pronunciation of all pinyin letters in terms of English approximations is given further below. The pronunciation of Chinese is generally given in terms of initials and finals, which represent the segmental phonemic portion of the language. Initials are initial consonants, while finals are all possible combinations of medials (semivowels coming before the vowel), the nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant).

Initials

In each cell below, the first line indicates IPA, the second indicates pinyin. ^- and are interchangeable.

Finals

In each cell below, the first line indicates IPA, the second indicates pinyin for a standalone (no-initial) form, and the third indicates pinyin for a combination with an initial. Other than finals modified by an -r, which are omitted, the following is an exhaustive table of all possible finals. ¹ It is of interest to point out that the only syllable-final consonants in standard Mandarin are -n and -ng, and -r which is attached as a grammatical suffix. If you see a Chinese syllable ending with any other consonant, it is either a dialect (notably Cantonese), or a non-Pinyin Romanization system (where final consonants are used to indicate tones) is being used. ¹ /ər/ (而, 二, etc.) is written as er. For other finals formed by the suffix -r, pinyin does not use special orthography; one simply appends -r to the final that it is added to, without regard for any sound changes that may take place along the way. For information on sound changes related to final -r, please see Standard Mandarin.
² "ü" is written as "u" after j, q, or x.
³ "uo" is written as "o" after b, p, m, or f.
⁴ It is pronounced when it follows an initial, and pinyin reflects this difference.
In addition, ê is used to represent certain interjections.

Rules given in terms of English pronunciation

All rules given here in terms of English pronunciation are approximate.

Pronunciation of initials

Pronunciation of finals

The following is an exhaustive list of all finals, with or without final -r. To find the pronunciation of a final: #Look for the entire combination rather than the individual letters. For example, look for ian, not i + a + n. #For syllables starting with y- or w-, change the y- to i- and w- to u-, then take the i- and u- as part of the final. (E.g. yan -> ian, where "ian" is the final.) If this results in ii-, uu-, and iu-, change those to i-, u-, and ü- respectively. (E.g. yin -> in, wu -> u, yue -> üe) #If the initial is j-, q-, and x-, and the final starts with -u-, then change the -u- to -ü-.

Orthographic features

Pinyin differs from other romanizations in several aspects, such as:
- w is placed before syllables starting with u.
- y is placed before syllables starting with i and ü.
- ü is written as u when there is no ambiguity (such as ju, qu, and xu), but written as ü when there are corresponding u syllables (such as lü and nü)
- When preceded by a consonant, iou, uei, and uen are simplified as iu, ui, and un (which do not represent the actual pronunciation).
- Like zhuyin, what are actually pronounced as buo, puo, muo, and fuo are given a separate representation: bo, po, mo, and fo.
- The apostrophe (') is used before ɑ, o, and e to separate syllables in a word where ambiguity could arise, e.g., pi'ao (皮襖) vs. piao (票), and Xi'an (西安) vs. xian (先).
- Eh! alone is written as ê; elsewhere as e. Schwa is always written as e.
- zh, ch, and sh can be abbreviated as ẑ, ĉ, and ŝ. However, the shorthands are rarely used due to difficulty of entering them on computers.
- ng has the uncommon shorthand of ŋ.

Tones

ŋ The Pinyin system also incorporates suprasegmental phonemes to represent the four tones of Mandarin. Each tone is indicated by a diacritical mark above a non-medial vowel. Many books printed in China mix fonts, with vowels with tone marks rendered in a different font than the surrounding text, a practice that tends to give such Pinyin texts a typographically ungainly appearance. This style, most likely rooted in early technical limitations, has led many to believe that Pinyin's rules call for this practice and also for the use of "" (with no curl over the top) rather than the standard style of the letter "a" found in most fonts. The official rules of Hanyu Pinyin, however, specify no such practice. Note that tone marks can also appear on consonants in certain vowelless exclamations. # The first tone is represented by a macron (ˉ) added to the pinyin vowel: #:
# The second tone is denoted by an acute accent (ˊ): #:
# The third tone is symbolized by a caron (ˇ, also known as a reverse circumflex). Note, it is officially not a breve (˘, lacking a downward angle), although this misuse is somewhat common on the Internet. #:
# The fourth tone is represented by a grave accent (ˋ): #:
# The fifth or neutral tone is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark: #:

:(In some cases, this is also written with a dot before the syllable; for example, ·ma.) Since most computer fonts do not contain the macron or caron accents, a common convention is to postfix the individual syllables with a digit representing their tone (e.g., "tóng" (tong with the rising tone) is written "tong2"). The digit is numbered as the order listed above, except the "fifth tone", which, in addition to being numbered 5, is also either not numbered or numbered zero, as in ma0 (吗/嗎, an interrogative marker). These tone marks normally are only used in Mandarin textbooks or in foreign learning texts, but they are essential for correct pronunciation of Mandarin syllables, as exemplified by the following classical example of five characters whose pronunciations differ only in their tones: The words are "mother", "hemp", "horse", "admonish" and a question particle, respectively.

Rules for placing the tone mark

The rules for determining on which vowel the tone mark appears are as follows: # If there is more than one vowel and the first vowel is i, u, or ü, then the tone mark appears on the second vowel. # In all other cases, the tone mark appears on the first vowel (y and w are not considered vowels for these rules.) The reasoning behind these rules is in the case of diphthongs and triphthongs, i, u, and ü (and their orthographic equivalents y and w when there is no initial consonant) are considered medial glides rather than part of the syllable nucleus in Chinese phonology. The rules ensure that the tone mark always appears on the nucleus of a syllable.

Miscellanea

An umlaut is placed over the letter u when it occurs after the initials l and n in order to represent the sound [y]. This is necessary in order to distinguish the front high rounded vowel in lü (e.g. 驴/驢 donkey) from the back high rounded vowel in lu (e.g. 炉/爐 oven). Tonal markers are added on top of the umlaut, as in lǘ. However, the ü is not used in other contexts where it represents a front high rounded vowel, namely after the letters j, q, x and y. For example, the sound of the word 鱼/魚 (fish) is transcribed in pinyin simply as yú, not as yǘ. This practice is opposed to Wade-Giles, which always uses ü, and Tongyong Pinyin, which always uses yu. Whereas Wade-Giles needs to use the umlaut to distinguish between chü (pinyin ju) and chu (pinyin zhu), this ambiguity cannot arise with pinyin, so the more convenient form ju is used instead of jü. Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu/nü and lu/lü, which are then distinguished by an umlaut diacritic. Many fonts or output methods do not support an umlaut for ü or cannot place tone marks on top of ü. Likewise, using ü in input methods is difficult because it is not present as a simple key on many keyboard layouts. For these reasons v is sometimes used instead by convention. Occasionally, uu (double u) or U (capital u) is used in its place. See also:
- Postal System Pinyin (unrelated)
- Combining diacritic marks Unicode #U0300

Pinyin in Taiwan

The Republic of China on Taiwan is in the process of adopting a modified version of pinyin (currently Tongyong Pinyin). For elementary education it has used zhuyin (also known as bopomofo), and for romanization there is no standard system in general use in Taiwan despite many efforts to standardize on one system. In the late-1990s, the government of Taiwan formally decided to move from zhuyin to pinyin. This has triggered a very heated discussion of which pinyin system to use: hanyu pinyin of People's Republic of China or some other system. Much of the controversy centers on issues of national identity because of political interests. Proponents for adopting pinyin maintain that it is an international standard that is already used throughout the world. Proponents for adopting a new system maintain that Taiwan should have its own identity and culture separate from the People's Republic of China. A new system Tongyong Pinyin was created in Taiwan in 1998. Tongyong Pinyin is mostly similar to Hanyu Pinyin with a number of changes in the letters and digraphs representing certain sounds. In October 2002, the ROC government adopted Tongyong Pinyin through an administrative order that local governments can override. Localities with governments controlled by the Kuomintang, most notably Taipei City, have overridden the order and converted to Hanyu Pinyin (although with a slightly different capitialization convention than the Mainland). As a result, English signs have inconsistent romanization in Taiwan, with many places using Tongyong Pinyin but some using Hanyu Pinyin, and still others not yet having had the resources to replace older Wade-Giles or MPS2 signage. This has resulted in the odd situation in Taipei City in which inconsistent pinyin are shown in freeway directions, with freeway signs, which are under the control of the national government, using one pinyin, but surface street signs, which are under the control of the city government, using the other. As of 2003, no form of pinyin is used in elementary education on Taiwan to teach pronunciation. Although the ROC government has stated the desire to use romanization rather than zhuyin in education, the lack of agreement on which form of pinyin to use and the huge logistical challenge of teacher training has stalled these efforts.

Other languages

Pinyin-like systems have been devised for other variants of Chinese. Guangdong Romanization is a set of romanizations devised by the government of Guangdong province for Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka (Moiyen dialect), and Hainanese. All of these are designed to use letters in a similar way to Pinyin. In addition, in accordance to the "Regulation of Phonetic Transcription in Hanyu Pinyin Letters of Place Names in Minority Nationality Languages" (《少数民族语地名汉语拼音字母音译转写法》) promulgated in 1976, place names in non-Chinese languages like Mongol, Uyghur, and Tibetan are also officially transcribed using Pinyin. The pinyin letters (26 Roman letters, ü, and ê) are used to approximate the non-Chinese language in question as closely as possible. This results in spellings that are different from both the customary spelling of the place name, and the Pinyin spelling of the name in Chinese:

Controversy

Debate continues about the actual suitability of pinyin as a Chinese romanization method. This argument revolves around pinyin's unconventional use of Roman letters, of which the phonological values of some phonemes are quite different from that of most languages utilizing the Roman alphabet. Some sinologists praise this as pinyin's flexibility in that it allows the entire Roman alphabet to be adapted to the Chinese sound system (compared to Wade-Giles, which leaves out or underuses many letters). Others point out that pinyin letter values are so unconventional that for a person unfamiliar with Chinese, they result in a larger number of mispronunciations when compared to Wade-Giles. However, as not only the PRC but by now most institutions and publications have adopted it, the debate seems increasingly obsolete. Pinyin, like all systems of romanization, has certain limitations that users should be aware of:
- Like the spelling systems of any other language, pinyin does not represent English pronunciation and should not be pronounced according to English conventions. Readers are advised to learn pinyin phonetic conventions, bearing in mind that many sounds have no equivalents in English.
- Chinese characters can indicate semantic cues. But since pinyin is based on the sounds of Mandarin alone, these semantic cues are no longer preserved. For speakers of other Chinese spoken variants, it becomes unsuitable for use in reading and writing because these sounds do not necessarily correspond to their speech.
- The phonotactics of spoken Mandarin dictate a relatively small set of possible syllables and there is a potential for homonyms. Because of this, pinyin can be ambiguous, especially when transcribing Standard Written Chinese, which uses formal constructions not often found in speech. However, this should not be an issue in the transcription of normal spoken Mandarin conversation since speakers would not use such ambiguous constructions in speech. Computer systems long provided the most convincing argument in favor of pinyin; early computers were able to display nothing but 7-bit ASCII (essentially the 26 letters, the 10 digits, and a handful of punctuation marks). Most contemporary computer systems are now able to readily display characters from not only Chinese, but from many other writing systems as well. In addition, multiple input method editors exist that use standard keyboards to type them (pinyin being one such method). Now, PDAs and digitizing tablets allow users to write characters with a stylus, which can then be stored and edited like any text. Thus, this justification is no longer as strong as it used to be. Nonetheless, pinyin has gained wide acceptance, and supporters believe it is useful for students of Chinese as a second language.

Reference

Yin Binyong 尹斌庸, Mary Felley: Chinese Romanization. Pronunciation and Orthography (Hanyu pinyin he zhengcifa 汉语拼音和正词法; Sinolingua, Beijing 1990), ISBN 7-80052-148-6 / ISBN 0-8351-1930-0.

External links

Auto-converters

- [http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/annotation.html Chinese characters to Pinyin (with tone marks and English meaning)]
- [http://www.pinyin.info/unicode/marks3.html Pinyin with tone numbers to Pinyin with tone marks] (can handle 5 for neutral tone)
- [http://www.foolsworkshop.com/ptou/index.html Pinyin with tone numbers to Pinyin with tone marks]
- [http://www.rikai.com/perl/HomePage.pl?Language=Zh Rikai.com] A web-mediator that adds mouseover pinyin readings to Chinese web-pages.
- [http://www.mandarintools.com/dimsum.html DimSum Chinese Reading Assistant] Add pinyin (or bopomofo, etc.) to text, web pages, or RTF files. Includes dictionary, flashcards.

Other

- [http://www.pinyin.info/ Pinyin.info] — very complete explanation of Unicode pinyin.
- [http://www.pinyin.info/unicode/unicode_test.html Pinyin info Unicode testpage]
- [http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/read.shtml Read/Write using Unicode]
- [http://research.chtsai.org/papers/pinyin-comparison.html Tongyong and Hanyu Pinyin]
- [http://www.sinosplice.com/lang/pronunciation.html Sinosplice - Pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese]
- [http://www.fdicts.com/dictlist1.php?k1=126 Fdicts] Simplified Chinese Dictionary
- [http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary]
- [http://www.mandarintools.com/pyconverter.html Chinese Romanization Converter] - Convert between Hanyu Pinyin, Wade-Giles, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and other common Romanization systems. Category:Chinese language romanization Category:Latin-derived alphabets Category:Mandarin terms ko:병음 ja:ピン音 th:พินอิน

Chinese written language

The Chinese written language consists of a writing system stretching back nearly 4000 years. Its logographic writing system employs a large number of symbols, known as characters, to represent individual words or morphemes. The writing system is considered to have also been a unifying force for much of Chinese history, transcending differences in spoken language. From the time of the Qin Dynasty onwards, a standard written language (at first Classical Chinese and later Vernacular Chinese) has always been in place to bridge the divergent spoken variants of Chinese.

Written standards

One can classify Chinese writing into the following basic types:
- Wenyan (文言) (Classical Chinese)
- Baihua (白話/白话) (Vernacular Chinese)
- Written colloquial Chinese (in particular, written colloquial Cantonese)
- Poems and other Chinese constrained writings The relationship between the Chinese spoken and written languages is complex. This complexity is compounded by the fact that the numerous variations of spoken Chinese have gone through centuries of evolution since at least the late-Han Dynasty. However, written Chinese has changed much less than the spoken language. Until the 20th century, most formal Chinese writing was done in wenyan, translated as Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese, which was very different from any of the spoken varieties of Chinese in much the same way that Classical Latin is different from modern Romance languages. Chinese characters that are closer to the spoken language were used to write informal works such as colloquial novels. Since the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the formal standard for written Chinese was changed to baihua, or Vernacular Chinese, which, while not completely identical to the grammar and vocabulary of Standard Mandarin, was based mostly on the dialects of modern spoken Mandarin. The term standard written Chinese now refers to Vernacular Chinese. Although few new works are now written in classical Chinese, it is still taught in middle and high school and forms part of college entrance examinations. Classical Chinese forms are also sometimes included in written works to give them a highly formal or archaic flavor. Chinese characters are understood as morphemes that are independent of phonetic change. Thus, although the number one is read as "yi" in Mandarin, "yat" in Cantonese and "tsit" in Hokkien, they derive from a common ancient Chinese word and still share an identical character: 一. Nevertheless, the orthographies of Chinese dialects are not identical. The vocabularies used in the different dialects have also diverged. In addition, while literary vocabulary is often shared among all dialects (at least in orthography; the readings are different), colloquial vocabularies are often different. Colloquially written Chinese usually involves the use of "dialectal characters" which may not be understood in other dialects or characters that are considered archaic in baihua. The complex interaction between the Chinese written and spoken languages can be illustrated with Cantonese, and Cantonese in the following illustration can be replaced with any spoken language of Chinese. Cantonese speakers are all taught standard written Chinese in school even though its grammar and vocabulary are based on Mandarin. In most written communication, Cantonese speakers will write in standard written Chinese, so Mandarin speakers typically can read such communication without much difficulty. In addition, every character in standard written Chinese has a Cantonese pronunciation so all writing can be read aloud in Cantonese, however this is not the same as spoken Cantonese. Colloquially spoken Cantonese features different grammar and vocabulary, which if written down, can be largely unreadable by an untrained Mandarin speaker. Standard written Chinese essentially functions as a different register for Cantonese speakers, because they mostly do not write exactly the way they speak. Standard written Chinese spoken aloud using Cantonese pronunciation (usually with some colloquial words substituted in) serves as an acrolect used in newscasts and other formal contexts. Written colloquial Cantonese does exist however, and Cantonese is unique among non-Mandarin regional languages in having a widely used written colloquial standard. This is due in part to the fact that Hong Kong, a large Cantonese speaking city, was outside of Chinese control for over a hundred years before the British returned it to the People's Republic of China in 1997. In contrast, the other regional languages do not have such widely used alternative written standards. Written colloquial Cantonese has become quite popular in certain tabloids, online chat rooms, and instant messaging. Even so, Cantonese speakers will use standard written Chinese in most formal written communications. As with other aspects of the Chinese language, the contrast between different written standards is not sharp and there can be a socially accepted continuum between the written standards. For example, in writing an informal love letter, one may use informal baihua. In writing a newspaper article, the language used is different and begins to include aspects of wenyan. In writing a ceremonial document, one would use even more wenyan. The language used in the ceremonial document may be completely different from that of the love letter, but there is a socially accepted continuum existing between the two. Pure wenyan, however, is rarely used.

Chinese characters

Main articles: Chinese character, Punctuation: East Asian punctuation The Chinese written language employs the Han characters (漢字/汉字 pinyin hànzì), which are named after the Han culture to which they are largely attributed. Chinese characters appear to have originated in the Shang dynasty as pictograms depicting concrete objects. The first examples we have of Chinese characters are inscriptions on oracle bones, which are occasionally sheep scapula but mostly turtle plastrons (lower shells) used for divination purposes. Over the course of the Zhou and Han dynasties, the characters became more and more stylized. Abstract symbols, such as those indicating up and down, and combined characters came into usage. For example, the word "rén" (in pinyin), meaning "person", is a pictogram of a man; "trust" is a combination of "man" and "speech/word". Also, additional components were added so that many characters contain one element that gives (or at least once gave) a fairly good indication of the pronunciation, and another component (the so-called "radical") gives an indication of the general category of meaning to which the character belongs. In the modern Chinese languages, the majority of characters are phonetically based rather than logographically based. An example would be the character for the word 按 àn that means "to press down". It contains 安 ān (peace), which serves as its phonetic component, and 手 shǒu (hand), that indicates that the action is frequently one that is done using one's hand. These characters, having both components, constitutes the majority of the Chinese vocabulary. A number of Chinese characters are derived out of each other; as a result some classical dictionaries contain circular references of words having identical radicals and meanings. However, new meanings have been injected into these redundant words through popular usage. Some words are also "borrowed" (ie. to introduce an additional meaning) because they bear a phonetic resemblance with another thing that has no assigned written character. Many styles of Chinese calligraphic writing developed over the centuries, such as zhuanshu (篆書, seal-script), caoshu (草書, grass script), lishu (隸書, official script) and kaishu (楷書, standard script). In Japan and Korea, Han characters were adopted and integrated into their languages and became Kanji and Hanja, respectively. Japan still uses Kanji as an integral part of its writing system; however, Korea's use of Hanja has diminished (it was abolished in North Korea in the 1950's, but revived in the 1960's for cultural continuation proved inadequate without Chinese characters). In the field of software and communications internationalization, CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and the rarer CJKV a collective term for the same plus Vietnamese, all of which are double-byte languages, as they have more than 256 characters in their "alphabet". The computerized processing of Chinese characters involves some special issues both in input and character encoding schemes, as the standard 100+ key keyboards of today's computers don't allow input of that many characters with a single key-press. The Chinese writing system is mostly logographic, i.e., each character expresses a monosyllabic word part, also known as a morpheme. This is helped by the fact that over 90% of Chinese morphemes are monosyllabic. The majority of modern words, however, are multisyllable and multigraphic. Multisyllabic words have a separate logogram for each syllable. Some, but not all, Han characters are ideographs, but most Han Chinese characters have forms that were based on their pronunciation rather than their meanings, so they do not directly express ideas.

Character forms

There are currently two standards for printed Chinese characters. One is Traditional Chinese characters, used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Mainland China and Singapore use the Simplified Chinese characters (developed by the PRC government in the 1950s). Many simplified versions were derived from established, though obscure, historically-established simplifications. In Taiwan, some simplifications are used when characters are handwritten, but in printing traditional characters are the norm. In addition, most Chinese use some personal simplifications. Simplification process is actually not restricted to Simplified system. In order to computerize Chinese, the authority in Taiwan has tried to "standardize" the glyph of characters being used, to eliminate unnecessary variations. As a result, several characters are combined into one, and some characters have their written form altered to ease the glyph generation process by computing technologies at that time. But these simplification process are rather minor as compared to the work done by the Mainland government. In addition, Chinese can be written horizontally or vertically. Horizontal writing works just like English, while vertical writing goes from top to bottom, and is arranged into columns going from right to left. Both systems are used for Traditional Chinese, while Simplified Chinese predominantly uses horizontal writing.

External links

- [http://www.char4u.com/article_info.php?articles_id=2 History of Chinese Writing System] An Article about Chinese Writing History Category:Chinese language Category:Logographic writing systems

Traditional Chinese character

Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese characters. It is the set of characters that first appeared during the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) and has been used since the 5th century during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. It is called traditional as opposed to the other form - the simplified Chinese characters, created or standardised by the government of the People's Republic of China (mainland China) starting from the 1950s. Traditional Chinese is text written with Traditional Chinese characters. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and some overseas Chinese communities; especially those originating from the aforementioned countries or who emigrated before the widepspread adoption of simplified characters in the People's Republic of China. In contrast, simplified characters are used in Mainland China, Singapore, and in some overseas Chinese communities; especially those from aforementioned countries who emigrated after the widespread adoption of simplified Chinese characters.

Controversy over name

Among Chinese people, traditional Chinese characters are referred to by several different names, each with different implications. The government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) officially calls traditional Chinese characters standard characters or orthodox characters (Traditional Chinese: 正體字; Simplified Chinese: 正体字; pinyin: zhèngtǐzì), which implies that traditional characters are the full and correct forms of the characters. In contrast, users of simplified characters call them complex characters (Traditional Chinese: 繁體字; Simplified Chinese: 繁体字; pinyin: fántǐzì), or, informally, old characters (老字; pinyin: lǎozì), with the implication that traditional Chinese characters have been replaced and are obsolete. Traditional character users argue that traditional characters cannot be called "complex" as they were never made more complex; the characters were preserved the way they were. Conversely supporters of simplified Chinese characters object strongly to the description of these characters as "standard," since they view the new simplified characters as the contemporary standard. They also point out that traditional characters are not truly traditional as Chinese characters have changed significantly over time. Curiously, although the character which is generally translated as "complex" is itself comprised of numerous, if not complex strokes, the character has not undergone simplification; this is perhaps intentional as it demonstrates the relative complexity of the Traditional characters in contrast to the Simplified versions. Additionally, while "complex" bears somewhat of a negative connotation in English, the Chinese character per se does not imply anything to the extent that it might be construed as "complex" or "troublesome"; rather, the meaning is rather vague and remains neutral unless coupled with other characters. Some older people refer to traditional characters as proper characters (正字; pinyin: zhèngzì) and simplified characters as simplified-stroke characters (Traditional Chinese: 簡筆字; Simplified Chinese: 简笔字; pinyin: jiǎnbǐzì) or reduced-stroke characters (Traditional Chinese: 減筆字; Simplified Chinese: 减笔字; pinyin: jiǎnbǐzì) (simplified- and reduced- are actually homonyms in Mandarin Chinese, both pronounced jiǎn).

Printed text

When printing text, people in Mainland China and Singapore mainly use the simplified system, which was developed by the People's Republic of China government in the 1950s. However, the PRC also prints material intended to be read outside of Mainland China using traditional characters. In handwritten text, most people use informal, sometimes personal simplifications. In most cases, an alternative character (異體字) would be used in place of one with more strokes, such as 体 for 體. Contrary to popular belief, most of these are still part of the set of traditional chinese characters, but informally and confusingly called simplified form (簡寫). Though not standard, these are usually accepted outside schools, and some are extremely widespread, notably the tai (台) in Taiwan as opposed to the standard character (臺).

Computer character encoding

In the past, Traditional Chinese was most often rendered using the Big5 character encoding scheme, a character encoding scheme that favors Traditional Chinese. Unicode, however, has become increasingly popular as a way to render Traditional Chinese. Unicode gives equal weight to both simplified and traditional Chinese characters and does not favor either over the other. There are various IMEs (Input Method Editors) available to input Chinese characters.

Usage in other languages

Traditional characters are also used in Korean Hanja, and moderately simplified traditional characters are used in modern Japanese Kanji.

Chinese character

] Chinese characters or Han characters () are logograms used in the written forms of the Chinese language, and to varying degrees in the Japanese and Korean. Use of Chinese characters has disappeared from the Vietnamese language — in which they were used until the 20th century — and from Korea, where in normal writing they have been completely replaced by Hangul. Contrary to popular belief, only a small number of Chinese characters are pictograms. Most characters are based on other characters that were homonyms when the character was created. Chinese characters are called hànzì in Mandarin Chinese, kanji in Japanese, hanja or hanmun in Korean, and hán tự or chữ nho in Vietnamese. In modern written Chinese, characters are written either in Traditional Chinese characters (used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau) or Simplified Chinese characters (used in Mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore) In Chinese, a word or phrase (词 / 詞 cí) (a unit of meaning) is composed of one or more characters (字 zì), for instance the phrase 汉字 / 漢字 hànzì is composed by two characters. Each Chinese character represents a single syllabic unit in all spoken variants of Chinese still existing today. However, unlike modern Chinese dialects, Archaic Chinese had consonant clusters and lacked a tonal feature, for example 角 jiǎo is pronounced klak in Archaic Chinese. Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese are not linguistically related to Chinese, and in order to make Chinese characters work in those languages with radically different grammar, many adaptations had to be made. For example, Japanese kanji are used to represent not only borrowings from Chinese, which are monosyllabic, but also native words (Kun'yomi), which are often multisyllabic. In many cases in these languages, there are differences from characters used in Chinese. Japanese has standardised on a set of 1,945 characters, known as the Jōyō kanji, which includes simplified or variant forms of characters traditionally used in China, as well as a number of Chinese characters created by the Japanese themselves. In China itself, thousands of simplified characters were created and adopted in Mainland China between 1956 and 1964 to eradicate mass illiteracies. This created major distinctions between the two sets of characters. (For example, 汉 in simplified characters used in Mainland China and Singapore, and 漢 in traditional characters used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.) Just as Roman letters have a characteristic shape (lower-case letters occupying a roundish area, with ascenders or descenders on some letters), Chinese characters tend to occupy a more-or-less square area. Characters made up of multiple parts squash these parts together in order to maintain a uniform size and shape. Because of this, beginners often practise on squared or graph paper, and the Chinese sometimes call Han characters "square characters". Roman letter

Origin

The oldest Chinese inscriptions that are clearly writing are the poorly understood Oracle Script (甲骨文 jiǎgǔwén) of the late Shang Dynasty (or Yin (殷) Dynasty), attested from about 1200 BC. Only about 1400 of the 2500 known Oracle Script glyphs can be identified with later Chinese characters and can therefore be easily read. There have been suggestions that this was not designed for the Chinese language, or even for a Sino-Tibetan language, because it does not seem to reflect Chinese morphology accurately. An analogy would be if English were written with a script that had a single character for die and kill, but two separate characters for warm in "it's a warm day" and "please warm the bath". Although the succeeding Zhou Dynasty was clearly Han Chinese, it's not clear which ethnic group the Shang were. One possibility is Miao (苗 Miáo). The first recorded Miao kingdom was Jiuli. The ancestors of the Jiuli are thought to be the Liangzhu people, and it is these who are credited with creating the Oracle Script. According to Chinese legend, Jiuli was defeated by the military unification of Huang Di (黃帝 Huángdì) and Yandi, leaders of the Huaxia (華夏 Huáxià) tribe (the ancestors of the Han Chinese) as they struggled for supremacy of the Huang He valley. After their defeat, the Jiuli people who were not absorbed into the new Zhou state moved south, splitting into the Miao and the Li (黎 Lí) peoples. The Yi script is quite old and is superficially similar to Chinese, but does not seem to be derived from it. It was perhaps inspired by the example of Chinese, but the possibility cannot be discounted that it and the Chinese script both descend from a common source such as the Oracle Script.

Styles

Yi script]] The earliest Chinese characters are the so called Oracle Script of the late Shang Dynasty, followed by the Bronzeware Script or (金文) jīnwén during the Zhou Dynasty. These scripts no longer serve as anything but a source for scholars. The first script that is still in (restricted) use today is the "Seal Script" or 篆書[篆书] zhuànshū. It is the result of the efforts of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, in the standardization of the Chinese script. The Seal Script, as the name suggests, is now only used in artistic seals. Few people are still able to read the seal script, although the art of carving a traditional seal in the seal script remains alive in China today. Scripts that are still used regularly for print are the "Clerk Script" or 隸書[隶书] lìshū, the "Wei Monumental" or 魏碑 wèibēi, the "Regular Script" or 楷書[楷书] kǎishū, the "Song Style" or 宋體[宋体] sòngtǐ (mainly used in printing and computer fonts), and the "Running Script" or 行書[行书] xíngshū. Modern Chinese handwriting is usually modeled on the Running Script. Finally, there is the "Draft Script" (also called "Grass Script"), or 草書[草书] cǎoshū. The draft script is an idealized calligraphic style, where characters are suggested rather than realized. Despite being cursive to the point where individual strokes are no longer differentiable, the draft script is highly revered for the beauty and freedom that it embodies. Many simplified Chinese characters are based on this style.

Radicals

Draft Script]] Main article: radical Each character has a fundamental component, or radical (部首 bù shǒu, literally "initial portion"), and this design principle is used in Chinese dictionaries to logically order characters in sets. Full characters are ordered according to their initial radical, which fall into roughly 200 types. Then these are subcategorised by their total number of strokes.

Classification

See also: Chinese character classification Chinese scholars have traditionally classified Han characters into six types by etymology (六书). The first two types are single-body (独体), which means that the character was created independent of other Chinese characters preceding it. The first type, and the type most often associated with Chinese writing, are pictograms(象形字), which are pictorial representations of the morpheme represented. The second type are ideograms(指事字) that attempt to graphicalize abstract concepts, such as "up" (上) and "down" (下). Also considered ideograms are pictograms with an ideographic indicator; for instance, 刀 is a pictogram meaning "knife", while 刃 is an ideogram meaning "blade". Although the perception of most Westerners is that these are how most characters are created, pictograms and ideograms actually take up but a small proportion of Chinese logograms. logogram The next two types are called combined-body (合体), or compounds which means that the character was created from assembling other characters together. Note that despite being called "compounds", these logograms are single entities in themselves; they are written so that they take up the same amount of space as any other logogram. The third type of characters are radical-radical compounds(會意字), in which each element (radical) of the character hints at the meaning. The fourth type is of radical-phonetic compounds(形聲字), in which one component (the radical) indicates the kind of concept the character describes, and the other hints at the pronunciation. This last type accounts for the majority of Chinese logograms. The final two types are rarer. Changed-annotation characters (转注字) are characters which were originally the same character but have bifurcated through orthographic (and often linguistic) drift. For instance, 考 and 老 were once the same character, meaning "elder person", but 考 now means "test" and 老 means "old". Fake-borrowed characters (假借字) are created when a native spoken word has no corresponding character, and therefore another character with the same or similar sound (and often a vaguely similar meaning) is "borrowed" to represent the new word. Occasionally the new meaning can supplant the old meaning. For instance, the character 自 used to be a pictographic word meaning "nose", but was borrowed to mean "self" -- and is now known almost exclusively as "self". However, the "nose" meaning survives in compounds. Note that Japanese Kana can all be considered to be of this type, hence the name "kana" (仮名, where 仮 is a simplified form of 假). Note that due to the long period of language evolution, such component "hints" within characters are often useless and sometimes quite misleading in modern usage. This is particularly true in non-Chinese languages. Classification has its own problems, as the origins of characters are often obscure. For example, the character for "East" (東; dōng), which combines the "tree" radical (木) and the "sun" radical (日), is usually considered a radical-radical compound. Though it appears to represent a sun rising through trees, and this is both an evocative image and a useful mnemonic, the origin and classification of the character are disputed among scholars. While some agree with the radical-radical classification, others see it as a unique character in and of itself — some claim it as being derived from an early pictograph of bundled sticks. As another example, the character for "mother" (媽 mā) consists of one component meaning "female" (女) and another one meaning "horse" (馬 mǎ). The first component denotes a female entity, whereas the second suggests the pronunciation by referring to the word for "horse". The reason that "horse" was chosen to represent mother may be that horses — in a historical context — were often used to represent "steadfastness". The majority of Chinese characters, like this example, have one component that suggests the meaning and another that suggests pronunciation. In many cases, even the component intended to suggest pronunciation has an abstract semantic relation to the idea expressed by the character. This is possible because the phonetic system of Chinese allows for many words to have the same pronunciation (homonymy), and because the consideration of phonetic similarity used in a character generally ignores its tone and the manner of articulation of its initial consonant (but not the place of articulation).

Orthography

Usually Chinese characters each take up the same amount of space. One of the easiest ways for beginners to ensure this is with a grid as guidance. In addition to strictness in the amount of space a character takes up, Chinese characters are written with very precise rules. The three most important rules are the strokes employed, the stroke placement, and the order with which they are written (see Stroke order). Most words can be written with just one stroke order, though some words also have variant stroke orders, which may result in different stroke counts. On a larger scale, Chinese text is traditionally written from top to bottom and then right to left, but it is more common today to see the same orientation as Western languages: going from left to right and then top to bottom. Most punctuation marks were adopted from the West, but there are a few exceptions: for example, names of books are marked with a wavy line drawn to their right in vertical text, or enclosed in a special double pointed bracket in horizontal text. Common errors while writing Chinese characters include incorrect stroke direction, incorrect stroke order, incorrect stroke length relative to other strokes, and incorrect placement of strokes relative to other strokes. Each mistake is highly visible to the literate eye due to the imperfections of the human fingers, as well as the weight given to the different parts of a stroke. Mistakes are often shunned, as they are marks of illiteracy or incompetence. In a culture that values scholarship as its highest virtue, such attributions are highly undesirable. Because of this strictness in not only the image of the character, but how the image is produced, it is considered by many the most difficult to learn properly. Due to the long history of China, as well as many stylistic variations that have developed and the many attempts by past rulers to standardize writing, some characters have multiple forms. The characters themselves can be considered separate, but often are merely derivatives of each other in that their composition is of the same root. They are often not considered simplifications, as their stroke count is sometimes the same, and often lessened only but a slight amount. The most famous today is probably the character for sword (劍), where the radical (on the right) is knife (刀). The same word can be written with different forms for the radical, including using 刃 or 刀 itself. The usage of traditional characters versus simplified characters varies greatly, and can depend on both the local customs and the medium. Often, simplified characters would be used in everyday writing, or quick scribblings, while traditional characters would be used in printed works. Since the 1950's, the PRC's has officially adopted a simplified script, while Hong Kong, Macau, and the Republic of China retain the use of traditional. There is no absolute rule for using either system, and often, it is determined by what the target audience understands, as well as the upbringing of the writer. In addition there is a special system of characters used for writing numerals in financial contexts; these characters are deliberately chosen to be complicated, to prevent forgeries or alterations.

Reforms

:Main articles: Simplified Chinese character, Kanji Although associated with the People's Republic of China (PRC), character simplification predates 1949. Cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. The People's Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. A second round of character simplifications (known as erjian, or "Second round simplified characters", were promulgated in 1977. It was poorly received, and in 1986 the authorities retracted the second round completely, and also made six revisions to the first round of simplified characters (including the restoration of three characters that had been simplified in the First Round: 叠, 覆, 像). Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification. The last round, in 1976, arrived at the same set of simplified characters as Mainland China. Malaysia promulgated a set of Simplified characters in 1981, which were also completely identical to the simplified characters used in Mainland China. In 1946, following World War II, the Japanese government also instituted a series of orthographic reforms. Some characters were given simplified forms called 新字体 (shinjitai). The number of characters in circulation was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established. Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. This was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and periodicals. These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used.

Dictionaries

The design and use of a dictionary of Chinese characters presents interesting problems. Dozens of indexing schemes have been created for the Chinese characters. The great majority of these schemes — beloved by their inventors but nobody else — have appeared in only a single dictionary; only one such system has achieved truly widespread use. This is the system of radicals. Chinese character dictionaries often allow users to locate entries in several different ways. Many Chinese, Japanese, and Korean dictionaries of Chinese characters list characters in radical order: characters are grouped together by radical, and radicals containing fewer strokes come before radicals containing more strokes. Under each radical, characters are listed by their total number of strokes. In Japanese and Korean dictionaries, it is usually possible to search for characters by sound, using Kana and Hangul. Most dictionaries also allow searches by total number of strokes, and individual dictionaries often allow other search methods as well. For instance, to look up the character 松 (pine tree) in a typical dictionary, the user first determines which part of the character is the radical, then counts the number of strokes in the radical (in this case four), and turns to the radical index (usually located on the inside front or back cover of the dictionary). Under the number 4, the user locates the radical 木, then turns to the page number listed, which is the start of the listing of all the characters containing this radical. This page will have a sub-index giving stroke numbers and page numbers. The right half of the character also contains four strokes, so the user locates the number 4, and turns to the page number given. From there, the user must scan the entries to locate the character he or she is seeking. Some dictionaries have a sub-index which lists every character containing each radical, so that if the user knows the number of strokes in the non-radical portion of the character, he or she can locate the correct page number directly. Another popular dictionary system is the four corner method, where characters are classified according to the "shape" of each of the four corners. Most Chinese-English dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries sold to English speakers use the radical lookup method combined with an alphabetical listing of characters based on their pinyin romanization system. To use one of these dictionaries, the reader finds the radical and stroke number of the character, as before, and locates the character in the radical index. The character's entry will have the character's pronunciation in pinyin written down; the reader then turns to the main dictionary section and looks up the pinyin spelling alphabetically, just as if it were an English dictionary.

Derivatives of Han characters

Besides Korean and Japanese, a number of Asian languages have historically been written with Han characters, or with characters modified from Han characters. They include:
- Khitan language (:ja:契丹文字)
- Miao language
- Nakhi language (Geba script)
- Tangut language (:fr:Tangoute, :zh:西夏文, [http://www.cflac.org.cn/chinaartnews/2003-10/08/content_1024511.htm], [http://www.huaxia.com/ssjn/smxx/00197002.html])
- Vietnamese language (Chữ nôm)
- Zhuang language The Jurchen language (:ja:女真文字) used a ideographic script consisted of original characters with a few Han borrowings. In addition, the Yi script is similar to Han, but is not known to be directly related to it.

Number of Chinese characters

The question of how many characters there are is still the subject of debate. In the 18th century, European scholars claimed the total tally to be about 80,000. This number, however, is thought to be exaggerated as the character count varies by dictionary and its comprehensiveness. For example, the Kangxi Dictionary lists about 40,000 characters, while the modern Zhonghua Zihai lists in excess of 80,000. One reason for the overwhelming number of characters is due to the existence of rarely-occurring variant and obscure characters (many of which are unused, even in Classical Chinese). Note, however, that no two characters are ever contextually identical. The large number of Chinese characters is due to their logographic nature — for every morpheme there must be a symbol, and sometimes there are variant characters have developed for the same morpheme. It has also been claimed that the sheer number of characters is used as a way to separate scholars from the ordinary, and perhaps even to keep certain texts from being read by all but the most scholarly.

Chinese

It is usually said that about 3,000 characters are needed for basic literacy in Chinese (for example, to read a Chinese newspaper), and a well-educated person will know well in excess of 4,000 to 5,000 characters. Note that it is not necessary to know a character for every known word of Chinese, as the majority of modern Chinese words are compounds made of two or more morphemes, and are thus written not with a single unique character, but with multiple, usually common, characters. There are 6763 code points in GB2312, an early version of the national standard used in the People's Republic of China. GB18030 has a much higher number. The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi proficiency test covers approximately 5000 hanzi. There are 4808 characters in Taiwanese Ministry of Education's list of regularly used Chinese characters. (常用國字標準字體表) The Chinese Standard Interchange Code (CNS11643) - the official national standard - supports 48027 characters, while the most widely-used encoding scheme, BIG-5, supports only 13053. In addition, there are a large number of dialect characters which are not used in formal Chinese written language, but are used to represent colloquial terms in non-Mandarin Chinese spoken forms..

Japanese

In Japanese there are 1945 "daily use kanji" (常用漢字 jōyō kanji) designated by the Japanese Ministry of Education. These are taught during primary and secondary school. Publications which include characters which fall outside this list should print furigana or rubi alongside the characters as a phonetic guide, however such guidance is often omitted for those characters that many are familiar with. Upon formalization of the daily-use kanji, government offices and newspapers were encouraged to abandon all other characters. This created an immediate problem with placenames and personal names which are not on the list and yet had been used in localities and families for hundreds of years. As a result, map production and birth registration processes were impeded. To resolve this issue, the government drew up a list of approximately one thousand additional characters, referred to as "name kanji" (jinmeiyō kanji 人名用漢字) used in personal and geographical names. For further information, see the Names section of the main Kanji article. This brought the total number of government-supported characters to 2928. There is some speculation that many of the "odd" kanji on the names list were promoted in an attempt to make a de-facto expansion of the Jouyou Kanji List, rather than with the serious idea that anyone will use them in names. The idea of reducing the number of kanji in use has been a politically contentious issue, with many conservatives believing that kanji are culturally Japanese and that people should use them frequently. Today, a well-educated Japanese person may know upwards of 3500 kanji. The Kanji kentei (日本漢字能力検定試験 Nihon kanji nōryoku kentei shiken or Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude) tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the Kanji kentei tests the ability to read and write 6000 kanji, though in practice few people attain this level as Japanese language generally uses fewer Chinese characters than Chinese does, and literacy in Japanese requires knowledge of fewer Chinese characters than literacy in Chinese.

Korean

In Korea, Chinese characters (Hanja - 한자) have become a politically contentious issue, with some Koreans urging a "purification" of the national language and culture by total abandonment of their use. These individuals encourage the exclusive use of the native alphabet (Hangul) throughout Korean society and the end to character education in public schools. In South Korea, educational policy on characters has swung back and forth, often swayed by the then-current minister's personal opinion. At times, middle and high school students have been formally exposed to 1,800 to 2,000 basic characters, however this education is focused principally on recognition, with the evident purpose of making the society newspaper-literate. Thus, compared to a Japanese high school graduate, at best a young adult Korean may be unable to write more than several hundred of the simplest and most common characters. On the other hand, Korean adults who were teenagers under anti-character education ministers, may be approaching the status of functional illiteracy in terms of character production and recognition. There is a clear evolution toward the exclusive use of Hangul in day-to-day South Korean society. Hanja are still used to some extent, particularly in newspapers, weddings, place names and calligraphy. Hanja is also extensively used in situations where ambiguity must be avoided, such as high-level corporate reports government documents, and newspapers. The issue of ambiguity is the main hurdle in any effort to "cleanse" the Korean language of Chinese characters. Characters convey meaning visually, while alphabets convey guidance to pronunciation, which in turn gives guidance to meaning. As an example, in Korean dictionaries, the alphabetical text for the sound "gisa" yields more than 30 different entries. In the past, this ambiguity has been efficiently resolved by parenthetically displaying the associated characters. In North Korea, the government, wielding much tighter control than its sister government to the south, has banned Chinese characters from virtually all public displays and media, and forced the use of Hangul in their place.

Vietnamese

Although now nearly extinct in Vietnamese, varying scripts of Chinese characters were used to write the language, with use of Chinese characters becoming limited to ceremonial uses beginning in the 19th century. Similarly to Japan and Korea, Chinese was used by the ruling classes, and the characters were eventually adopted to write Vietnamese. To express native Vietnamese words which had different pronunciations than the Chinese, Vietnamese developed the Chu Nom script which added diacritical marks to distinguish native (Vietnamese) words from Chinese.

Rare and complex characters

Chu Nom Chu Nom Chu Nom Often a character which is not commonly used (called "rare" or "variant" characters) will appear in a personal or place name in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean names (see Chinese name, Japanese name, and Korean name respectively). This has caused problems as many computer encoding systems include only the 5,000 or so most common characters and exclude the less often used characters. This is especially a problem for personal names which often contain rare or classical characters. People who have run into this problem include Taiwanese politicians Wang Chien-shien (王建煊) and Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) and Taiwanese singer David Tao (陶喆). Newspapers have dealt with this problem in varying ways, including trying to create a character from two characters, including a picture, or, especially as is the case with Yu Shyi-kun, simply omitting the rare character with the hope that the reader will be able to infer who it refers to. Japanese newspapers may render such names and words in katakana instead of kanji, and it is common practice for people to write names for which they are unsure of the correct kanji in katakana instead. There are also some extremely complex characters which have understandably become rather rare. According to Bellassen (1989), the most complex Chinese character is zhé (if the character is not rendered on your browser, refer to the image to the right instead), meaning "verbose" and boasting sixty-four strokes; although it fell from use around the fifth century AD. It might be argued, however, that while boasting the most strokes, it is not necessarily the most complex (in terms of difficulty) character, as it simply requires writing the same sixteen-stroke character four times (albeit in the space alloted for one). An 84-stroke kokuji (Japanese-created kanji) also exists [http://www.mojikyo.gr.jp/gif96/066/066147.gif] - composed of 3 clouds (雲) on top of 龘 (3 dragons; the appearance of a dragon walking), it has the kun-yomi odoto, taito and daito. The most complex character found in contemporary Chinese dictionaries is 齉 nàng , meaning "unclear pronouncing due to snuffle", with "just" thirty-six strokes. The most complex character still in use may be 'biáng', with 57 strokes, which refers to Biang Biang Noodles, a type of noodle from China's Shaanxi province. This character cannot be found in modern Chinese dictionaries. In contrast, the simplest character is 一 yī, "one", with just one stroke. The most common character is 的 de, a grammatical particle usually translatable as "of", with eight strokes. According to Bellassen (1989), the average number of strokes in a character is 9.8 (though it is unclear whether this average is weighted or includes traditional characters).

References

- Bellassen, Joël & Zhang Pengpeng (1989). Méthode d'Initiation à la Langue et à l'Écriture chinoises. La Compagnie. ISBN 2-9504135-1-X.

External links

- [http://www.landlubber.com/dec01/outcry.html A Typographic Outcry]: a curious perspective
- [http://www.zhongwen.com Chinese characters and culture]
- [http://www.chinaorbit.com/Chinese_Characters.871.0.html Articles about Chinese Characters]
- [http://www.mandarintools.com/chardict.html Chinese Character Dictionary]: Look up simplified and traditional characters by English definition, pinyin, Cantonese, and radical/stroke.
- [http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/_chinese Generator for Chinese typographical filler text]
- [http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm If English was written like Chinese]
- [http://www.chinese-school.netfirms.com/Chinese-symbols-customized.html Chinese Symbols] Introduction to Chinese Symbols
- [http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/visible/index.html Chinese]: a selection about Chinese characters from Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems, by John DeFrancis Category:Logographic writing systems Category:Writing Category:Chinese language ja:漢字 ko:한자

People's Republic of China

The People's Republic of China (PRC; Simplified Chinese: 中华人民共和国, Traditional Chinese: 中華人民共和國; Pinyin: Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó ), commonly referred to as China, is an East Asian country. The exact meaning of PRC and China varies. In an ongoing dispute, the PRC claims sovereignty over Taiwan and some neighboring islands, whose control was never relinquished by the Republic of China. The PRC asserts the Republic of China to be an illegitimate and supplanted entity and administratively categorizes Taiwan as the 23rd province of the PRC. (See China and Political status of Taiwan for more information.) The term "mainland China" is sometimes used to denote the area under the PRC's rule, usually excluding the two Special Administrative Regions, Hong Kong and Macau. The PRC refers to the period of its rule as New China (新中国) whenever it contrasts itself with China before 1949. In some contexts, particularly in economics, trade and sports events, China and People's Republic of China is often used to refer to the PRC with Hong Kong and Macau excluded.

Geography and climate

The PRC is the largest country in area in East Asia, the [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2147rank.html fourth largest] in the world and the second largest by land area. It borders 14 nations (counted clockwise): Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia and North Korea.North Korea The PRC contains a large variety of landscape. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, are found extensive and densely populated alluvial plains; the shore of the South China Sea is more mountainous and southern China is dominated by hill country and lower mountain ranges. In the central-east are found the deltas of China's two major rivers, the Huang He and Yangtze River (Chang Jiang). Other major rivers include the Xijiang River, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Amur. To the west, major mountain ranges, notably the Himalaya with China's highest point Mount Everest, and high plateaus feature among the more arid landscape of deserts such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. Due to a prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices dust storms have become usual in the spring in China. According to China's Environmental Protection Agency, the Gobi Desert has been expanding "like a tsunami" and is a major source of dust storms which affect Mainland China and other parts of northeast Asia such as Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Dust from the northern plains has been tracked to the West Coast of the United States. River management (human waste dumping, factory pollution, and water extraction for irrigation and drinking) and dust erosion are problems affecting other countries that have become recent important concerns for relations between China and its neighboring countries.

History

After World War II, the Chinese Civil War between the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang ended in 1949 with the Communists in control of mainland China and the Kuomintang in control of Taiwan and some outlying islands of Fujian. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong emphatically declared the People's Republic of China, establishing a communist state, and proclaiming "the Chinese people have stood up."communist state Supporters of the Maoist Era claim that under Mao, China's unity and sovereignty was assured for the first time in a century, and there was development of infrastructure, industry, healthcare, and education, which raised standard of living for the average Chinese. They also believe that campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were essential in jumpstarting China's development and purifying its culture. Supporters may also doubt statistics or accounts given for death tolls or other damages incurred by Mao's campaigns. Critics of Mao's regime assert that Mao's administration imposed strict controls over everyday life, and believe that campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution contributed to or caused millions of deaths, incurred severe economic costs, and damaged China's cultural heritage. The Great Leap Forward in particular preceded a massive famine in China which, according to numbers guessed by credible Western and Eastern [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm sources], 20–30 million people died; most Western and many Chinese analysts attribute this to the Great Leap Forward, while others, including Mao at the time, attribute this to natural disasters; still others doubt this figure entirely, or claim that many more people died due to famine or other consequences of political chaos during the rule of Chiang Kai-Shek. Following the dramatic economic failures of the early 1960s, Mao stepped down from his position as chairman of the People's Republic. The National People's Congress elected Liu Shaoqi as Mao's successor. Mao remained head of the Party but was removed from day to day management of economic affairs which came under the control of a more moderate leadership under the dominant influence of Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and others who initiated economic reforms. In 1966, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, which is viewed by his opponents (including both Western analysts and many Chinese people who were youth at the time) as a strike back at his rivals by mobilizing the youth of the country in support of his thought and purging the moderate leadership, but is viewed by his supporters as an experiment in direct democracy and a genuine attempt at purging Chinese society of corruption and other negative influences. Disorder followed but gradually under the leadership of Zhou Enlai moderate forces regained influence. After Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping, seen as the leader of the economic reformists, succeeded in winning the power struggle, and Mao's widow, Jiang Qing and her associates, the Gang of Four, who had assumed control of the country, were arrested and put on trial. Since then, the government has gradually and greatly loosened governmental control over people's personal lives, and began transitioning China's planned economy into a mixed economy. Supporters of the economic reforms point to the rapid development of the consumer and export sectors of the economy, the creation of an urban middle class that now constitutes 15% of the population, higher living standards (which is shown via dramatic increases in GDP per capita, consumer spending, life expectancy, literacy rate, and total grain output) and a much wider range of personal rights and freedoms for average Chinese as evidence of the success of the reforms. Critics of the economic reforms claim that the reforms have caused wealth disparity, environmental pollution, rampant corruption, widespread unemployment associated with layoffs at inefficient state-owned enterprises, and has introduced often unwelcome cultural influences. Consequently they believe that China's culture has been corrupted, the poor have been reduced to a hopeless abject underclass, and that the social stability is threatened. They are also of the opinion that various political reforms, such as moves towards popular elections, have been unfairly nipped in the bud. Regardless of either view, today, the public perception of Mao has improved dramatically, and images of Mao and Mao related objects have become fashionable.state-owned enterprise Despite these concessions to capitalism, the Communist Party of China remains in control and has maintained repressive policies against groups which it feels are threats, such as Falun Gong and the separatist movement in Tibet. Supporters of these policies claim that these policies safeguard stability in a society that is torn apart by class differences and rivalries, has no tradition of civil participation, and limited rule of law. Opponents of these policies claim that these policies severely violate norms of human rights that the international community recognizes, and further claim that this results in a police state, which creates an atmosphere of fear and ignorance. In 1989, the death of pro-reform official Hu Yaobang led to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, during which students and others held protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and elsewhere to campaign for democratic reform and freedom. The protests ended on June 3 - June 4 when PLA troops entered the square, killing hundreds. The event brought worldwide condemnation and sanctions against the PRC government. The PRC government itself has since remained relatively silent on the issue, though it has also defended it by saying that it was necessary for the continued stability of the country. The People's Republic of China adopted its current constitution on December 4, 1982.

Politics

1982 (NPC), highest legistlative body, of China convenes.]] In the technical terminology of political science the PRC was a communist state for much of the 20th century, and is still considered a communist state by many, though not all political scientists. Attempts to characterize the nature of the China's political structure into a single, simple category are typically seen as lacking sufficient depth to be satisfactory. A major reason for this is China's political history: for over two thousand years, prior to 1949, the state had been ruled by some form of centralized imperial monarchy with strong Confucian influences, which have left significant traces on subsequent political and social structures. This was followed by a chaotic succession of largely authoritarian Chinese Nationlist governments as well as warlord-held administration since the first Chinese Revolution of 1912. The PRC regime has variously been described as authoritarian, communist, socialist and various combinations of those terms. It has also been described as a communist government. This may be called state capitalist by more left-leaning communists. It appears China is slowly becoming capitalist in its economic system. China recently released an official statement on its political structure, upholding the notion that the state should be ruled by democratic means. The government of the PRC is controlled by the Communist Party of China. There are some other parties in PRC, though they are often closely associated or subparties within the CPC. The effect of the other parties on the government remains minimal. While there have been some moves toward political liberalization, in that contested elections are now held at the village level and legislatures have shown some assertiveness from time to time, the party retains effective control over governmental appointments. While the state uses authoritarian methods to deal with challenges to its rule, it simultaneously attempts to reduce dissent by improving the economy, allowing expression of personal grievances, and giving lenient treatment to persons expressing dissent whom the regime does not believe are organizers. Censorship of political speech is routine. The Communist Party has a policy of suppressing any protests and organizations that it considers a threat to its power, as was the case after the Tianamen Square protests. However, there are limits to the repression that the Party is willing or able to achieve. The media have become increasingly active in publicizing social problems and exposing corruption and inefficiency at lower levels of government, although recently the PRC has tended to increase crackdowns on reporters. The Party has also been rather unsuccessful at controlling information, and in some cases has had to change policies in response to public outrage. Although organized opposition against the Party is not tolerated, demonstrations over local issues are frequent and increasingly tolerated. The support that the Communist Party of China has among the Chinese population is unclear, as there are no national elections, and private conversations and anecdotal information often reveals conflicting views. Many in China appear appreciative of the role that the government plays in maintaining social stability, which has allowed the economy to grow without interruption. Political concerns in China include the growing gap between rich and poor in the PRC, and the growing discontent with widespread corruption within the leadership and officials.

Ongoing debates

The PRC government argues that the notion of human rights should include economic standards of living and measures of health and economic prosperity. In other words, when critiquing its internal situation, it sees the rise in the standard of living of the Chinese people as an indicator of improvement of the human rights situation, and when looking at the situation abroad, often notes the high rate of crime and/or poverty in places reputedly having a high standard of human rights. However, Western governments and NGOs have argued that arbitrary and lengthy incommunicado detention, forced confessions, torture, and mistreatment of prisoners as well as severe restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion, privacy, and worker rights are violations of their definition of human rights. They argue the issues stem from the PRC government's intolerance of dissent and the inadequacy of legal safeguards for individual political rights. The issue is covered in article Human rights in the People's Republic of China The PRC describes itself as a multiethnic state providing ethnic autonomy in the form of autonomous administrative entities. PRC policy gives advantages to ethnic minorities in areas such as high school or college admission and government employment. It also officially condemns Han chauvinism. However, it currently faces independence movements in Tibet, and Xinjiang. Independence groups and many foreign observers are critical of the PRC's ethnic policies. They consider practices such as the organization and generous financial encouragement of Han Chinese movement into non-Han Chinese areas, to be chauvinistic and colonial, bent on demographically swamping non-Han Chinese areas and reducing the possibility that any independence movement could succeed. Within China, many people are also critical of the above policies. For example, Han Chinese in Xinjiang tend to be resentful and perceive of themselves as being treated as "second-class citizens" as a result of policies that favour minorities. Many people also consider these policies to have encouraged the formation of separatist movements and to have threatened the territorial integrity of China.

Political divisions

The People's Republic of China has administrative control over 22 provinces (省); the government of the People's Republic of China considers Táiwān (台湾), which is actually controlled by the Republic of China, to be its 23rd province. (See Political status of Taiwan for more information.) Apart from provinces there are 5 autonomous regions (自治区) containing concentrations of several minorities; 4 municipalities (直辖市) for China's largest cities and 2 Special Administrative Regions (SAR) (特别行政区) governed by the PRC. The 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions and 4 municipalities can be collectively referred to as "mainland China", a term which usually excludes Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. mainland China The following are a list of administrative divisions of areas under the control of the People's Republic of China. Provinces（省）
- Ānhuī (安徽)
- Fújiàn (福建)
- Gānsù (甘肃)
- Guǎngdōng (广东)
- Guìzhōu (贵州)
- Hǎinán (海南)
- Héběi (河北)
- Hēilóngjiāng (黑龙江)
- Hénán (河南)
- Húběi (湖北)
- Húnán (湖南)
- Jiāngsū (江苏)
- Jiāngxī (江西)
- Jílín (吉林)
- Liáoníng (辽宁)
- Qīnghǎi (青海)
- Shaanxi (Shǎnxī) (陕西)
- Shāndōng (山东)
- Shānxī (山西)
- Sìchuān (四川)
- Yúnnán (云南)
- Zhèjiāng (浙江) Autonomous regions（自治区）
- Guǎngxī (广西壮族自治区)
- Inner Mongolia (Nèi Měnggǔ) (内蒙古自治区)
- Níngxià (宁夏回族自治区)
- Xīnjiāng (新疆维吾尔自治区)
- Tibet (Xīzàng) (西藏自治区)
Municipalities（直辖市）
- Běijīng (北京市)
- Chóngqìng (重庆市)
- Shànghǎi (上海市)
- Tiānjīn (天津市)
Special Administrative Regions（特别行政区）
- Hong Kong (Xiānggǎng) (香港特别行政区)
- Macau (Àomén) (澳门特别行政区)
Claimed by the PRC, but governed by Republic of China
- Táiwān (台湾) (disputed)
Claimed by the Republic of China, but given up by PRC
- Outer Mongolia

Foreign relations

The People's Republic of China maintains diplomatic relations with most countries in the world, but makes acknowledging its claim to Taiwan and severing any official ties with the Republic of China (ROC) government a prerequisite for diplomatic exchanges. It actively opposes foreign travels by current and former political officials of Taiwan, such as Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian, and other persons it sees politically dangerous, such as Tenzin Gyatso (considering Tibet) and and Li Hongzhi (considering Falun Gong). Falun Gong]] In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative for "China" in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council; it is also considered a founding member although the PRC was not in control at the founding of the UN. (See China and the United Nations) It was for a time a member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, but now is an observer. Much of the current foreign policy is based on the concept of China's peaceful rise. Sino-Japanese relations have been strained several times in the past few decades by Japan's refusal to acknowledge its past war crimes and violations to Chinese satisfaction, most notable among which is the Nanjing Massacre. Recent incidents with the United States include the United States bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo conflict in May 1999, alleged in nuclear secrets espionage reported in Cox report, US spy plane on mission colliding with Chinese jet flighter near Hainan Island in April 2001. Some NGOs and Western governments have criticized China for alleged human rights abuses and its foreign relations with many Western Nations suffered following the Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989. In addition to Taiwan, China is involved in several other territorial disputes. The PRC makes all of these claims on irredentist grounds, while the opposing claimants tend towards viewing irredentism as a baseless ideology or view the PRC as being motivated by resources, military considerations, or nationalism considerations:
- With India:
- Aksai Chin, administered by China, claimed by India
- Arunachal Pradesh / South Tibet, administered by India, claimed by China
- Over islands on the East China Sea or South China Sea:
- Paracel Islands, administered by China, claimed by Vietnam and the ROC
- Spratly Islands: the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and Vietnam each claim sovereignty over the entire group, while Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei claim parts of the group.
- Senkaku Islands / Diaoyu Islands, administered by Japan, claimed by the PRC and the ROC In 2004, Russia agreed to transfer Yinlong Island as well as one half of Heixiazi Island to China, ending a long-standing border dispute between Russia and China. Both islands are found at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, and were until then administered by Russia and claimed by China. The event was meant to foster feelings of reconciliation and cooperation between the two countries by their leaders, but it has also sparked different degrees of discontents on both sides. The transfer has been ratified by both the Chinese National People's Congress and the Russian State Duma but has yet to be carried out to date. Outside official opinion, it is popular for nationalists to make irredentist claims to Mongolia, Tuva and Outer Manchuria, as well as (less commonly) the Ryukyu Islands, Bhutan, the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar, and Central Asia southeast of Lake Balkhash.

Military

Lake Balkhash The PRC maintains military forces consisting of army, navy, air force, and strategic nuclear forces. Its 2.25 million strong force makes it the largest army, in terms of sheer number of troops, in the world. The People's Liberation Army's official budget for 2005 is $30 billion, possibly excluding foreign weapons purchases, military-related R&D. the paramilitary PAP and possible hidden budget. However, even the highest estimates set the military spending considerably less in relative than e.g. the United States. The PRC, despite possession of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, is widely seen both within and outside of China as having only limited ability to project military power beyond its borders and is not generally considered to be a true superpower, although it is widely seen as a major regional power. This is due to the limited effectiveness of its navy, such as lacking aircraft carriers, and air-force, which is large but generally considered obsolete by western standards. The PRC has embarked on a massive modernization program for its military. The PRC has been actively purchasing state-of-the-art fighters such as Su-27, Su-30 and has also been producing its own relatively modern fighters. A comprehensive effort has been undertaken to modernise the air-defense after observing the effects of air-superiority in Iraq. The air-defence revolves around the ultra-modern S-300 Surface-to-Air missile, which is objectively considered the best aircraft-intercepting system in the world. The PRC is also rapidly upgrading its armoured and rapid-reaction forces by enhancing their electronics and targeting capabilities. In recent years, much attention has been focused on building a navy with blue-water capability.

Largest cities

Su-30]] Su-30] Su-30] The PRC has dozens of major cities, including 3 of the 55 global cities.

Economy

global cities Beginning in late 1978 the Chinese leadership has been reforming the economy from a Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented economy but still within a rigid political framework of Communist Party control. To this end the authorities have switched to a system of household responsibility in agriculture in place of the old collectivization, increased the authority of local officials and plant managers in industry, permitted a wide variety of small-scale enterprise in services and light manufacturing, and opened the economy to increased foreign trade and investment. Prices controls were also relaxed. This has resulted in mainland China's shift from a command economy to a mixed economy with both communist and capitalist tendencies. The government has tended to not emphasize equality as when it first began and instead emphasized raising personal income and consumption and introducing new management systems to help increase productivity. The government also has focused on foreign trade as a major vehicle for economic growth, for which purpose it set up over 2000 Special Economic Zones (SEZ) where investment laws are relaxed in order to attract foreign capital. The result has been a quadrupling of GDP since 1978. In 1999, with its 1.25 billion people and a GDP of just $3,800 per capita, the PRC became the sixth largest economy in the world by exchange rate and third largest in the world after the European Union and the U.S. by purchasing power. The average annual income of a Chinese worker is $1,300. Chinese economic development is believed to be among the fastest in the world, about 7-8% per year according to Chinese government statistics. China is now a member of the World Trade Organization. Mainland China has a reputation as being a low-cost manufacturer, particularly due to its abundant flexible non-unionised inexpensive labor. An unskilled worker at a Chinese factory in the rural area costs a company under $1/hour, however, the prices of goods and services in China are lower than in more developed countries. Furthermore, the Chinese worker preference not to join a trade union. This is a substantive benefit to employers as it adds a level of flexibility to labor relations not enjoyed in most other parts of the world. A possible reason for this could be work ethics, or it is also conceivable it is driven by a fear that unions will be abused by the Communist Party of China to identify dissidents. (See list of Chinese dissidents.) Another aspect of the Chinese economy that is often overlooked is the low cost of non labor inputs. This is due in part to an overly competitive environment with many producers and a general tendency towards an oversupply and low prices. There is also the continued existence of price controls and supply guarantees left over from the former Soviet style command economy. As State owned enterprises continue to be dismantled and workers shift to higher productivity sectors, this deflationary effect will continue to put pressure on prices in the economy. Preferential tax incentives are also given as a direct fiscal incentive to manufacture in China, whether for export or for the local market of 1.3 billion. China is attempting to harmonize the system of taxes and duties it imposes on enterprises, domestic and foreign alike. As a result, preferential tax and duty policies that benefit exporters in special economic zones and coastal cities have been targeted for revision. China's high growth in the global markets has caused notable disputes, especially the trade inbalance with the United States. The discrepancy is largely attributable to the fact that Chinese corporations can produce many products desired in the US far more cheaply than American factories can, and expensive products produced in America are in large part too expensive for Chinese consumers. Another factor cited by some people was the unfavorable exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the United States dollar to which it used to be pegged. On July 21, 2005 the People's Bank of China announced that it would move to a floating peg, allowing its currency to move by 0.3% a day. With the elimination of clothing quotas, China stands to take over a large chunk of the worldwide textile industry. [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/26/business/worldbusiness/26CHIN.html?th], [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/business/02CHIN.html?th] In 2003, China's GDP in terms of purchasing power parity reached $6.4 trillion, becoming the [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html second-largest in the world]. Using conventional measurements it is ranked 6th. With its large population this still gives an average GNP per person of only an estimated $5,000, about 1/7th that of the United States. The officially reported growth rate for 2003 was 9.1%. Due to its size and ancient culture, China has a tradition of being a leading economy in the world. Trying to regain some of that glory is certainly a strong motivation for many Chinese." The economic regions of Mainland China covered under the strategies promulgated by the central government. The disparity in wealth between the coastal strip and the remainder of the country remains wide. To counter this potentially destabilizing problem, the government has initiated the China Western Development strategy (2000), the Revitalize Northeast China initiative (2003), and the Rise of Central China policy (2004), which are all aimed at helping the interior of China to catch up.

Transportation

Transportation in the mainland of the People's Republic of China has improved remarkably starting in the late 1990s as part of a government effort to link the entire nation through a series of expressways known as the National Trunk Highway System. Private car ownership is increasing but remains uncommon, in large part due to government policies designed to make car ownership expensive through the use of taxes and toll roads. Air travel has increased considerably, although remains out of reach for most ordinary mainland Chinese. Long distance transportation for most mainland Chinese is still dominated by the railways and bus systems. Cities are increasingly building underground or light rail systems, such as in Shanghai. Hong Kong has one of the most modern transport systems in the world.

Society

Demographics

Ethnicity and race

Officially the PRC views itself as a multi-ethnic nation with 56 recognized ethnicities. The majority Han Chinese ethnicity makes up about 93% of the population and is the majority over about half of the area of the PRC. The Han Chinese itself is relatively racially heterogeneous, and can also be conceived as a large category bringing together many diverse ethnic subgroups sharing common cultural and linguistic characteristics.

Language

The majority Han Chinese speak varieties of spoken Chinese, which can be regarded as either one language or a family of languages. The largest subdivision of spoken Chinese is Mandarin Chinese, with more speakers than any other language on Earth. A standardized version of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, known as Putonghua, is taught in schools and used as the official language of the entire country.

Issues

The People's Republic of China, in an attempt to limit its population growth, has adopted a policy which limits urban families (ethnic minorities such as Tibetans are an exception) to one child and rural families to two children when the first is female. Because males are considered to be more economically valuable in rural areas, there appears to be a high incidence of sex selective abortion and child abandonment in rural areas to ensure that the second child is male. (See National Geographic's China's Lost Children). This policy only applies to the Han majority. There are numerous orphanages for the children that are abandoned, but approximately 98% of these children are not adopted, and stay in the orphanage until they are an adult. China has instituted a regulated program to permit international adoption, although this only affects a small percentage of the children. By 2000 this has resulted in a sex ratio at birth of 117 boys being born for every 100 girls which is substantially higher than the natural rate (106 to 100) (but comparable to the ratios in places such as the Caucasus, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea). Although some of this problematic ratio is attributable to sexism, recently, it has been found that it correlates with hepatitis as well. The PRC government is attempting to mitigate this problem by emphasizing the worth of women and has gone so far as to criminalize medical providers from disclosing to parents the sex of an expected baby. The result of the sex ratio bias is that there are now 30–40 million Chinese males who cannot marry Chinese women. Apart from emigration, this may cause an increase in prostitution. In some cases, this has led to kidnappings, where women are abducted from their families, and forcibly sold as wives in distant villages.

Health

The PRC has several emerging public health problems: health problems related to air and water pollution, a progressing HIV-AIDS epidemic and hundreds of millions of cigarette smokers. The HIV epidemic, in addition to the usual routes of infection, was exacerbated in the past by unsanitary practices used in the collection of blood in rural areas. The problem with tobacco is complicated by the concentration of most cigarette sales in a government controlled monopoly. The government, dependent on tobacco revenue, seems hesitant in its response to the tobacco compared with other public health problems. Hepatitis B is endemic in mainland China, with a large percentage of the population contracting the disease; about 10% of these are seriously affected. A program initiated in 2002 will attempt over the next 5 years to vaccinate all newborns in mainland China. In November 2002, the pneumonia-like SARS surfaced in Guangdong province. The epidemic spread into neighboring Hong Kong, Vietnam, and other countries via international travelers. The strains of avian flu outbreaks in recent years among local poultry and birds, along with a number of its citizens. While the virus is currently mainly animal-human transmissible, experts expect an avian flu pandemic that would affect the region, should the virus morph to be human-human transmissible. The recent pig-to-human transmission of Streptococcus suis bacteria, which has led to an unsually high number of deaths in and around Sichuan province.

Education

To provide for its population in mainland China, the PRC has a vast and varied school system. There are preschools, kindergartens, schools for the deaf and blind, key schools (similar to college preparatory schools), primary schools, secondary schools (comprising junior and senior middle schools, secondary agricultural and vocational schools, regular secondary schools, secondary teachers' schools, secondary technical schools, and secondary professional schools), and various institutions of higher learning (consisting of regular colleges and universities, professional colleges, and short-term vocational universities).

Culture

Streptococcus suis, in Peking opera]] Peking opera China's traditional values were derived from the orthodox version of Confucianism/conservatism, which was taught in schools and was even part of imperial civil service examinations. However, the term Confucianism is somewhat problematic in that the system of thought which reached it high-water mark in Qing Dynasty imperial China was in fact composed of several strains of thought, including Legalism, which in many ways departed from the original spirit of Confucianism; indeed by the height of imperial China, the right of the individual ethical conscience and the right to criticise tyrannical governments and demand change had largely been prohibited by "orthodox" thinkers. Currently, there are neo-Confucians who believe that contrary to that line of thought, democratic ideals and human rights are quite compatible with traditional Confucian "Asian values". See [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccba/cear/issues/fall97/graphics/special/debary/debary.htm] The leaders who directed the efforts to change Chinese society after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 were raised in the old society and had been marked with its values. PRC leaders sought to change some traditional aspects, such as rural land tenure, sexism, and Confucian education, while preserving others, such as the family structure. Some observers believe that the Communist period following 1949 is very much in continuity with traditional Chinese history, rather than revolutionary. On the other hand, some observers believe that the Communist period following 1949 has fundamentally altered or damaged the foundations of Chinese culture. At various times in the history of the PRC, many aspects of traditional Chinese culture were labeled 'regressive and harmful' or 'vestiges of feudalism' by the regime or by prominent movements (e.g. by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution), such as Confucianism, traditional art, literature, and performing arts; for example, Beijing opera was "reformed" to conform to communist propaganda. The brutality of the Cultural Revolution itself has also been described as destructive to China's traditional moral values. The institution of the Simplified Chinese orthography reform is controversial as well, with some considering it harmless, and others viewing it as an assault on Chinese culture. However, China has since moved away from attempting to reform all of its traditional art forms. As time has progressed, the PRC government has accepted much of traditional Chinese culture as an integral part of Chinese society; current Chinese national policy often lauds these as important achievements of the Chinese civilization and emphasizes them as being integral to the formation of Chinese national identity. The PRC has also promoted feelings of nationalism in recent years, regarded by some observers as an effort to provide legitimacy for its rule.

Science & Technology

Simplified Chinese] After the Sino-Soviet split, China started to develop its own indigenous nuclear deterrent and delivery systems. A natural outgrowth of this was a satellite launching program. This culminated in 1970 with the launching of Dong Fang Hong I, the first Chinese satellite. This made the PRC the fifth nation to independently launch a satellite. In 1992 the current "Project 921" manned spaceflight program was authorised. On 19 November 1999, the unmanned Shenzhou 1 was launched, the first test flight of the program. After three more tests, Shenzhou 5 was launched on October 15, 2003, using a Long March 2F rocket and carrying Yang Liwei, making the PRC the third country to put a human being into space through its own endeavors. The second mission, Shenzhou 6 launched 12 October 2005. Some see China's space program as a respond to the United States Air Force's efforts to militarize space. China is actively developing in fields such as biotechnology, biomedicine, information technology, urban infrastructure and electronics.

Miscellaneous topics

- China article on China's civilizations
- Chinese law and law of the People's Republic of China
- Communications in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau
- Education in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau
- National College Entrance Examination
- Environment of China
- Ethnic groups of China
- Police in the People's Republic of China
- Railways in China
- Science and technology in China
- Transportation in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau
- Military history of China
- China and weapons of mass destruction
- List of Chinese battles

References

- [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html CIA World Factbook 2002/2004]
- [http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/18902.htm Background Note: China U.S. Department of State website]

External links

Government

- [http://www.china.org.cn/english/index.htm China.org.cn] China's Official Gateway
- [http://www.gov.cn www.gov.cn] China's Government Portal

News

- [http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/home/index.html China Daily]
- [http://www.chinaonline.com/ China Online]
- [http://english.eastday.com/ Eastday] Shanghai-based
- [http://www.HavenWorks.com/world/china HavenWorks - China News] news headline links
- [http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ People's Daily Online]
- [http://www.scmp.com/ South China Morning Post] Hong Kong-based
- [http://202.84.17.11/en/index.htm Xinhua] government news agency
- [http://news.yahoo.com/fc/World/China Yahoo! News- Full Coverage: China] news headline links

Overviews

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1287798.stm BBC News - Country Profile: China]
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/asia_pacific/2004/china/default.stm BBC News - In Depth: Changing China] ongoing coverage
- [http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/eyeonchina/ CNN.com Specials - Eye on China] ongoing coverage
- [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html CIA World Factbook - China]
- [http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/0,7368,467721,00.html Guardian Unlimited - Special Report: China] ongoing coverage
- [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cntoc.html Library of Congress - Country Study: China] data as of July 1987
- [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/red/ PBS Frontline - China in the Red] documentary covering 1998-2001
- [http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/chn-summary-eng Amnesty International Report 2004]

Directories

- [http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/China/ Open Directory Project - China] directory category
- [http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/China/ Yahoo! - China] directory category
- [http://www.findouter.com/China/ China Findouter] directory category

Tourism

-
- [http://www.mondophoto.net/asia/china/china.html Mondophoto.net] - 4200 Public Domain photos of China
- [http://www.ianandwendy.com/OtherTrips/ChinaVietnamCambodia/China/?nosplash=true China Pictures] - Photos from a backpacker's trip through China

Other

- [http://www.seoultrain.com "Seoul Train" documentary] A critically acclaimed PBS documentary on North Korean refugees (Incite Productions)
- [http://chinadigitaltimes.net/ China Digital Times]
- [http://china.notspecial.org/ The Opposite End of China (Xinjiang, China Blog)]
- [http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/147/ Censorship in China]
- [http://www.globalpolitician.com/articles.asp?ID=225 Chinese Threat to American Leadership in Space]
- [http://www.arachina.com/ China International Travel Service OF Guilin - JP ]
- [http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/ China History Forum]
- [http://www.chinaorbit.com ChinaOrbit.com] general information
- [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/12/international/asia/12CHIN.html?tntemail1 Chinese politics]: New York Times June 12, 2003 (login is required)
- [http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/1921/ Go Taikonauts!] Chinese citizen's page devoted to China's space program
- [http://www.cinaoggi.com/china-map/ Interactive Map of China]
- [http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/shenzhou_china_archive.html Space.com] articles on China's space activities
- [http://www.globalpolitician.com/articles.asp?ID=341 The Dragon's Dawn: China as a Rising Imperial Power] February 11, 2005
- [http://www.freedo

Mainland China

and Taiwan too small to appear on this map.]] Mainland China (, lit. "The Chinese Massive Landmass" or "Continental China") is an informal geographical term which is usually synonymous with the area currently administered by the People's Republic of China (PRC); however, it usually excludes the two Special Administrative Regions administered by the People's Republic of China: Hong Kong and Macau, which are governed under "One Country, Two Systems" and have a high degree of autonomy. It always excludes the area administered by the Republic of China (ROC), namely Taiwan, Penghu, Quemoy, and Matsu islands. In contrast to the term China proper, the term usually also includes Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. Since "mainland China" describes a political and economic rather than geographic entity, it usually includes all offshore islands administered by the PRC, such as Hainan. "Mainland China" (Zhōngguó dàlù) is commonly used both in Mainland China and on Taiwan, because it is a neutral term and does not contain implications about the political status of Taiwan. More recently, the term Zhōngguó nèidì (內地 "the inner regions of China") has become the most common term within Mainland China to refer to Mainland China, although the term is infrequently used outside of Mainland China. In Taiwan, the term Mainlander can refer to wàishěng rén (外省人, literal meaning: "external province person(s)"), who are the people who emigrated to Taiwan from Mainland China near the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949; children of wàishěng rén, though born in Taiwan, can also be referred to as wàishěng rén. The term Mainlander can also refer to dàlù rén (大陸人, literal meaning: "Mainland person(s)"), meaning the people who live on the Mainland now and the very small number of people who have emigrated from the Mainland to Taiwan recently. Relations between Mainland China and Taiwan are typically known in Chinese as liǎng'àn guānxì (兩岸關係), which literally means "relations between the two sides/seashores (of the Strait of Taiwan)" and is known in English as "cross-straits relations". The term liǎng'àn (two shores) is often used when describing Mainland China and Taiwan collectively. Again these terms are commonly found because they are politically-neutral and do not contain implications about the nature of the relationship between Mainland China and Taiwan (see political status of Taiwan). When Hong Kong is involved, the term liǎng'àn sāndì (literally two shores, three places) is used. The term is used more often since the transfers of sovereignty, to the People's Republic of China, of Hong Kong in 1997 and Macao in 1999. Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau have different customs and immigration control, passports, currencies, stamps, judiciary systems and courts of last resort, public finance, extradition, etc.

Singapore

The Republic of Singapore (Simplified Chinese: 新加坡共和国; Pinyin: Xīnjiāpō Gònghéguó, Malay: Republik Singapura; Tamil: சிங்கப்பூர் குடியரசு), is an island city-state in Southeast Asia, situated on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of the Indonesian Riau Islands. Its coordinates are , just 137 km north of the Equator. The name Singapore was derived from Malay word singa (lion), which itself is derived from the Sanskrit word सिंह siMha of the same meaning, and the Sanskrit word पुर pura (city) . Singapore developed from a small Malay fishing village to become a multicultural, major global city, while attracting controversy for some of its current government policies. Throughout history, it has been posssessed by multiple countries and empires and changed hands many times, including being in the possesion of Melaka and the Sultanate of Johore in ancient history, the British Empire in the colonial era, Japanese Empire in World War II and Malaysia after merger. It finally achieved independence in 1965. After independence, government-led rapid industrialisation and open policies inviting foreign investments stimulated rapid economic growth and the country is now regarded as a developed nation. Presently, Singapore can be politically analysed as a democratic socialist country and has an extensive welfare system, although de facto it has a dominant-party system. The nation regards itself as multiracial, and the majority of the population are ethnic Chinese, with ethnic Indians, Malays and Eurasians being a significant minority. Singapore has little natural resources, so its economy must on exports of electronics and manufacturing from her port. More than 90% of Singapore's population lives in housing estates constructed by the Housing Development Board and nearly half utilises its public transport system daily. As a result of public transport and environmental initiatives by government ministries, Singapore's lack of pollution is a distinguishing characteristic from many other cities, and isolated to heavy industry located offshore in Jurong Island.

History

The first records of Singapore's existence are in Chinese texts from the 3rd century. The island was an outpost of the Sumatran Srivijaya empire and originally bore the Javanese name Temasek. Temasek rose to become a significant trading city, but subsequently declined. There are few remnants of old Temasek in Singapore other than archaeological evidence. In the 15th and 16th century, Singapore was a part of the Sultanate of Johore. During the Malay-Portugal wars in 1617, Singapore was set ablaze by Portuguese troops. 1617, erected at the spot where he first landed at Singapore. He is recognised as the modern founder of Singapore.]] In 1819, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, a British East India Company official, made a treaty with the Sultan of Johore and established Singapore as a trading post and settlement, and saw instant growth and immigration from various ethnic groups. Singapore was later made a crown colony by Britain in 1867. After a series of territorial expansions, the British Empire soon raised it as an entrepot town due to its strategic location along the busy shipping routes connecting Europe to China. During World War II, Japanese forces invaded Malaya and the surrounding region in the Battle of Malaya, culminating in the Battle of Singapore. The British were unprepared and swiftly defeated, despite having superior numbers of troops. They surrendered to the Japanese on February 15, 1942. The Japanese renamed Singapore as Syonan-to ("Light of the South") and occupied it until the Japanese defeat September 1945. In 1959, Singapore became a self-governing crown colony with Lee Kuan Yew from the People's Action Party (PAP) as the first Prime Minister of Singapore following the 1959 elections. After a national referendum in 1962, Singapore was admitted into the Federation of Malaysia along with Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak as a state with autonomous powers in September 1963. After heated ideological conflict developed between the state government formed by PAP and the Federal government in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore was expelled from the federation on August 7 1965. It gained official sovereignty two days later on August 9 1965 with Malaysia the first country to recognise it as an independent nation, the date becoming Singapore's National Day. Singapore's National Days are celebrated with annual parades and other festivities. National Day]] National Day] The fledgling nation had to struggle for self-sufficiency, and faced problems including mass unemployment, housing shortages and the lack of land and natural resources, like oil. During Lee Kuan Yew's term as prime minister from 1959 to 1990, his administration curbed unemployment, raised the standard of living, developed Singapore's economic infrastructure and overcame problems such as lack of housing, social stability and an independent national defence. This elevated Singapore into developing nation and subsequently to developed status. On 26 November 1990 Goh Chok Tong became prime minister. Under his tenure the country tackled the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the SARS outbreak in 2003 as well as terrorist threats posed by the Jemaah Islamiah (JI). Lee Hsien Loong, the eldest son of Lee Kuan Yew, became the third prime minister on 12 August 2004 after securing the confidence of a majority of Parliament, which is still dominated by the PAP.

Politics and government

: Singapore is a republic with a Westminster system of a unicameral parliamentary government, with the bulk of the executive powers resting in the hands of a cabinet of ministers led by a prime minister. The office of the president was, historically, a ceremonial one as head of state, but the Constitution was amended in 1991 to create the position of a popularly elected president and also to grant the president veto powers in a few key decisions such as the use of the national reserves and the appointment of key judiciary positions. The legislative branch of government is the Parliament. Politics of Singapore have been dominated by the People's Action Party (PAP) since its independence in 1965. Critics have called Singapore a de facto one party state and have accused the PAP of taking harsh actions against opposition parties to impede their success, including gerrymandering and the filing of civil suits against the opposition for libel or slander. The media arm of the Government applies a somewhat monopolistic grip on the local mainstream media, often subjecting it to stringent censorship, as a result, opposition political parties in Singapore hardly get any mention or coverage. Critics claim that Singaporean courts have been favouring the government and the PAP in these lawsuits, although there were a few cases in which the opposition won. They consider the form of government in Singapore to be closer to authoritarianism rather than true democracy, and could be considered an illiberal democracy or procedural democracy. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Singapore has what many consider to be a highly successful and transparent market economy. PAP's policies contain certain aspects of socialism, which includes large scale public housing programme, public education system and the dominance of government controlled companies in the local economy. Although present in almost all segments of Singaporean society, the government has a clean, corruption-free image, and has consistently been rated as the least-corrupt country in Asia and amongst the top ten cleanest in the world by Transparency International since its first annual survey conducted in 1995. Although Singapore's laws are inherited from British and British Indian laws, the PAP has also consistently rejected wholesale Western democratic values, with former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew citing incompatibilities with "Asian values". Singapore's position is that there should not be a "one-size-fits-all" solution to a democracy. Most recently, the PAP has relaxed some of its socially conservative policies and encouraged entrepreneurship. Singapore enjoys one of the lowest crime rates in the world, as its laws are generally strict, and which has often been cited by foreign companies as one of the reasons for investing in Singapore. As the tiny city-state is a multi-racial society, materials that may breed ill-will among its population or cause religious disharmony are not tolerated, even on the Internet. In September 2005, three bloggers were charged with sedition for posting racist remarks targeting minorities, after admitting their guilt, the punishments handed down ranged from serving community service and fines to the maximum imprisonment of a month. Some offences can lead to heavy fines or caning; laws provide for capital punishment in Singapore in cases of first-degree murder and drug trafficking. According to an Amnesty International report, 400 people were hanged between 1991 and 2004, which the report claimed is "possibly the highest execution rate in the world" per capita. However, the Singapore Government responded to AI's report in January 2004 on its Home Affairs website [http://www2.mha.gov.sg/mha/detailed.jsp?artid=990&type=4&root=0&parent=0&cat=0&mode=arc] and reiterated capital punishments as a sovereign right for the most serious crimes, a stance in common with democracies like Japan [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20050917a2.htm] and the United States.

Geography

United States. ([http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=1.352692,103.804321&spn=0.473579,0.633396&t=k&hl=en details])]] Singapore is a diamond-shaped island with surrounding smaller islands. There are two connections from Singapore to the Malaysian state of Johor — a man-made causeway (known as the Causeway) to the north, crossing the Tebrau Straits, and Tuas Second Link (called Linkedua Expressway in Malaysia), a bridge in the western part of Singapore that connects to Johor. Of Singapore's dozens of smaller islands, Jurong Island, Pulau Tekong, Pulau Ubin and Sentosa are the larger ones. The highest point of Singapore is Bukit Timah Hill, with a height of 164 m (538 feet). Bukit Timah Hill]] The urban area used to be concentrated on the southern part of Singapore around the mouth of the Singapore River, while the rest of the land was tropical rain forest or used for agriculture. Since the 1960s, the government has constructed new towns in outlying areas, resulting in an entirely built-up and urban landscape with a few exceptions, such as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. In addition, Singapore has reclaimed land with earth obtained from its own hills, the seabed and neighbouring countries. As a result, Singapore's land area grew from 581.5 km² in the 1960s to 697.2 km² today, and may grow by another 100 km² by 2030. Without natural freshwater rivers and lakes, the primary domestic source of water in Singapore is rainfall, collected in reservoirs or catchment areas. Rainfall supplies approximately 50% of Singapore's water; the remainder is imported from Malaysia. In addition to existing catchment areas, recycled water facilities (called NEWater) and desalination plants, more NEWater and desalination plants are being built or proposed to reduce reliance on foreign supply. Singapore has a tropical rainforest climate with no distinct seasons, under the Köppen climate classification. Its climate is characterised by uniform temperature and pressure, high humidity and abundant rainfall. Temperatures range from 23ºC to 35ºC. On average, the relative humidity is around 90 percent in the morning and 60 percent in the afternoon. During prolonged heavy rain, relative humidity often reaches 100 percent.

Economy

relative humidity and hub of economic transactions in Singapore, and is also the home of the Singapore Exchange, Asia-Pacific's first demutualised and integrated securities and derivatives exchange.]] Singapore has a highly developed market-based economy in which the state plays a major role. It has one of the highest per capita gross domestic products in the world and is considered one of the "East Asian Tigers". Domestic demand is relatively low, and the economy depends heavily on exports produced from refining imported goods in a form of extended entrepot trade. This is especially true in electronics and manufacturing. Singapore was hit hard in 2001 by the global recession and the slump in the technology sector, which caused the GDP that year to contract by 2.2 percent. The Economic Review Committee (ERC), set up in December 2001, made key recommendations in remaking Singapore's economy. Singapore introduced the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on April 1, 1994, starting at 3 percent. This has substantially increased government revenue as well assisted in maintaining the stability of the government's finances to spend on reforming the economy into more services and value added goods instead of relying on electronics manufacturing. The taxable GST is now at 5 percent, with the last increase in 2004. The economy has since recovered in response to improvements in the world economy, and grew by 8.4 percent in 2004. In the longer term the government hopes to establish a new growth path that will be less vulnerable to the external business cycle than the current export-led model, but is unlikely to abandon efforts to establish Singapore as Southeast Asia's financial and high-tech hub. The per capita GDP in 2005 is US$28,228. Recently, in September 2005, the unemployment rate was 3.3 percent.

Tourism

value added : Singapore as a travel destination has become noted among many international travellers, making tourism one of the largest industries in Singapore. Much of its attraction can be attributed to its cultural diversity that reflects its rich colonial history and Chinese, Malay, Indian, Eurasian and Arab ethnicities. For many years considered to be the business hub of Southeast Asia, Singapore has an expansive shopping precinct located in the Orchard Road district. Filled with many multi-story shopping centres, the area also has many hotels, and is centre of tourism in Singapore, as opposed to Raffles Place, which can be thought of as the financial heart. Other popular tourist attractions include the Singapore Zoological Gardens and its Night Safari, which allows people to explore Asian, African and American habitats at night, without any visible barriers between guests and the wild animals. The Singapore Zoo has embraced the 'open zoo' concept whereby animals are kept in enclosures, separated from visitors by hidden dry or wet moats, instead of caging the animals. Also famous is the Jurong Bird Park, wherein there are specimens of magnificent bird life from around the world, including a flock of one thousand flamingos. The tourist island of Sentosa, located in the south of Singapore, consists of about 20-30 landmarks, such as Fort Siloso, which was built as a fortress to defend against the Japanese during World War II. Guns from the World War II era can be seen at Fort Siloso, from a mini-sized to a 16-pound (7 kg) gun. Recently, the island has built the Carlsberg Sky Tower, which allows visitors to view the whole of Sentosa, as well as the Sentosa Luge, a small one- or two-person sled on which one sleighs supine and feet-first. Steering is done by shifting the weight or pulling straps attached to the sled's runners. Singapore will have two integrated resorts with casinos in 2009, one at Marina Bayfront and the other at Sentosa which the government announced during a parliament session on April 18, 2005.

Transport

2005 (MRT) system, one of three heavy rail passenger transport lines in Singapore.]] Singapore is a major transport hub in Asia and its history has been closely tied to the growth of its transport industry since its infancy. The transport industry contributes over 10% of gross domestic product despite an increasingly diversified economy. The Port of Singapore, managed by port operators PSA International and Jurong Port, is the world's busiest in terms of shipping tonnage handled. 1.04 billion gross tons were handled in the year 2004, crossing the one billion mark for the first time in Singapore's maritime history. Singapore also emerged as the top port in terms of cargo tonnage handled with 393 million tonnes of cargo in 2004, surpassing the port in Rotterdam for the first time. Singapore is ranked second globally in terms of containerised traffic with 21.3 million twenty-foot equivalent units handled in 2004, and retains her position as the world's busiest hub for transhipment traffic. She is also the world's biggest bunkering hub with 23.6 million tonnes of bunkers sold in 2004. Singapore is a major aviation hub and is an important stopover point for the "Kangaroo route" between Australasia and Europe. Singapore Changi Airport has a network of 77 airlines connecting Singapore to 178 cities in 56 countries. It is one of the top five airports in Asia in terms of passengers handled, with 30 million passengers passing through in 2004. It has been consistently rated as one of the best international airports by numerous international travel magazines . National carrier Singapore Airlines has also received several accolades internationally and is renowned for the image of the 'Singapore Girl', where air stewardesses are clad in traditional dress (Sarong Kebaya) while serving passengers. It will also be the first airline in the world to fly the new Airbus A380 commercially. In anticipation of rising demand in both the regular and low-cost sectors, a third passenger terminal and a low-cost terminal are currently under construction. These will increase the airport's total capacity to 66.7 million passengers annually by 2008. Domestic transport infrastructure is relatively efficient, and includes the heavy rail passenger Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system, the North-East Line, an autopilot extension of the MRT, the Light Rapid Transit (LRT) system, an extensive expressway and road system and a nationwide system of taxis and buses. The EZ-Link system allows, contactless smartcards to be used as stored value tickets for use in the public transport systems, and improves the convenience of the systems. Vehicles are subject to toll by an Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system during hours of heavy road traffic to regulate road usage. Recently, there have been complaints of rising public transport fares but the government asserts that this is due to the increase in global oil prices. Currently, fares are capped at $1.90 (~US$1.10) per ride. Electronic Road Pricing will allow it to handle up to 66.7 million passengers annually. Also in the pipeline is a new budget airline terminal to serve the rapidly growing budget airline industry.]]

Demographics

Electronic Road Pricing is the largest Hindu temple in Singapore. It is also one of the many religious buildings marked as national monuments for their historical value.]] : Singapore is the second most densely populated independent country in the world. Eighty-four percent of Singaporeans live in public housing provided by the Housing and Development Board (HDB). Singapore's population, though small at 4.42 million as of July 2005, is relatively diverse compared to most other countries, although neighbour Malaysia also features a multiracial population. The Chinese, who have constituted the majority of the island population since the colonial era, account for 76.8 percent of Singaporeans. Malays, who are the indigenous native group of the country, constitute 13.9 percent, though this number includes many Malay ethnic groups from other parts of the Malay archipelago including the Javanese, Bugis, Baweans and Minangs. Indians are the third largest ethnic group at 7.9 percent, consisting of several groups—Tamils, who form the largest Indian group, and others such as Malayalees, Punjabis and Bengalis. The rest are made up of smaller groups such as Arabs, Jews, Thais, Japanese, and the Eurasian community. Singapore is generally a multi-religious country, mainly due to its strategic location and the variety of religious beliefs that most Singaporeans hold. More than 40 percent of Singaporeans profess that they adhere to Buddhism. This is usually due to a lack of distinction between Taoism and Buddhism. Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and ancestral worship are merged into one by most of the Chinese population. Most Muslims are Malay but there are adherents among all races. Christianity in Singapore consists of Roman Catholicism and various denominations and its numbers hover at around 14% of the population. The government of Singapore has been careful to maintain ethnic harmony after racial riots erupted in the 1960s. Racial harmony has been emphasized in all aspects of society, including education, military and housing. So far the policy has been largely successful, and there have been few signs of ethnic tension since the early 1970s. Current issues include the ban on wearing the Islamic headscarf in public schools. In October 2005, a man was sentenced to one month in jail for making racist comments on an online blog. The national language of Singapore is Malay for historical reasons, and it is used in the national anthem. The official languages are English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. English has been promoted as the country's language of administration since independence, and it is spoken by the majority of the population, although with concurrent Speak Mandarin Campaigns, most public signs, advertising and print media tend to be in English and Chinese only. To promote Chinese culture and the use of Mandarin among the Chinese, the government has introduced a Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC). Historically, the Chinese immigrants often did not understand each other, having migrated from different parts of China, and were linguistically isolated into "dialects" such as Hokkien, Cantonese, Hokchia, Teochew, Hakka, Hokchiu and Hainanese. Malay was thus often used at that time as a common language. During the Speak Mandarin campaign however, Mandarin became a unifying factor at the cost of usage of Malay among the younger generation. Recently, there has been a "Speak Bahasa Melayu" campaign.

Culture

Hainanese As Singapore is a small and relatively modern amalgam of semi-indigenous Malay population with the majority of third generation Chinese and Indian and Arab immigrants with little intermarriage (although it exists and is most common between the Chinese and Indian races), there appears little in the way of specifically Singaporean culture. However, there exists a Eurasian community and a community of Peranakan or "Straits Chinese," of mixed Chinese and Malay descent. Singapore has also achieved a significant degree of cultural diffusion with its unique combination of these ethnic groups, and has given Singapore a rich mixture of diversity for its young age. One of the prime examples is in Singapore's cuisine, often a cultural attraction for tourists. The English used is primarily British English, with some American English influences. The local colloquial dialect of English is known formally as Singapore Colloquial English (though it is more commonly called "Singlish"), and has many creole-like characteristics, having incorporated much vocabulary and grammar from various Chinese, Malay, and Indian languages. Singlish is basically identical to Manglish (the English dialect of Malaysia), and is the usual language on the streets, but is frowned upon in official contexts. English use among the population generally became more widespread after the implementation of English as a first language medium in the Singapore education system, and English is the most common language in Singapore literature. Singapore literature Singapore also has several ethnic neighbourhoods, including a Little India and a Chinatown, which were formed under the Raffles Plan to segregate the new immigrants into ethnic ghettoes. Although the population is no longer segregated, these ethnic neighbourhoods retain selective elements of their specific culture. The usage of such neighbourhoods is mostly commercial or for a cottage industry specific to the culture of its ethnic neighbourhood, and does not play a big part in housing the population, although it is used for that purpose. Hence, these neighbourhoods have a diverse patronage who probably wish to either eat or buy something specific to that culture. In other parts of the country, segregation is discouraged and diversity encouraged. This can often be found in the policies of the Housing Development Board (HDB), which try to make sure there is a mix of all races within each housing district. The effect of this can be observed in all parts of the country; for example a store devoted to selling Malay food might be right next to stores selling Chinese or Indian goods. This, in return, is thought by some to foster social cohesion and national loyalty, crucial for sustaining Singapore's growth. There is an extremely strong emphasis towards racial harmony and the history pertaining to it, such as the 1964 Race Riots. Religious tolerance has been strongly encouraged since the British colonised Singapore; the Sri Mariamman Temple (a south Indian Hindu temple that was declared a national monument in the 1980s), as well as the Masjid Jamae Mosque that served Chulia Muslims from India's Coromandel Coast is situated along South Bridge Road, which is an old major road that runs through Chinatown. Among other religious landmarks is the Church of Gregory the Illuminator, that was built in 1836, making it one of the oldest religious buildings in Singapore. It has been preserved to the present day, and Orthodox services continue to be held in it. Although most religions are tolerated, some unorthodox groups are banned. Male homosexual intercourse is illegal in Singapore. This has been the subject of much debate both inside and outside the country, and there is no current legislative proposal to alter this. Under the Societies Act, the government has not allowed any gay rights group to form and openly address the issue. The Internet has resulted in a number of alternative communities like PLU (People Like Us), Sambal, Fridae, Red Queen, and others. However, the Singapore Government has considered homosexuality to be taboo, claiming that the population is predominantly conservative. Since the late 1990s, the government has been striving to promote Singapore as a centre for arts and culture, including theatre and music. This fits in with Singapore's status as a cosmopolitan and multi-racial society, often being called the "gateway between the East and West". The highlight of this plan is the Esplanade - "Theatres on the Bay", a centre for performing arts, opened in 2003. The Esplanade is also informally known as "The Durian", due to its resemblance to the pungent fruit. To attract more tourists, the government passed a bill on 17 April 2005 to legalise gambling. It has decided to build two "Integrated Resorts" (IRs), each with a casino component built-in, at Marina South and Sentosa respectively. The decisions to legalise gambling and to build the resorts came only after great controversy and debate. Bans on bar-top dancing and bungee jumping were also lifted despite their lukewarm demand.

External links

- [http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/sgp-summary-eng Amnesty International's 2005 report on Singapore]
- [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sn.html CIA World Factbook Entry for Singapore]
- [http://www.streetdirectory.com.sg Online map of Singapore]
- [http://www.gov.sg/ Singapore Government Online Portal]
- [http://www.sg/ Singapore Infomap]
- [http://www.visitsingapore.com Singapore Tourist Guide]
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- [http://www.singapore.alloexpat.com/information_center_singapore.php AlloExpat - Singapore Information Center]

References

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- This article incorporates public domain text from the websites of Singapore Department of Statistics, United States Department of State, [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/sgtoc.html the United States Library of Congress] & CIA World Factbook (2004).

Footnotes

# [http://www.bartleby.com/61/46/S0424600.html Singapore, bartleby.com] # [http://www.changiairport.com.sg/changi/level2_with_links.jsp;jsessionid=CUYCy26IIRpFk3sIMZSfQxwEyOMPDUihLomClhV1EsWtQ1dQ2TBB!-1022406898!-1062718459!7005!8005?ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=1408474395181062&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302024442&bmUID=1121245380514 Changi Airport, Singapore] Wikipedia:Footnote3 Category:ASEAN member states Category:Capitals in Asia Category:Cities and towns in Singapore Category:Coastal cities Category:Former British colonies Category:Island nations Category:Members of the Commonwealth of Nations Category:Republics zh-min-nan:Sin-ka-pho ko:싱가포르 ms:Singapura ja:シンガポール simple:Singapore th:ประเทศสิงคโปร์

Macao

The Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (Traditional Chinese: 中華人民共和國澳門特別行政區; Simplified Chinese: 中华人民共和国澳门特别行政区; short form Macau or Macao (澳門, Pinyin: Àomén; also informally known as 馬交; see Names) is a small territory on the southern coast of China. Administered by Portugal until 1999, it was the oldest European colony in China, dating to the 16th century. The administrative power (in Portuguese "poderes") over Macau was transferred to the People's Republic of China in 1999, and it is now a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. Macau has played a unique and influential role in relations between China and the West, especially between the late 16th and 19th centuries. Residents of Macau mostly speak Cantonese natively; Mandarin, , and are also spoken. Broadly, Macanese refers to all permanent inhabitants of Macau. More narrowly, it refers to an ethnic group in Macau originating from Portuguese descent, usually mixed with Chinese and sometimes other ancestry. Besides historical colonial relics, Macau's biggest attraction is its gambling industry and casinos. Though many forms of gambling are legal here, the most popular game is Pai Gow, played with Chinese dominoes. Gamblers from Hong Kong often take one-day excursions to Macau; ferry service by hydrofoil to and from Hong Kong is available 24 hours a day, every day.

Names

The name "Macau" is thought to be derived from the Templo de A-Má (Temple of A-Ma) (媽閣廟, Cantonese Jyutping: Maa1 Gok3 Miu6, local pronunciation: Maa5 Gok3 Miu6 or Maa5 Gok3 Miu5), a still-existing landmark built in 1448 dedicated to the goddess Matsu. The Chinese name Aomen 澳門 (pinyin: Àomén, Cantonese Jyutping: Ou3 Mun4) means "Inlet Gates". The "gates" refer to two erect gate-like mountains of Nantai () and Beitai (). Alternately, Ao may derive from Macau's previous name Heung San O, as it is geographically situated at "Cross' Door". Macau is also known as Ho King O (壕鏡澳; pinyin: Haojing'ao; "Oyster-mirror Inlet"), Heung San O (香山澳; Xiangshan'ao; "Fragrant-mountain Inlet"), Lin Do (蓮島; Liandao; "Lotus Island"), as well as "Soda Port" (疏打埠). While Àomén/Ou3 Mun4 is the traditional Chinese name of the place, it is common among the Cantonese-speaking population of the territory to use the Portuguese name when speaking in Cantonese, pronouncing it Maa3 Gaau1 (Jyutping romanization), occasionally rendering it phonetically as 馬交 in Chinese characters. The form "Macao" was the original Portuguese spelling, and has been retained in most European languages. In modern Portuguese, the correct spelling is "Macau". During the 20th century, the official spelling "Macau" became more and more common in English-language sources, including most print media. Since the handover of sovereignty, the government of Macau considers "Macao" the official English spelling of the name, whereas "Macau" remains the official spelling in Portuguese. This is the practice followed in official documents such as passports and immigration forms. The pinyin transcription Aomen has occasionally been used in English as if it were the official name for Macau. However, this is not the case, as only "Macao" is official in English. Hohhot

History

Main article: History of Macau Macau was first settled by the Portuguese in 1557. Beginning in 1670, Portugal leased the territory although there was no transfer of sovereignty. Macau prospered as a port and was the subject of repeated attempts by the Dutch to conquer it in the 17th century. After the House of Braganza regained control of Portugal from the Spanish Habsburgs in 1640, Macau was granted the official title of Cidade do (Santo) Nome de Deus de Macau, Não há outra mais Leal or City of the (Holy) Name of God of Macau, "There is none more Loyal". The motto "There is none more Loyal" was granted in honour of the fact that the territory of Macau (Amacao, in older Portuguese writings) never recognized Spanish sovereignty, and thus it is considered by historians as a (now former) part of Portugal that was never surrendered. Realistically, the Habsburgs could never have changed this situation anyway since they were heavily involved in European wars and Macau was far away. Additionally, the successful, decades-long resistance against Dutch privateers demonstrated that Macau was not a soft target. With Hong Kong established as a British Crown Colony, Macau's status as the major regional trading centre declined due to the fact that larger ships were drawn to the deep water port of Victoria Harbour. In 1849, Portugal declared the colony independent of China. This was recognised by the Chinese government in 1887. In 1955, the Salazar regime declared Macau, as well as other Portuguese colonies, an "Overseas Province" of Portugal. Although Macanese culture had always been a mixture between Chinese and Portuguese this did not always come about peacefully. Chinese citizens efforts to establish their own identity were often counter to the aims of the Portuguese government. Overseas Province In 1966 residents tried to obtain a licence for a private school in Taipa, the first of two islands connected to and forming part of Macau. After being rejected many times they went ahead and started building without permits. On November 15, 1966, the Portuguese police arrested the school officials and beat construction workers, residents, and press reporters. As a result, Chinese teachers and students gathered at the Governor’s Palace to protest, some even got inside the Palace to cite the quotations of Mao Zedong and sang Chinese revolutionary songs. On December 3rd the government ordered them to be arrested. This stirred up the anger of the general public and more people came to protest. They pulled down the statue of Colonel Vicente Nicolau de Mesquita at Largo do Senado at the city centre, and burnt down archive documents - some irreplaceable - at the Leal Senado Building and the Holy House of Mercy. Portuguese soldiers from Africa, who came to Macau on holiday, were called in and martial law was declared. As a result of the protests, 11 people died and 200 were injured. The Chinese people adopted a "three no's" approach as a means to continue their struggle with the Government — no taxes, no service, no selling to the Portuguese. They were successful and on January 29, 1967 the Portuguese government of Macau signed a statement of apology. This marked the beginning of equal treatment and recognition of Chinese identity and of de facto Chinese control of the colony. After the leftist military coup of 1974, the now democratic Portuguese government was determined to relinquish all its overseas possessions, but the People's Republic of China did not favour Macau's immediate return to Chinese sovereignty. In 1976, Lisbon redefined Macau as a Special Territory, and granted it a large measure of administrative and economic autonomy. In addition, Portugal and the PRC agreed to regard Macau as 'a Chinese territory under Portuguese administration'. This status was made anomalous by the agreement in 1985 to return Hong Kong to China, and in 1987, an agreement, known as the "Joint Delcaration" was made to make Macau a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. The Macau Special Administrative Region finally came into being on December 20, 1999.

Politics

Main article: Politics of Macau The chief executive is appointed by the People's Republic of China's central government after selection by an election committee, whose members are nominated by corporate bodies. The chief executive appears before a cabinet, the Executive Council, of between 7 and 11 members. Edmund Ho, a community leader and banker, is the first China-appointed chief executive of the Macau SAR, having replaced General de Rocha Vieira on December 20, 1999. The legislative organ of the territory is the Legislative Assembly, a 23-member body comprising 10 directly elected members, 10 appointed members representing functional constituencies and seven members appointed by the chief executive. The Legislative Assembly is responsible for general lawmaking and like many other legislatures, it has power to impeach the Chief Executive. It has power to amend the makeup of its successors after 2009. The legal system is based largely on Portuguese law. The territory has its own independent judicial system, headed by the Court of Final Appeal (CFA), which makes final judgments on court cases. Judges are selected by a committee and appointed by the chief executive. Court of Final Appeal

Subdivisions

Main article: List of cities and parishes in Macao Macau comprises two administrative subdivisions:
- The Macau District (澳門區): The Macau Peninsula
- The Islands District (離島區, 海島區): Taipa and Coloane

Geography

Main article: Geography of Macau Macau is 70 km southwest of Hong Kong and 145 km from Guangzhou. It consists of a peninsula, and the islands of Taipa and Coloane. The peninsula is formed by the Zhujiang (Pearl River) estuary on the east and the Xijiang (West River) on the west. It borders the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone in mainland China. Macau has a generally flat terrain resulting from extensive land reclamation, but numerous steep hills mark the original natural land mass. The Macau peninsula was originally an island, but gradually a connecting sandbar turned into a narrow isthmus. Land reclamation in the 17th century made Macau into a peninsula. With a dense urban environment, Macau has no arable land, pastures, forest, or woodland. Because of this deficiency, Macau's people traditionally have looked to the sea for their livelihood.

Economy

Main article: Economy of Macau Macau's economy is based largely on tourism, including gambling. Textile and fireworks manufacturing are the largest employers after gambling. Efforts to diversify have spawned other small industries, such as toy, artificial flowers, and electronics manufacturing. The clothing industry has provided about three-fourths of export earnings, and the gambling industry is estimated to contribute more than 40% of Macau's GDP. Over 8 million tourists visited Macau in 2000. While recent growth in gambling and tourism has been driven primarily by residents of mainland China, tourists from Hong Kong remain the most numerous. Recently Triad underworld violence, a dark spot on the economy, has significantly declined, to the benefit of the tourism sector. The average growth rate between 2001 and 2005 has been approximately 10% annually. The GDP per capita in 2004 was USD22,620. In the first quarter of 2005, the unemployment rate was 4.1%. With the opening of the Sands Casino [http://www.sands.com.mo/eng/index04.html] in 2004 gambling revenues from Macau's casinos were for the first time greater than those of Las Vegas (each about $5 billion), making Macau currently the highest-volume gambling centre in the world. Other casinos slated to be opened through 2008 are the Wynn Macau Casino [http://www.wynnmacau.com/intro.htm], the Venetian Macau [http://www.sands.com.mo/eng/index05_4_1_4.html], the Galaxy and others. As a result, the small economy is growing rapidly due to gambling related tourism from China and construction from the new casino entrants.

Demographics

Considered as a dependency, Macau is the world's most densely populated country/dependency. Macau's population is 95% Chinese, primarily Cantonese and some Hakka, both from nearby Guangdong Province. The remainder are of Portuguese or mixed Chinese-Portuguese ancestry, or the so-called Macanese. Some Japanese, including descendants of Japanese Catholics who were expelled by shoguns, also live in Macau. The official languages are Portuguese and Chinese. Though the residents commonly speak Cantonese, both Cantonese and Mandarin are de facto official. English is spoken in tourist areas. Macanese or Patuá, an ancient Portuguese based dialect, is almost extinct.

Culture

Main article: Culture of Macau

Landmarks

- Ruins of Saint Paul's Cathedral
- Casino Lisboa
- Macau Tower Some 22 historic monuments and eight public squares, together forming the "Historic Centre of Macao", has been inscribed onto the World Cultural Heritage List of UNESCO, on 15 July 2005. UNESCO.]]

Miscellaneous

- Like Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, but unlike both mainland China and Portugal, traffic in Macau travels on the left, and the majority of vehicles are right hand drive. (Portugal and southern provinces of China also originally drove on the left.)
- Like Hong Kong, Macau also has a flower to represent the city. While the representative flower of Hong Kong is the Bauhinia, the representative flower of Macau is the lotus. The lotus is always used as a symbol of the Macau Special Administrative Region.

Macau-related topics

:Main article: List of Macao-related topics
- Communications in Macau
- Crime and Police in Macau
- Education in Macau
- Gambling in Macau
- Legal system of Macau
- List of universities in Macao
- Macau Grand Prix
- Macau Law
- Military of Macau
- Transportation in Macau
- Postage stamps and postal history of Macau

External links

- [http://www.rthk.org.hk/rthk/tv/hkcc/20041220.html Documentary by RTHK on fifth anniversary of Macao SAR]
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/4080105.stm Profile of Macau] on BBC News
- [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mc.html Profile of Macau] on the CIA World Factbook
- [http://www.macauzhuhai.com/directory.htm Expatriate Guide]
- [http://www.gov.mo/egi/Portal/index.jsp Portal of the government of Macau]
- Government Printing Bureau
- [http://www.imprensa.macau.gov.mo/cn/ Traditional Chinese version]
- [http://www.imprensa.macau.gov.mo/pt/ Portuguese version]
- [http://www.imprensa.macau.gov.mo/en/ English version]
- [http://www.olamacauguide.com/ Guide to Macau]
- [http://www.hongkong-macau.info/ Hongkong-Macau.info]
- [http://www.macauresorts.com/ Macau Hotels and Resorts tours]
- [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/motoc.html Library of Congress - Country Study: Macau] data as of August 2000
- [http://macau.blogharbor.com/blog/ BlogMacau.info (an independent weblog about Macau)]
- [http://www.char1es.net/guide.html Nate's guide to Macau]
- [http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Macau/ Open Directory Project - Macau] directory category
- [http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/China/Provinces__Regions__and_Municipalities/Macau/ Yahoo! - Macau] directory category
- [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09481b.htm Entry for Macao] on Catholic Encyclopedia
- [http://heritage.icm.gov.mo/Info/indexE.asp Macau Heritage Net - List of Historic Centre of Macao]
- Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao Special Administrative Region
- [http://www.icm.gov.mo/ Traditional Chinese version]
- [http://www3.icm.gov.mo/gate/gb/www.icm.gov.mo/ Simplified Chinese version]
- [http://www.icm.gov.mo/indexP.asp Portuguese version]
- [http://www.icm.gov.mo/indexE.asp English version]
- [http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Macau&ll=22.157837,113.549881&spn=0.151035,0.240704&t=k&hl=en Satellite map of Macau] from Google Maps Category:Cities in China Category:Coastal cities Category:Former Portuguese colonies Category:Pearl River Delta Category:Special territories ja:マカオ ko:마카오 ms:Macau th:มาเก๊า zh-min-nan:Ò-mn̂g

Taiwan

Taiwan (; Taiwanese: Tâi-oân) is an island in East Asia located off the coast of mainland China, south of Japan and north of the Philippines. "Taiwan" is commonly used to refer to the territories currently governed by the Republic of China (ROC), which include the Taiwan island group (including Lanyu (Orchid Island) and Green Island), the Pescadores in the Taiwan Strait, Quemoy and Matsu off the coast of mainland Fujian, and Taiping and the Pratas in the South China Sea. The current political status of Taiwan in contested by the People's Republic of China, which claims it as one of its provinces. The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa (Portuguese sailors called it Ilha Formosa, which means "beautiful island"), is bounded to the east by the Pacific Ocean, to the south by the South China Sea and the Luzon Strait, to the west by the Taiwan Strait and to the north by the East China Sea. The island is 394 kilometers (245 miles) long and 144 kilometers (89 miles) wide and consists of steep mountains covered by tropical and subtropical vegetation.

Political status

Main article: Political status of Taiwan In 1895, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, became a Japanese colony, a concession by the Qing Empire after it lost the First Sino-Japanese War. After Japan's defeat at the end of World War II in 1945, Allied Command ordered Japanese troops in Taiwan to surrender to the Republic of China (ROC) and ROC became the de facto ruler of Taiwan ever since. In 1949, upon losing the Chinese Civil War to the Communist Party of China, the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) of the Republic of China retreated from mainland China and moved the ROC government to Taipei, Taiwan's largest city, while continuing to claim sovereignty over all of China and Mongolia. On the mainland, the Communists established the People's Republic of China (PRC), claiming to be the sole representative of China including Taiwan and portraying the ROC government on Taiwan as an illegitimate entity. Taiwan has been transformed into a major industrialized economy and is touted as one of the East Asian Tigers. Meanwhile, political reforms beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through the early 1990s liberalized the Republic of China from an authoritarian one-party state into a multiparty democracy. In 2000, the KMT's monopoly on power ended after the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won the ROC presidency. Besides groups seeking the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland, there is a Taiwan independence movement that seeks to establish a Taiwanese republic. The competing claims over the future of Taiwan have made and continue to make Taiwan's political status a contentious issue. The numbers who answer favorably toward any particular resolution often changes depending on the particular wording of the question, illustrating the complexity of public opinion on the topic. The political environment is complicated by the potential for military conflict to result should overt actions toward independence be taken. It is the policy of the PRC to reserve the right to "use force to ensure reunification" if peaceful reunification fails, and there are substantial military installations on the Fujian coast. In return, the US has provided military training and arms sales to the ROC. However, the United States has repeatedly stated that it does not condone the Taiwan independence movement, and furthermore that it does not support unilateral changes in the current status quo by either the ROC or PRC leadership. The KMT supports the status quo for the indefinite future with the ultimate goal of reunificaiton because unification under the current political climate in PRC is unacceptable to its members and the public. The DPP, which supports an independent Taiwan, supports the status quo because the risk of declaring independence and provoking mainland China is unacceptable to its members. However, both parties support taking active steps to advocate ROC's participation in international organizations. Currently there are 25 states -- mostly small, developing nations in Africa and Central America -- that have diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, although many countries such as the United States and United Kingdom have de-facto embassies in the ROC. The United States, for example, maintains unofficial diplomatic relations through the American Institute in Taiwan. ROC's de facto embassies are referred to as "Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Offices" (TECRO), with branch offices, the equivalent of consulates, called "Taipei Economic and Cultural Offices" (TECO). Each year since 1992, the government of the Republic of China petitions the UN for entry but has so far been unsuccessful because most countries, including the United States, do not wish to engage in the issue of ROC's political status for fears of souring diplomatic ties with PRC, although both the US and Japan publicly support ROC's bid into the World Health Organization as an observer. Without official support from the international community, it is unclear how the pro-independence contingent's vision of Taiwanese independence can be achieved. Facing tremendous pressure from PRC, the ROC uses the name Chinese Taipei in the Olympics and other international events, usually of which PRC is also a party.

History

Main article: History of Taiwan History of Taiwan

Prehistory and early settlement

Evidence of human settlement in Taiwan dates back 30,000 years, although the first inhabitants of Taiwan may have been genetically distinct from any groups currently on the island. About 4,000 years ago, ancestors of current Taiwanese aborigines settled Taiwan. These aborigines are genetically related to Malay and Polynesians, and linguists classify their language as Austronesian. Records indicate that Han Chinese settled in Penghu since the 1100s, but it was not until later that people other than aborigines permanently settled in the main island of Taiwan. Records from ancient China indicate that Han Chinese might have known of the existence of the main island of Taiwan since the Three Kingdoms period (third century), having assigned offshore islands in the vicinity names like Greater and Minor Liuqiu (Ryukyu), though none of these names have been definitively matched to the main island of Taiwan. It has been claimed but not verified that the Ming Dynasty admiral Zheng He visited Taiwan between 1403 and 1424. In the 15th century, a Portuguese ship sighted the main island of Taiwan and dubbed it "Ilha Formosa", which means "Beautiful Island." The Portuguese made no attempt to colonize Taiwan. In 1624, the Dutch established a commercial base on Taiwan and began to import workers from Fujian and Penghu as laborers, many of whom settled. The Dutch made Taiwan a colony with its colonial capital at Tainan.

Koxinga and imperial Chinese rule

Ming naval and troop forces defeated the Dutch from the island in 1662, subsequently expelling the Dutch government and military. They were led by Lord Cheng Cheng-Kung (also known as Lord Koxinga), a pirate turned Ming navy commander. Following the fall of the Ming dynasty, Cheng retreated to Taiwan as a self-styled Ming loyalist, and established the Kingdom of Tungning (1662–1683). Cheng establishing his capital at Tainan and he and his heirs continued to launch raids on the east coast of mainland China well into the Qing dynasty, in an attempt to recover the mainland. In 1683, the Qing dynasty defeated the Cheng holdout, and formally annexed Taiwan, placing it under the jurisdiction of Fujian province. Following the defeat of Cheng's grandson to an armada led by Admiral Shi Lang, Cheng's followers were expatriated to the farthest reaches of the Qing empire, leaving approximately 7,000 Han on Taiwan. The Qing government wrestled with its Taiwan policy to reduce piracy and vagrancy in the area, which led to a series of edicts to manage immigration and respect aboriginal land rights. Illegal immigrants from Fujian continued to enter Taiwan as renters of the large plots of aboriginal lands under contracts that usually involved marriage, while the border between taxpaying lands and "savage" lands migrated east, with some aborigines 'Sinicizing' while others retreated into the mountains. During this time, there were a number of conflicts involving Han Chinese from different regions of China, and between Han Chinese and aborigines. The bulk of Taiwan's population today, the "native" Taiwanese, claim descent from these migrants. In 1887, the Qing government of China made Taiwan a province by itself, the 20th in the country, with capital at Taipei. The move was accompanied by a modernization drive that included the building of the first railroad and the beginning of a postal service in Taiwan.

Japanese colonial rule

Taiwanese Following its defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), Qing China ceded Taiwan and Penghu (the Pescadores) to Japan in perpetuity, on terms dictated by the latter. Inhabitants wishing to remain Qing subjects were given a 2-year grace period to sell their property and move to the mainland. On May 25, 1895, the Republic of Taiwan was formed with a dynastic name of "Forever Qing" and with capital at Tainan, to resist impending Japanese rule. Japanese forces entered the capital and quelled this resistance on October 21, 1895. As opposed to elsewhere in Asia, Japan attempted to use Taiwan as a model colony and was instrumental in the industrialization of the island; they extended the railroads that had just sprung up in late Qing rule, built a sanitation system and a public school system, among other things. Still, the Chinese-speaking residents and aborigines were classified as second and third class citizens. Large scale violence continued in the first decade of rule. Around 1935, the Japanese began an island-wide assimilation project to bind the island more firmly to the Japanese Empire. By 1945, just before Japan lost World War II, desperate plans were in place to incorporate popular representation of Taiwan into the Japanese Diet to make Taiwan an integral part of Japan proper. Japan's rule of Taiwan came to an end with its defeat in World War II. Its signing of the Instrument of Surrender on August 15, 1945, signaled that Taiwan was to be returned to China, one of the Allied objectives from the wartime declarations. On October 25, 1945, ROC troops, representing the Allied Command, accepted the formal surrender of Japanese military forces in Taihoku (today: Taipei). However, due to the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communists, the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty between Japan and the Allies failed to name the recipient of Taiwan's sovereignty.

Republic of China era

San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1946. There is little evidence that the people of Taiwan actually elected these delegates.]] San Francisco Peace Treaty The ROC administration announced October 25, 1945, as "Taiwan Retrocession Day." Reportedly, they were greeted as liberators by the island residents. However, the ROC military administration on Taiwan under Chen Yi, was extremely corrupt. This corruption, compounded with a period of hyperinflation, unrest due to the Chinese Civil War, and distrust due to political, cultural and lingual differences that had developed between the Taiwanese and the newcomers, quickly led to the loss of popular support for the new administration. This culminated in a series of severe clashes between the ROC administration and "native" Taiwanese, in turn leading to the bloody 228 incident and the reign of white terror. At the same time, the Chinese Civil War was in progress. In 1949, the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party or KMT), which at the time controlled the government of the ROC, retreated to Taiwan after continued military defeats at the hands of the Communist Party of China drove it from most parts of the mainland. Some 1.3 million refugees from mainland China arrived in Taiwan around that time. Initially, the United States abandoned the KMT and expected that Taiwan would fall to the Communists. However, in 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, and in the context of the Cold War, US President Harry S. Truman intervened again and dispatched the 7th Fleet into the Taiwan Straits to "neutralize" the Straits. In the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which came into force on April 28, 1952, and the Treaty of Taipei, concluded hours before that date, Japan formally renounced all right, claim and title to Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores (Peng-hu), and renounced all treaties signed with China before 1942. Both treaties remained silent about who would take control of the island, in part to avoid taking sides in the ongoing Chinese Civil War. Advocates of Taiwan independence have used this omission to justify self-determination. During the 1960s and 1970s, Taiwan began to develop into a prosperous and dynamic economy, becoming one of the East Asian Tigers while maintaining an authoritarian, one-party government. Because of the Cold War, most Western nations and the United Nations regarded the Republic of China government on Taiwan as the sole legitimate government of China until the 1970s, when most nations began switching recognition to the People's Republic of China. After Chiang Kai-Shek died in 1975 his Vice-President, Yen Chia-kan, briefly took over from 1975 to 1978. During the presidency of Chiang Ching-kuo, from 1978 to 1987, Taiwan's political system began a gradual liberalization. Martial law, which had been in effect since 1948, was lifted in 1987. Upon Chiang's death, Vice President Lee Teng-hui succeeded him as president of the ROC and chairman of the KMT, and effective one-party rule was ended in 1991. Lee became the first Taiwanese to become the president during KMT rule. In 2000, President Chen Shui-bian of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party was elected, creating the first peaceful democratic transition in power. After surviving a politically controversial assassination attempt which the opposition claimed as staged to win sympathy votes the night before the 2004 election, Chen was re-elected by a slim margin. Medical and police investigation have verified that the wounds sustained by President Chen and Vice President Annette Lu are real, and no evidence has been found suggesting that the assassination was staged. See also
- Timeline of Taiwanese history
- History of the Republic of China
- History of China

Political divisions

Main article: Political divisions of the Republic of China Taiwan Island contains all but one county of Taiwan Province: 15 counties and all five province-administered cities. Penghu (the Pescadores) is the only county in Taiwan Province which is not on Taiwan. Taiwan's two largest cities, Taipei City and Kaohsiung City, although on the island of Taiwan, are not part of Taiwan Province but are centrally-administered municipalities, with the same level as provinces. Since 1998, the provincial tier of government has been largely eliminated, leaving the county the main division under the central government. Currently, in addition to the main island of Taiwan, the Republic of China also controls the Pescadores, Kinmen (Quemoy), and Matsu islands situated in the Taiwan Strait off the coast of mainland Fujian (Fuchien), plus some Pacific Coast islands (notably the Green and Orchid islands). Furthermore, the ROC also claims some islands in the South China Sea. Some of these outer islands, notably the Spratly (Nansha) islands -- claimed by PRC, ROC and some southeastern Asian countries simultaneously --in the South China Sea and the Senkaku (Diaoyutai) islands -- occupied by Japan now but disputed by both PRC and ROC --in the Pacific Coast.

Geography

Senkaku Main article: Geography of Taiwan The island of Taiwan lies some 200 kilometers off the southeastern coast of China, across the Taiwan Strait, and has an area of 35,801 square kilometers (13,823 square miles), with the East China Sea to the north, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Luzon Strait directly to the south and the South China Sea to the southwest. The island is characterised by the contrast between the eastern two-thirds, consisting mostly of rugged mountains running in five ranges from the northern to the southern tip of the island, and the flat to gently rolling plains in the west that are also home to most of Taiwan's population. Taiwan's highest point is the Yu Shan at 3,952 meters. Taiwan's climate is marine tropical. The rainy season lasts from June to August during the southwest monsoon, though cloudiness is persistent and extensive all year. Natural hazards include typhoons and earthquakes. Taiwan is a center of bird endemism. See Endemic Birds of Taiwan for further information. With its high population density and many factories, Taiwan suffers from heavy pollution. According to one report, Taiwan ranks 119 out of 143 countries examined by [http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/taiwanenv.html Energy Information Administration]. Taipei City suffers from heavy air pollution as a result of the ring of mountains that surrounds it, effectively trapping soot and smog in the city.

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Taiwan ROC's population was estimated in 2005 as being 22.9 million, most of which are on Taiwan. About 98 percent of the population is of Han Chinese ethnicity. Of these people, 84 percent are descendants of early Han immigrants known as native Taiwanese (c: 本省人; p: Bensheng ren; lit. "home-province person"). This group contains two subgroups. The first subgroup is the Southern Fujianese (70 percent of the total population), who migrated from the coastal Southern Fujian region in the southeast of mainland China. The second subgroup is the Hakka (15 percent of the total population), who originally migrated south to Guangdong, its surrounding areas and Taiwan, intermarrying extensively with Taiwanese aborigines. The remaining 14 percent of Han Chinese are known as Mainlanders (外省人; Waisheng ren; lit. "external-province person") and are composed of and descend from immigrants who arrived after the Second World War. This group fled mainland China in 1949 following the Nationalist defeat in the Chinese Civil War. Dalu ren (大陸人) refers to residents of Mainland China. This group excludes almost all Taiwanese, including the Mainlanders, except recent immigrants from mainland China, such as those made Republic of China citizens through marriage. The other 2 percent of Taiwan's population, numbering about 440,000, are the Taiwanese aborigines (原住民; yuánzhùmín; lit. "original inhabitants"), divided into 12 major groups: Ami, Atayal, Paiwan, Bunun, Puyuma, Rukai, Tsou, Saisiyat, Yami, Thao, Kavalan and Taroko.

Languages

Almost everyone on Taiwan born after the early 1950s can speak Mandarin, which was forced on the mainly Taiwanese/Japanese speaking population in a heavy-handed way, when the KMT came to Taiwan. It became the official language of Taiwan, via the Republic of China, and has been the medium of instruction in the schools for more than four decades. Under KMT rule, Taiwanese was forbidden from the airwaves and in official situations, and students received corporal punishment, as they did for many other infractions, for speaking Taiwanese, Hakka, or Aboriginal languages in school. Today, non-Mandarin native languages have undergone a revival in Taiwan. A large fraction of people speak Taiwanese, a variant of Min-nan, and a majority understand it. A large proportion speak Hakka, which has a distinct Hakka language/dialect. Between 1900 and 1945, Japanese was the medium of instruction, and many Taiwanese educated during that period can speak fluent Japanese. All Taiwanese schools today teach English, resulting in a trilingual population, many of whom speak even more languages, though the average student rarely reaches fluency. Chinese romanization on Taiwan uses both Tongyong pinyin, which the national government officially has adopted, and Hanyu pinyin, which some localities use. Wade-Giles, used traditionally, also is found. Mayor Ma Ying-jeou recently changed all Taipei street names to the Hanyu form, although most romanizations in other cities still are in Tongyong and addresses are generally written in Tongyong. Most aboriginal groups in Taiwan have their own languages, and unlike Taiwanese or Hakka, do not belong to the Chinese language family, but rather belong to the Austronesian language family. Mandarin is still the languge of instruction in schools and predominate television and airwaves.

Religion

About half of the ROC population is religious, and most of these people identify themselves as Buddhists or Taoists. Belief in folk religion also is prevalent, and many people practice some combination of these three faiths. Confucianism is also an honored school of thought and ethical code. Christian churches have been active on Taiwan for many years; a majority of these churches are Protestant, with Presbyterians playing a particularly significant role.

Economy

Presbyterian Main article: Economy of Taiwan Taiwan has a dynamic capitalist economy with gradually decreasing state involvement in investment and foreign trade. In keeping with this trend, the government is privatizing some large banks and industrial firms. Real growth in gross domestic product has averaged about 8 percent during the past three decades. Exports have provided the primary impetus for industrialization. The trade surplus is substantial, and foreign reserves are the world's third largest. The ROC has its own currency: the New Taiwan Dollar. Agriculture constitutes only 2 percent of GDP, down from 35 percent in 1952. Traditional labor-intensive industries are moving steadily offshore, with more capital- and technology-intensive industries replacing them. Taiwan has become a major investor in mainland China, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam; around 50,000 Taiwanese businesses are established in mainland China. Taiwan is one of the largest foreign investors in mainland China. Because of its conservative financial approach and its entrepreneurial strengths, Taiwan suffered little compared with many of its neighbors from the Asian financial crisis in 1998–1999. The global economic downturn, however, combined with poor policy coordination by the new administration and increasing bad debts in the banking system, pushed Taiwan into recession in 2001, the first whole year of negative growth since 1947. Due to the relocation of many manufacturing and labor-intensive industries to mainland China, unemployment also peaked at a level last seen during the 1970s oil crisis. This problem became one of the major issues in the presidential election of 2004. The unemployment rate eventually declined after the government adopted a few economy-stimulating measures. The ROC has entered international governmental trade organizations such as the World Trade Organization and APEC under the name Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (台灣、澎湖、金門及馬祖個別關稅領域) in WTO and under the name Chinese Taipei in APEC. Although the PRC objects to having other countries maintain diplomatic or official relations with the ROC, it made no objection to having the ROC maintain economic relations. However, under PRC pressure, the ROC joined governmental organizations under different names. The opening of the Taipei Financial Center, also know as Taipei 101 due to its number of floors, on December 31, 2004, brought more world recognition to Taiwan and Taipei. Taipei 101, equipped with the world's fastest elevators, is the world's tallest building. The surrounding financial district is steadily becoming more recognized in the world market, and a trendy shopping district is rapidly growing around it as well. Along with Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong, Taiwan is known as one of the East Asian Tigers. [http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/?article=olds.taiwan.economic.history]

References

External links

Government

- [http://www.gio.gov.tw Government Information Office] - government information portal
- [http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V4e/index.htm Central Weather Bureau] - local weather and earthquake reports
- [http://english.www.gov.tw/e-Gov/index.jsp Electronic Government] - e-government, entry point of Taiwan

Tourism

- [http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/north_east_asia/taiwan/ Lonely Planet Destination Taiwan] - travel guide
- [http://wikitravel.org/en/article/Taiwan Taiwan travel guide at Wikitravel]
- [http://www.tbroc.gov.tw/lan/cht/index/ Taiwan Tourism Bureau] - local travel news
- [http://site.voila.fr/taiwan/index.html Taiwan from inside] - Pictures of the daily life in Taiwan

Taiwan news in English

- [http://www.taiwanheadlines.com/ Taiwan Headlines -- news via Taiwan's Government Information Office]
- [http://en.pots.com.tw/ "POTS EXTRA, Taipei's Free Weekly"]
- [http://www.cbs.org.tw/ Radio Taiwan International]
- [http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/ Taipei Times]
- [http://www.cna.com.tw/eng/ Taiwan Central News Agency]
- [http://news.cens.com/ Taiwan Economic News]
- [http://www.etaiwannews.com/ Taiwan News]
- [http://www.chinapost.com.tw/ The China Post]

Misc.

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1285915.stm Country Profile on BBC]
- [http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/ China History Forums]
- [http://www.taiwannation.com.tw History of Taiwan from a TI perspective]
- [http://wufi.org/english.html WUFI - World United Formosans for Independence] Category:Disputed territories Category:Republic of China
- ja:台湾 ko:중화민국 ms:Taiwan simple:Taiwan th:ไต้หวัน zh-min-nan:Tâi-oân

Overseas Chinese

Overseas Chinese (華僑 in pinyin: huáqiáo, or 華胞 huábāo, or 僑胞 qiáobāo) are ethnic Chinese people who live outside of China. China, in this usage, may refer to Greater China including territory currently administered by the rival governments of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China as per traditional definitions of the term prior to the Chinese civil war, or only to the People's Republic of China by some quarters. In addition, the government of the Republic of China granted residents of Hong Kong and Macau "overseas Chinese status" prior to their respective handover to Beijing rule, so the definition may be said to loosely extend to them.

Terminology

Strictly speaking, there are two words in Chinese for overseas Chinese: huáqiáo (华侨 / 華僑) refers to overseas Chinese who were born in China, while huáyì (华裔 / 華裔) refers to any overseas Chinese with a Chinese ancestry. It has to be noted that the usage of the term can be relatively fluid geographically. For example, the ethnic Chinese people of Singapore and Malaysia are occasionally excluded from the above said definition of "overseas Chinese" in view of their close cultural and social affinity with China, despite the geographical divide of the said societies. This view is very rare, however, as recent researches shown, majority of the ethnic Chinese in both nations have expressed that they are bonded to their nation, than to China (both PRC and ROC).

History

Chinese people has long history of migration to overseas. The overseas Chinese of today can be dated back to the Ming dynasty. When Zheng He became the envoy of Ming, he thousands of people to explore the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. Many of them were Cantonese and Hokkienese. Many people had been stayed in Southeast Asia forever and never back to China. In 19th century, the age of colonialism was at its height and it was the start of Chinese Diaspore. Many colonies were lack of labours. Meanwhile, in the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung in China, there were surplus of population owning to relative peaceful in the period earlier in Qing dynasty. The Qing government was forced to allow her subjects to work overseas under colony powers. Many Hokkienese chose to work in Southeast Asia with their earlier links starting from Ming. So did the Cantonese. For the countries in North America and Australia, high amount of labours were needed in the dangerous taks of gold mining and railway construction. With insufficient of food in Kwangtung, this attracted large number of Cantonese to work in these countries to improve the living conditions of their relatives. Parts of overseas Chinese were sold to South America during Punti-Hakka Clan Wars in the Pearl River Delta in Kwangtung. With the completion of railways, many overseas Chinese suffered from racial discrimation in Canada and the United States of America and the migration to them was not permitted. After the World War II, the wars between Chinese Communist Party and Kuomintang made Chinese suffered. Many people fled before communist advanced. Some educated Chinese in overseas did not return to Chinese as the condition deteriorated. Many people from the New Territories in Hong Kong were chosen to earn more living in England and Holland in post-war period. In 1980s, Hong Kong was destinated to return to communist China and this triggered another wave of migration to England, Australia, Canada, United States of America and others. The event June 4th Massacre in 1989 furthur accelerated the migration. The wave calmed after the transfer of soveignty in 1997. From time to time, the effect of chain migration accounted for the geographic perference in destination.

Current numbers

There are approximately 34 million overseas Chinese mostly living in Southeast Asia where they make up a majority of the population of Singapore and significant minority populations in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. The overseas populations in those areas arrived between the 16th and the 19th centuries from mostly the maritime provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, followed by Hainan. There are incidences of earlier emigration in the 10th centuries to 15th centuries in particular to Malacca and Southeast Asia.

Recent emigration

More recent emigration has been directed primarily to western countries such as United States, Canada and Australia being destinations.

Assimilation

Overseas Chinese vary widely as to their degree of assimilation, their interactions with the surrounding communities (see Chinatown), and their relationship with China. In Thailand, overseas Chinese have largely intermarried and assimilated with the native community. In Myanmar, the Chinese rarely intermarry, but have adopted the Burmese culture, maintaining both Chinese and Burmese identities. Chinese in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar are among some of the countries in the world who are not allowed to register their birth names in Chinese. Very often, there's no distinct number of the Chinese population in these countries. On the other hand, in Malaysia and Singapore, overseas Chinese have maintained a distinct communal identity, though the rate and state of being assimilated to the local, in this case a multi-cultural society, is currently en par with that of other Chinese communities. Chinese have also brought a cultural influence to some other countries such as Vietnam - where many customs have been adopted by native Vietnamese.

Waves of immigration

Often there are different waves of immigration leading to subgroups among overseas Chinese such as the new and old immigrants in Cambodia and Indonesia. The Chinese in southeast Asian countries have often established themselves in commerce and finances. In North America, because of immigration policies, overseas Chinese tend to be found in professional occupations, including significant ranks in medicine and academia. More recent Chinese presences have developed in Europe, where they number nearly a million, and in Russia, they number over 600,000, concentrated in Russia's Far East.

Relationship with China

Both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan maintain highly complex relationships with overseas Chinese populations. Both maintain cabinet level ministries to deal with overseas Chinese affairs, and many local governments within the PRC have overseas Chinese bureaus. Both the PRC and ROC have some legislative representation for overseas Chinese. In the case of the PRC, some seats in the National People's Congress are allocated for returned overseas Chinese. In the ROC's Legislative Yuan, there are eight seats allocated for overseas Chinese. These seats are apportioned to the political parties based on their vote totals on Taiwan, and then the parties assign the seats to overseas Chinese party loyalists. Most of these members elected to the Legislative Yuan hold dual citizenship, but must renounce their foreign citizenship (at the American Institute in Taiwan for American citizens) before being sworn in. During the 1950s and 1960s, the ROC tended to seek the support of overseas Chinese communities through branches of the Kuomintang based on Sun Yat-sen's use of expatriate Chinese communities to raise money for his revolution. During this period, the People's Republic of China tended to view overseas Chinese with suspicion as possible capitalist infiltrators and tended to value relationships with southeast Asian nations as more important than gaining support of overseas Chinese, and in the Bandung declaration explicitly stated that overseas Chinese owed primary loyalty to their home nation. After the Deng Xiaoping reforms, the attitude of the PRC toward overseas Chinese changed dramatically. Rather than being seen with suspicion, they were seen as people which could aid PRC development via their skills and capital. During the 1980s, the PRC actively attempted to court the support of overseas Chinese by among other things, returning properties that were confiscated after the 1949 revolution. More recently PRC policy has attempted to maintain the support of recently emigrated Chinese, who consist largely of Chinese seeking graduate education in the West. Overseas Chinese have sometimes played an important role in Chinese politics. Most of the funding for the Chinese revolution of 1911 came from overseas Chinese, and many overseas Chinese are overseas for political reasons. Many overseas Chinese are now investing in mainland China providing financial resources, social and cultural networks, contacts and opportunities.

Statistics

Note that the percentages do not add up due to varying census and estimate dates. Various sub-ethnic groups include: Chinese American, American-born Chinese, Chinese Argentines, Chinese Australians, Chinese Vietnamese, Chinese British, Burmese Chinese, Chinese Canadian, Chinese Cayman Islander, Chinese Cuban, Chinese Filipino, Indonesian Chinese, Malaysian Chinese, Chinese Mauritian, Chinese Peruvian, Chinese Puerto Rican, Chinese Singaporean, Chinese South African, and Chinese Thai.

References

- Pan, Lynn (1998)The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas Landmark Books, Singapore ISBN 9183018925
- Chin, Ung Ho. (2000) The Chinese of South East Asia . London: Minority Rights Group. ISBN 1 897693 28 1

External links

- [http://www.library.ohiou.edu/subjects/shao/databases_popdis.htm Ohio University Study on Distribution of the Overseas Chinese Population]
- [http://163.29.16.16/ Overseas Chinese Affairs Commision, R.O.C.]
- ja:華僑

People's Republic of China

Geography and climate

History

Politics

Ongoing debates

Political divisions

Foreign relations

Military

Largest cities

Su-30]] Su-30] Su-30] The PRC has dozens of major cities, including 3 of the 55 global cities.

Economy

Transportation

Society

Demographics

Ethnicity and race

Language

Issues

Health

Education

Culture

Science & Technology

Miscellaneous topics

References

- [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html CIA World Factbook 2002/2004]
- [http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/18902.htm Background Note: China U.S. Department of State website]

External links

Government

- [http://www.china.org.cn/english/index.htm China.org.cn] China's Official Gateway
- [http://www.gov.cn www.gov.cn] China's Government Portal

News

Overviews

Directories

Tourism

Other

1930s

----

Events and trends

The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical lifestyles, as countries were struggling to find a solution to the global depression. In Australia, this decade was known as the Dirty Thirties. In both Central Europe and Eastern Europe, Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, and dominated as the solution, the first two adopting war-oriented economic policies and the latter emphasizing heavy industrial development, all of them described as totalitarian regimes. In East Asia, the rise of Militarism occurred. In Western Europe, Australia and the United States, more progressive reforms occurred as opposed to the extreme measures sought elsewhere. Roosevelt's New Deal attempted to use government spending to combat large-scale unemployment and severely negative growth. Ultimately, it would be the beginning of World War II in 1939 that would end the depression.

Technology

- Jet engine invented
- Disney adopts a three-color Technicolor process for cartoons
- The photocopier is invented
- Air mail service across the Atlantic

Science

- Nuclear fission discovered by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann
- Pluto, the ninth planet from the Sun, is discovered by Clyde Tombaugh
- British biologist Arthur Tansley coins term "ecosystem"
- New and safer method for blood transfusions.

War, peace and politics

- Socialists proclaim The death of Capitalism
- Rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany
- Under Joseph Stalin, millions die in famines. The Great Purges eliminate all Old Bolsheviks from the Soviet government, except for Molotov and Stalin himself.
- Almost all of Continental Europe moves to Authoritarianism or Totalitarianism
- Starts or continue the Estado Novo in Brazil and Portugal.
- Advent of the modern welfare state in New Zealand and Sweden.
- The Empire of Japan invades China as a precursor to Japanese invasions in Southeast Asia
- The Spanish Civil War
- Start of World War II in Asia and Europe

Economics

- Worldwide Great Depression

Culture, religion

- Radio becomes dominant mass media in industrial nations
- "Golden Age" of radio begins in U.S.
- First intercontinental commercial airline flights
- Height of the Art Deco movement in Europe and the US
- The Wizard of Oz
- "Big band" or "swing" music becomes popular (from 1935 onward)
- Superman debuts in 1938.
- Triumph of the Will

Others

- U.S. presidential candidate Huey Long assassinated
- Board of Temperance Strategy established in U.S. to fight repeal of prohibition.

People

World leaders

- Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (Canada)
- President Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China)
- President Lin Sen (Republic of China)
- President Paul von Hindenburg (Germany)
- Adolf Hitler (Germany)
- King Victor Emmanuel III (Italy)
- Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (Italy)
- President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (Turkey)
- Emperor Hirohito (Japan)
- Pope Pius XI
- Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union)
- King George V (United Kingdom)
- King Edward VIII (United Kingdom)
- King George VI (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (United Kingdom)
- President Herbert Hoover (United States)
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt (United States)
- President W.T. Cosgrave (Irish Free State)
- President Eamon de Valera (Irish Free State)
- Taoiseach Eamon de Valera (Éire)
- Prime Minister James Scullin (Australia)
- Prime Minister Joseph Lyons (Australia)
- Prime Minister Sir Earle Page (Australia)
- Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage (New Zealand)
- President Getúlio Vargas (Brazil)
- Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar (Portugal)

Entertainers

- Alice Brady
- Bela Lugosi
- Benny Goodman
- Bing Crosby
- Boris Karloff
- Charlie Chaplin
- Duke Ellington
- Django Reinhardt
- Edward G. Robinson
- Fats Waller
- Fred Astaire
- Ginger Rogers
- Glenn Miller and his orchestra
- Judy Garland
- Katharine Hepburn
- Louis Armstrong
- The Marx Brothers
- Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy
- Carl Stuart Hamblen

Sports figures

- Cliff Bastin (English footballer)
- Donald Bradman (Australian cricketer)
- Bill "Dixie" Dean (English footballer)
- Jack Dyer (Australian Rules Football player)
- Walter Hammond (Gloucestershire & England cricketer)
- Eddie Hapgood (English footballer)
- George Headley (West Indies cricketer)
- Alex James (Scottish footballer)
- Douglas Jardine (England cricket captain)
- Harold Larwood (Nottinghamshire & England cricketer)
- Jack Lovelock (New Zealand runner)
- Jesse Owens (American track and field athlete)
- Fred Perry (English tennis player)

External links

- [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/front.html America in the 1930s]— An overview of the decade in the United States
- [http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/webtours/GE_P4_1_EN.html The Dirty Thirties] — Images of the Great Depression in Canada Category:1930s ko:1930년대 ja:1930年代 simple:1930s

Kuomintang

:KMT redirects here. For the scientific usage of KMT, see Kinetic theory. The Chinese Nationalist Party (; Tongyong Pinyin: Jhongguo Guomindang), commonly known as the Kuomintang (KMT), is a conservative political party currently active in the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. Together with the People First Party, it forms what is known as the pan-blue coalition, which leans towards Chinese reunification whereas the pan-green coalition leans towards Taiwan independence. Organized shortly after the Xinhai Revolution, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty in China, the KMT fought the Beiyang warlords and the Communist Party of China for control of the country before its retreat to Taiwan in 1949. There, it controlled the government under a one-party authoritarian state until reforms in the late 1970s through the 1990s loosened its grip on power. The ROC was once referred to synonymously with the KMT and known simply as "Nationalist China" after its ruling party. The KMT in Taiwan became the world's richest political party, with assets once valued to be around US$ 2.6-10 billion, though these assets have begun to be liquidated since 2000.

Support

Support for the KMT on Taiwan encompasses a wide range of groups. KMT support tends to be higher in northern Taiwan, where it draws its backing primarily from business interests, Mainlanders, Hakka, and aboriginals. Business interests and persons, especially in Taipei, tend to agree with the KMT's pro-business ideology, who seek, among other issues, to better relations with the mainland. In rural areas, support for the KMT comes largely as a result of patronage and social networks, in which supporters of the KMT view as working for the people. Critics tend to view this as a form of corruption that benefits only a select group of people. KMT also has strong support in the labor sector because of the many labor benefits and insurances implemented when it was in power. KMT traditionally has strong cooperations with labor unions too. aboriginals Opponents of the KMT include strong supporters of Taiwan independence. There also is opposition due to an image of KMT both as a Mainlander's and urban party out of touch with rural life. In addition, many oppose the KMT on the basis of its authoritarian past, such as the 228 Incident and the reign of White Terror. The party is a member of the International Democrat Union.

Early years

The Kuomintang was originally founded in Guangdong Province on August 25, 1912 from a collection of several revolutionary groups, including the Revolutionary Alliance, as a moderate democratic socialist party and Anarchists active in the Student movement. The party traces its roots to the Revive China Society, which was founded in 1895 and merged with several other anti-monarchist societies as the Revolutionary Alliance in 1905. Sun Yat-sen, who had just stepped down as provisional president of the Republic of China, was chosen as its overall leader under the title of premier (總理), and Huang Xing was chosen as Sun's deputy. However, the most influencial member of the party was the third ranking Sung Chiao-jen, who mobilized mass support from gentry and merchants for the KMT in winning the 1912 National Assembly election, on a platform of promoting constitutional parliamentary democracy. Though the party had an overwhelming majority in the first National Assembly, President Yuan Shikai started ignoring the parliamentary body in making presidential decisions, counter to the Constitution, and assassinated its parliamentary leader Sung Chiao-jen in Shanghai in 1913. Members of the KMT led by Sun Yat-sen staged the Second Revolution in July 1913, a poorly planned and ill-supported armed rising to overthrow Yuan, and failed. Yuan dissolved the KMT in November (whose members had largely fled into exile in Japan) and dismissed the parliament early in 1914. Second Revolution While exiled in Japan in 1914, Sun established the Chinese Revolutionary Party, but many of his old revolutionary comrades, including Huang Xing, Wang Jingwei, and Chen Jiongming, refused to join him or support his efforts in inciting armed uprising against the Beijing government, and Sun was largely sidelined within the Republican movement during this period. Sun returned to China in 1917 to establish a rival government at Guangzhou, but was soon forced out of office and exiled to Shanghai. There, with renewed support, he resurrected the KMT on October 10, 1919, but under the name of the Chinese Kuomintang (the old party had simply been called the Kuomintang). In 1920, Sun and the KMT were restored in Guangdong. In 1923, the KMT and its government accepted aid from the Soviet Union after being denied recognition by the western powers. Soviet advisers -- the most prominent of whom was an agent of the Comintern, Mikhail Borodin -- began to arrive in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of the KMT along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, establishing a Leninist party structure that lasted into the 1990s. The Communist Party of China (CPC) was under Comintern instructions to cooperate with the KMT, and its members were encouraged to join while maintaining their separate party identities, forming the First United Front between the two parties. Soviet advisers also helped the Nationalists set up a political institute to train propagandists in mass mobilization techniques, and in 1923 Chiang Kai-shek, one of Sun's lieutenants from the Tongmenghui days, was sent to Moscow for several months' military and political study. At the first party congress in 1924, which included non-KMT delegates such as members of the CPC, they adopted Sun's political theory, which included the Three Principles of the People - nationalism, democracy, and the livelihood of the people.

Civil and World War

Following the death of Sun Yat-sen, General Chiang Kai-shek emerged as the KMT leader and launched the Northern Expedition in 1926 against the warlord government in Beijing. He halted briefly in Shanghai in 1927 to purge the Communists who had been allied with the KMT, which sparked the Chinese Civil War. Kuomintang forces took Beijing in 1928 and received widespread diplomatic recognition in the same year. The capital was moved from Beijing to Nanjing, the original captial of the Ming dynasty. Thus began the period of "political tutelage," whereby the party was to control the government while instructing the people on how to participate in a democratic system. After several military campaigns, the Communists were forced (1934-35) to withdraw from their bases in southern and central China. The Kuomintang continued to attack the Communists, even during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). After the defeat of the Japanese, full-scale civil war between the Communists and Nationalists resumed. Chiang Kai-shek ordered his forces to the cities to defend industrialists and financiers, allowing the Communists to move freely through the countryside. Much of the war from 1946-1949 was financed from Taiwan's sugar and rice reserves acquired by the KMT. By the end of 1949 the Communists controlled almost all of mainland China, as the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan with 2 million refugees along with a hoard of China's national treasures. Some leftists stayed and broke away from the main Kuomintang to found the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang, which still exists (as of 2005) as one of the eight minor registered parties in the People's Republic of China.

KMT in Taiwan

In 1950 Chiang took office in Taipei under the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion which halted democratic processes until the mainland could be recovered from the communists. During this time, as a result of the 228 Incident, Taiwanese people had to endure what is called the "White Terror", a KMT-led political repression. The various government organs previously in Nanjing were re-established in Taipei as the KMT-controlled government actively claimed sovereignty over all China. The Republic of China retained China's seat in the United Nations until 1971. In the 1970s, the Kuomintang began to allow for "supplemental elections" on Taiwan to fill the seats of the aging representatives. Although opposition parties were not permitted, Tangwai (or, "outside the party") representatives were tolerated. In the 1980s, the Kuomintang focused on transforming itself from a party of a single-party system to one of many in a multi-party democracy, and on "Taiwanizing" itself. With the founding of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1986, the Kuomintang found itself competing against the DPP in Taiwanese elections. Lee Teng-Hui, the ROC President and the leader of the Kuomintang during the 1990s, angered the People's Republic of China and a significant number of voters on Taiwan with his advocacy of "special state-to-state relations" with the PRC, which many associated with Taiwan independence. In order to maintain influence, the Kuomintang was allegedly involved in vote-buying and black gold, which decreased its support among the Taiwanese middle class. black gold, was seen as a symbol of the party's wealth and dominance.]] As the ruling party on Taiwan, the KMT amassed a vast business empire of banks, investment companies, petrochemical firms, and television and radio stations. Its wealth in the year 2000 was at an estimated US $6.5 billion, making it the richest political party in the world. Although this war chest appeared to help the KMT throughout until the mid-1990s, it led to accusations of black gold corruption, and after 2000, the KMT's financial holdings appeared to be far more of a liability than an asset. After 2000, the KMT claims to have divested itself of a large quantity of assets, but because the transactions were not disclosed and because there is no transparency in the spending of campaign funds (no reporting is required), these claims are difficult to verify. There were accusations in the 2004 presidential election that the KMT retained assets that were illegally acquired, and in any case, the KMT retains large properties throughout Taiwan. According to political opponents, most of the KMT's properties used to be governmental public assets belonging to the Japanese ruling government and were not supposed to be transfered to non-governmental entities after the second world war. Currently, there is a law proposed by the DPP in the Legislative Yuan to recover illegally acquired party assets and return them to the government; however, since the pan-Blue alliance, the KMT and its smaller partner PFP, control the legislature, it is very unlikely to be passed. The KMT also acknowledged that part of its assets were acquired through extra-legal means and thus promised to "retro-endow" them to the government. However, the quantity of the assets which should be classified as illegal are still under heated debate; DPP, the current ruling party, claimed that there is much more that the KMT has yet to acknowledge. Also, the KMT actively sold assets under its title in order to quench its recent financial difficulties, which the DPP argues is illegal. Current KMT Chairman Ma Ying-Jiu's position is that the KMT will sell off some of its properties at below market rates rather than return them to the government and that the details of these transactions will not be publicly disclosed. The Kuomintang faced a split in 1994 that led to the formation of the Chinese New Party, alleged to be a result of Lee's "corruptive ruling style". The New Party has, since the purging of Lee, largely reintegrated into KMT. A much more serious split in the party occurred as a result of the 2000 Presidential election. Upset at the choice of Lien Chan as the party's presidential nominee, former party Secretary-General James Soong launched an independent bid, which resulted in the expulsion of Soong and his supporters and the formation of the People's First Party (PFP). The KMT candidate placed third behind Soong in the elections. After the election, Lee's strong relationship with the opponent became apparent. In order to prevent defections to the PFP, Lien moved the party away from Lee's pro-independence policies and became more favorable toward Chinese reunification. This shift led to Lee's expulsion from the party and the formation of the Taiwan Solidarity Union. With the party's voters defecting to both the PFP and TSU, the KMT did poorly in the December 2001 legislative elections and lost its position as the largest party in the Legislative Yuan. More recently, the party did well in the 2002 mayoral and council election with Ma Ying-jeou, its candidate for Taipei mayor, winning reelection by a landslide and its candidate for Kaohsiung mayor narrowly losing but doing surprisingly well. Since 2002, the KMT and PFP have coordinated electoral strategies. In 2004, the KMT and PFP ran a joint presidential ticket, with Lien running for president and Soong running for vice-president. In December 2003, however, the KMT chairman and presidential candidate, Lien Chan, initiated what appeared to some to be a major shift in the party's position on the linked questions of Chinese reunification and Taiwanese independence. Speaking to foreign journalists, Lien said that while the KMT was opposed to "immediate independence," it did not wish to be classed as "pro-reunificationist" either. At the same time, Wang Jin-pyng, speaker of the Legislative Yuan and the Pan-Blue Coalition's campaign manager in the 2004 presidential election, said that the party no longer opposed Taiwan's "eventual independence." This statement was later clarified as meaning that the KMT opposes any immediate decision on unification and independence and would like to have this issue resolved by future generations. The KMT's position on the cross-strait relationship was redefined as hoping to remain in the current neither-independent-nor-united situation. There has been a recent warming of relations between the pan-blue coalition and the PRC, with prominent members of both the KMT and PFP in active discussions with officials on the Mainland. In February 2004, it appeared that KMT had opened a campaign office for the Lien-Soong ticket in Shanghai targeting Taiwanese businessmen. However, after an adverse reaction in Taiwan, the KMT quickly declared that the office was opened without official knowledge or authorization. In addition, the PRC issued a statement forbidding open campaigning in the Mainland and formally stated that it had no preference as to which candidate won and cared only about the positions of the winning candidate. The loss of the presidential election of 2004 to DPP President Chen Shui-bian by merely over 30000 votes was a bitter disappointment to party members, leading to a few rallies for a few weeks protesting alleged electoral fraud and the "odd circumstances" of the shooting of President Chen. However, the fortunes of the party were greatly improved when the KMT did well in the legislative elections held in December 2004 by maintaining its support in southern Taiwan achieving a majority for the pan-blue coalition. Soon after the election, there appeared to be a falling out with the KMT's junior partner with the coalition the People's First Party and talk of a merger seemed to have ended. This split appeared to widen in early 2005, as the leader of the PFP, James Soong appeared to be reconciling with President Chen Shui-Bian and the Democratic Progressive Party. However, Soong appeared to split with Chen Shui-Bian after Chen attended a protest against the Anti-Secession Law passed by the People's Republic of China. In 2005, Party chairman Lien Chan announced that he was to leave his office. The two leading contenders for the position include Ma Ying-jeou and Wang Jin-pyng. On April 5 2005, Mayor of Taipei Ma Ying-jeou said he wishes to lead the opposition Kuomintang with Wang Jin-pyng, if he were elected its chairman in an exclusive interview with CTV talk show host Sisy Chen. On March 28 2005, thirty members of the Kuomintang (KMT), led by KMT vice chairman P. K. Chiang, arrived in mainland China, marking the first official visit by the KMT to the mainland since it was defeated by communist forces in 1949 (although KMT members include Chiang had made individual visits in the past). The delegates began their itinerary by paying homage to the revolutionary martyrs of the Tenth Uprising at Huanghuagang. They subsequently flew to the former ROC capital of Nanjing to commemorate Sun Yat-sen. During the trip KMT signed a 10-points agreement with the CPC. The opponents regarded this visit as the prelude of the third KMT-CPC cooperation. Weeks afterwards, in May, Chairman Lien Chan visited the mainland and met with Hu Jintao. No agreements were signed because Chen Shui-bian's government threatened to prosecute the KMT delegation for violating laws prohibiting citizens from collaborating with Communists. On 16 July 2005 Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou was elected as KMT chairman in the first contested leadership in Kuomintang's 93-year history. Some 54 percent of the party's 1.04 million members casted their ballots. Ma Ying-jeou garnered 72.4 percent of vote share, or 375,056 votes, against Wang Jin-pyng's 27.6 percent, or 143,268 votes. After failing to convince Wang to stay on as a vice chairman, Ma named, as vice chairpersons, holdovers Wu Po-hsiung (吳伯雄), Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤), and Lin Cheng-chi (林澄枝), as well as long-time party administrator and strategist John Kuan (關中), and the vice chairpersons were approved by handcount of party delegates. The KMT won a decisive victory in the 3-in-1 local elections of December 2005, replacing the DPP as the largest party at the local level. This was seen as a major victory for the party ahead of legislative elections in 2007, and especially for Ma Ying-jeou ahead of the 2008 presidential elections.

List of leaders of the Kuomintang

President: # Sung Chiao-jen (1912-1913) Premier: # Sun Yat-sen (1913-1915, 1918-1925) # Hu Hanmin (1925-1927) Chairman of Central Executive Committee # Hu Hanmin (1927-1931) # Chiang Kai-shek (1931-1938) Director-General: # Chiang Kai-shek (1938-1975) Chairman: # Chiang Ching-kuo (1975-1988) # Lee Teng-hui (1988-2000) # Lien Chan (2000-2005) # Ma Ying-jeou (2005-)

External link

- [http://www.kmt.org.tw/ Kuomintang official web site] ([http://www.kmt.org.tw/Aboutus/English/Aboutus-12.html English]) Category:Conservative parties Category:International Democrat Union Category:Nationalist parties Category:Political parties in Taiwan (Republic of China) Category:Republic of China Category:Single-party system parties zh-min-nan:Tiong-kok Kok-bîn-tóng ko:중국국민당 ja:中国国民党

Spelling reform

Natural languages often develop cumbersome manners of spelling words. Particular sounds may be represented by various letter combinations, while one letter may be pronounced in various ways. This is especially true of languages such as English that borrow heavily from other languages. Spelling reforms generally attempt to introduce a logical structure connecting the spelling and pronunciation of words. It may be associated with other efforts of language planning. People whose spelling does not conform to that of the standard language often suffer prejudice, being seen as uneducated, lower-class or even stupid. Proposed spelling reforms range from modest attempts to eliminate particular irregularities (such as SR1) thru more far-reaching reforms (such as Cut Spelling) to attempts to introduce a full phonemic orthography, like the Shavian alphabet, the latest [http://www.fonetikspell.info/devagreek.htm DevaGreek] alphabet, the Latinization of Turkish or Hangul in Korea. Stated reasons for these reforms include making the language more useful for international communications and easier to learn for immigrants and children. Opposition to reforms is often based upon concern that old literature will become inaccessible, the presumed suppression of regional accents, or simple conservatism based upon concern over unforeseen consequences. Reform efforts are further hampered by habit and a lack of a central authority to set new spelling standards. The idea of phonetic spelling has faced more serious criticism, on the grounds that it would hide morphological similarities between words that happen to have quite different pronunciations. This line of argument is based on the idea that when people read, they do not in reality try to work out the sequence of sounds composing each word, but instead either recognise words as a whole, or as a sequence of small number of semantically significant units (for example morphology might be read as morph+ology, rather than as a sequence of a larger number of phonemes). In a system of phonetic spelling, these semantic units become less distinct, as various allomorphs can be pronounced differently in different contexts. For example, in English spelling, most past participles are spelled with an -ed on the end, even though this can have several pronunciations (compare kissed and interrupted). This criticism is corroborated by the experience of some peoples of the former Soviet Union whose language was switched from the Latin alphabet to the Cyrillic alphabet, notably Moldovans. Accompanying elements of "phonetization" severed etymological links between related words thus destroying certain subtleties of the languages. One of the concerns in introducing a spelling reform is how to reflect different pronunciations, often linked to regions or classes. If the reform tries to be absolutely phonemic according to some model dialect, some speakers will find collisions with their usage.

English spelling reforms

English spelling contains many irregularities due to a number of factors. Borrowing from other languages is one of them; an even greater cause is the fact that English began to be widely written and printed during the Middle English period. While English spelling was relatively systematic during the Middle English period, the shift to modern English involved undergoing a Great Vowel Shift and many other changes in phonology. The older, etymological spellings have been retained despite major shifts in phonology. Functional illiteracy has been reported as high as 20% in the UK compared with 10% in Germany and 8% in Sweden. Professor Seymour referring to the findings of the EU project "Learning Disorders as a barrier to human development" children need 2 and a half to 3 years to gain the same level of literacy that children acquire in a year learning most other languages. (Masha Bell: Understanding English Spelling p 115). This difference is attributed to the exceptional level of irregularities in English spelling. Modern English has anywhere from fourteen to twenty-two separate vowel and diphthong phonemes, depending on dialect, and 26 or 27 consonants. A simple phoneme-letter representation of this language with the twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet is clearly impossible and multi letter graphemes are a part of most spelling reform proposal which is in any case in current English spelling. (As for example the first two phonemes of sheep are the diagraphs and .) Diacritical marks have occasionally formed part of spelling reform proposals. Practicalities of devising a phonemically based system are also the target of criticism. The vowel inventory of British English and American English differs substantially, and many words are pronounced differently. A phonemic system would have to pick between the two. That also neglects Australian, Caribbean English (in several forms), and so on. A number of proposals have been made to reform English spelling. Some were proposed by Noah Webster early in the 19th century. He was in part concerned to distinguish British spelling from American usage. Some, but by no means all, of his suggestions result in the differences between American and British spellings. Spelling reform is parodied in "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling"[http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/87/2094.10.html], which is variously attributed to Mark Twain, who was actually a supporter of reform, and to M J Shields.

List of leading spelling reform proposals

The reform proposals below are considered to be amongst the most likely to succeed for the following reasons:
- They do not introduce any new letters or symbols, unlike the radical proposals of the Shavian, Deseret and [http://www.fonetikspell.info/devagreek.htm FonetikSpell] alphabets
- They rely upon familiar digraphs
- They do not introduce diacriticals (accents), which are not favored by English speakers
- They do not dramatically change the appearance of existing words
- There is an increased regularity to the spelling rules
- There is an improvement to the consistency in the way the vowels are sounded #SoundSpel #Cut Spelling #Freespeling [http://www.freespeling.com/ Freespeling] #[http://www.spellingsociety.org/aboutsss/leaflets/tough.php Stage 1] #[http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/pamflets/p12ns90.php New Spelling 90] #[http://www.saispel.com Saispel™] #[http://crockford.com/wrrrld/nuspelynh.html Nuspelynh] #N'wenglish [http://www.literacy-research.com/] Numerous other proposals exist. Perhaps the best starting point to explore them is [http://www.spellingsociety.org/ The Simplified Spelling Society]

Successes in spelling complication

Some dictionaries of this time period also adopted false Latin etymologies:
- iland became island (from the Latin insula, although island is actually a Germanic word)
- ile became aisle (also from insula)

Successes in spelling simplification

Noah Webster, when developing his dictionary in the early 19th century, advocated spelling reform and used many simplified spellings in his dictionary. The most commonly seen, which separate American English from British English in this area, are, from the 1821 edition:
- musick became music (musick spelling is no longer in use today)
- publick became public (publick spelling is no longer in use today)
- cheque became check
- colour became color
- plough became plow
- favour became favor
- phantasy became fantasy (phantasy is now only used as an old-fashioned affectation) The 1806 edition uses some alternate spellings which did not gain acceptance:
- isle became ile
- examine became examin
- feather became fether
- definite became definit
- thread became thred
- thumb became thum Spelling reform managed to make some progress in the early 20th century. Most notably, beginning in 1934, the Chicago Tribune adopted many simplified spellings for words, which they did not entirely abandon until 1975. Some simplified spellings of the 20th century have become widely accepted:
- hiccough became hiccup (hiccough is still sometimes used). "Hiccup" is in fact the older form; "hiccough" was inspired by false etymology with "cough".
- interne became intern
- mediaeval (or mediæval) became medieval
- gramme became gram Others were only accepted in certain regions:
- sulphur became sulfur (dominant spelling in American English, IUPAC-adopted spelling)
- tyre became tire (tire is used in the U.S. and Canada, tyre in other English-speaking areas)
- programme became program (dominant spelling in American English and in the field of software)
- catalogue became catalog (dominant spelling in American English, uncommon elsewhere)
- analogue became analog (dominant spelling in American English, uncommon elsewhere)
- cancelled became canceled (single-L common in American English; double-L common in International English) Others survive as variant spellings:
- aghast became agast
- prologue became prolog
- hearken became harken
- proceed became procede
- socks became sox (remembered in the names of the Red Sox and White Sox Major League Baseball clubs)
- through became thru (informal or archaic, as in "drive-thru")
- night became nite (informal or archaic — "late nite")
- clue became clew (archaicism)
- telephone became telefone (archaicism) Finally, some never gained acceptance:
- hockey became hocky
- cigarette became cigaret
- thorough became thoro
- definitely became definitly
- traffic became trafic
- tongue became tung
- subpoena (or subpœna) became subpena
- drought became drouth

French spelling reform

Main article: Reforms of French orthography. In 1990, a substantial reform ordered by the French prime minister changed the spelling of about 2000 words as well as some grammar rules. With much delay, the new recommended orthography received official support in France, Belgium and Quebec in 2004, but it has not been widely adopted. Some major French-language dictionaries have incorporated some of the changes.

German spelling reform of 1996

Main article: German spelling reform of 1996. Even though German spelling has already been much more consistent than English or French spelling, German speaking countries signed an agreement for spelling reforms in 1996, planned to be gradually introduced beginning in 1998 and fully used in 2005. The so-called Rechtschreibreform is still subject to dispute, and polls consistently show a majority against the new rules. In Summer of 2004, several newspapers and magazines returned to the old rules. It was not the first reform of the German spelling. There was an earlier reform in 1901. In 1944 another was due to be introduced, but ultimately came to nothing because of the war situation.

Indonesian spelling reforms

Indonesian underwent spelling reforms in 1947 and 1972, after which its spelling was more consistent with the form of the language spoken in Malaysia (i.e. Malay). The first of these changes (oe to u) occurred around the time of independence in 1947; all of the others were a part of an officially-mandated spelling reform in 1972. Some of the old spellings, which were more closely derived from the Dutch language, still survive in proper names.

Norwegian spelling reforms

Prior to Norway becoming independent in 1905, Norwegians wrote Danish. After the independence there were spelling reforms in 1907, 1917, 1938, 1941 and 1981, reflecting the tug-of-war between the spelling-style preferred by traditionalists, nazis, urban middle class and urban working class.

Portuguese spelling reforms

The original medieval spelling of Portuguese was mostly phonetic, but, from the Renaissance on, many authors who admired classical culture began to use an etymological orthography. In the early 20th century, however, spelling reforms in Portugal and Brazil reverted the orthography to phonetic principles. Subsequent reforms have aimed mainly at three objectives, with variable success: to eliminate the few traces of redundant etymological spelling that remained, to reduce the number of words marked with diacritics, and to bring the Brazilian spelling standard and the European-African spelling standard closer to each other. In the early 20th century, Brazil and Portugal started talks on spelling reform to end the pseudo-etymological writing system. Because of delays, Portugal adopted the reform alone in 1911, resulting in a split between the orthographies of the two countries. In 1924, the Portuguese and Brazilian academies settled on an International Agreement. In 1931, a preliminary agreement adopted the new orthography in Brazil. But there remained many differences, leading to the new orthographic agreement of 1943, which would have removed the remaining differences; however, Portugal has made another "reform" in 1945, which has restored some "mute" letters as in "facto" or "assumpção", which are spelled "fato" and "assunção" according to 1943 reform. In 1956 Brazil has adopted a simplification in accentuation rules. In 1971, some differences were removed. In 1986, Brazil invited the other six Portuguese-speaking countries (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe) to a meeting in Rio de Janeiro to address the remaining problems, but the results were not adopted. In 1990, these seven countries entered into a new agreement, to take effect in 1994. For various reasons, ratification was delayed in the nations' parliaments. But slowly, Portugal, Brazil and Cape Verde ratified the agreement; an alteration was made in 1998 in Cape Verde, which does not set a specific date to implement the agreement. In 2004, the seven nations and East Timor, assembled in the CPLP, agreed that the agreement should enter into practice immediately in the countries that had ratified it, and to accept both orthographies. This led to the acceleration of the ratification process in East Timor and Guinea-Bissau. The old orthographies, however, continue to predominate in the respective countries until three countries rectify the alteration to the agreement. As of January 2005, only Brazil has fulfilled the requirements. In the other and, Portugal is facing elections delaying the use of the new spelling reform. All this is moot in Brazil, where apart from some enthusiasts the reform is being thoroughly ignored, as most people do not see any problem with the current orthography and many linguists argue it would enforce uniformity where Brazilian usage is actually more regular or reflects local pronunciation.

Russian spelling reforms

Main article: Reforms of Russian orthography. Over the time, there were a number of changes in spelling. They were mostly related with elimination of letters of the Cyrillic alphabet rendered obsolete by changes in phonetics. When Peter I introduced his "civil script" in 1708, based on more western-looking letter shapes, spelling was simplified as well. The most recent major reform of Russian spelling was carried out shortly after the Russian Revolution. The Russian orthography was simplified by eliminating four obsolete letters and the archaic usage of the letter yer (hard sign) at the ends of words, which had originally been a vowel with a sound similar to schwa, but had become silent by the 20th century.

Spanish language spelling reforms

Spanish orthography is such that every speaker can guess the pronunciation (adapted for accent) from the written form. While the same pronunciation could be misspelt in several ways — there are homophones, because of the language's silent h, vacilations between b and v, between ll and y, and between c and z (and between c, z, and s in Latin America and some parts of the Peninsula) — the orthography is far more coherent than, say, English orthography. In spite of that, there have been several initiatives to reform the spelling: Andrés Bello succeeded in making his proposal official in several South American countries, but they later returned to the standard set by the Real Academia Española. Another initiative, the O.RR.L.I., remained a curiosity. Juan Ramón Jiménez proposed changing -ge- and -gi to -je- and ji, but this is only applied in editions of his works or his wife's. Gabriel García Márquez raised the issue of reform during a congress at Zacatecas, but, with all his prestige, he got attention but nothing going. The Academies however from time to time change several tidbits, such as allowing este instead of éste ("this one"), when there is no possible confusion.

External links

- [http://www.spellingsociety.org The Simplified Spelling Society]
- [http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j1/norwegian.php A brief history of spelling reform in Norway]
- [http://specgram.com/CXLIX.1/03.chambers.reform.html A 21st Century Proposal for English Spelling Reform]: A humorous look at spelling reform, arguing that the complexity of English has led to its position as a world language, and thus should increase.
- [http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/wrintref.htm Writing Systems Reforms and Revolutions]

References

FODOR István, HAGÈGE Claude (eds) (1983-1989), La Réforme des langues. Histoire et avenir. Language reform. History and future. Sprachreform. Geschichte und Zukunft, Hamburg, Buske Category:Linguistics

1956

1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar.

Events

January-April

- January 1 - End of Anglo-Egyptian Codominium in Sudan.
- January 16 - President Gamal Abdal Nasser of Egypt vows to reconquer Palestine.
- January 26 - 1956 Winter Olympic Games open in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.
- January 26 - The United Kingdom bans heroin.
- January 25-January 26 - Finnish troops reoccupy Porkkala after Soviet troops vacate its military base. Civilians can return February 4.
- February 6 - Paul Harvey arrested for trying to break into Argonne National Laboratory.
- February 15 - Urho Kekkonen is elected President of Finland.
- February 22 - Elvis Presley enters the music charts for the first time, with "Heartbreak Hotel."
- February 23 - Nikita Khrushchev attacks the veneration of Joseph Stalin as a "cult of personality."
- March 1 - the International Air Transport Association finalises a draft of the Radiotelephony spelling alphabet for the International Civil Aviation Organization.
- March 2 - Morocco declares its independence from France.
- March 9 - British deport Archbishop Makarios from Cyprusto Seychelles.
- March 12 - United Kingdom abolishes death penalty for murder
- March 15 - The Broadway musical My Fair Lady opens in New York City.
- March 20 - Tunisia gains independence from France.
- March 23 - Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic.
- April 7 - Spain relinquishes its protectorate in Morocco.
- April 9 - Habib Bouirgiba is elected prime minister of Tunisia.
- April 19 - British diver Lionel Crabb dives into the Portsmouth harbor to investigate visiting Soviet cruiser and vanishes.
- April 19 - Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier III of Monaco.

May-June

- early May - The Methodist Church in America decides at its General Conference to grant women full ordained clergy status.
- May 8 - Austria and Israel form diplomatic relations.
- May 8 - Constitutional union between Indonesia and Netherlands is dissolved.
- May 9 - First ascent of Manaslu, eighth highest mountain in the world.
- May 18 - First ascent of Lhotse (main), fourth highest mountain.
- May 21 - Nuclear testing: In the Pacific Ocean, Bikini Atoll is nearly obliterated by the first airborne explosion of a hydrogen bomb.
- May 23 - French minister Pierre Mendes-France resigns due to government's policy on Algeria.
- June 1 - Vyacheslav Molotov resigns as a foreign minister of Soviet Union; he later becomes ambassador in Mongolia.
- June 6 - In Singapore, chief minister David Marshall resigns after breakdown of talks about internal self government in London.
- June 10 - 1956 Summer Olympics: Equestrian events open in Stockholm, Sweden.
- June 14 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorizes the phrase "under God" should be added to the Pledge of Allegiance
- June 18 - Last foreign troops leave Egypt.
- June 23 - Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes the second president of Egypt.
- June 28 - MP Sydney Silverman's bill for abolition of death penalty passes the British House of Commons.
- June 28 - Labour riots at Poznan, Poland, are crushed with heavy loss of life. Soviet troops fire at crowd that protests high prices - 53 dead.
- June 29 - Actress Marilyn Monroe marries the playwright Arthur Miller.
- June 30 - A TWA Lockheed Constellation and United Airlines Douglas DC-7 collide in mid-air over the Grand Canyon in Arizona and crash. All 128 people aboard the two aircraft are killed in the disaster. The accident prompts tighter air traffic control to be implemented in the United States.

July-August

- July 2 - Two passengers planes collide and fall into Grand Canyon - 127 dead
- July 8 - First ascent of Gasherbrum II.
- July 10 - British House of Lords defeats the abolition of death penalty.
- July 24 - At New York City's Copacabana Club, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy show together which started on July 25, 1946.
- July 25 - 45 miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria sinks after colliding with the Swedish ship SS Stockholm in heavy fog, killing 51.
- July 26 - Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation.
- July 30 - A Joint Resolution of the U.S. Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing "In God We Trust" as the U.S. national motto.
- July 31 - Jim Laker sets extraordinary record at Old Trafford in the fourth Test of taking nineteen wickets in a first class match (the previous best was seventeen).
- August 8 - Fire and explosion kills 263 miners at Marcinelle, Belgium.
- August 17 - West Germany bans communist party

September-October

- September 25 - Submarine telephone cable across the Atlantic opened
- October 10 - Finland joins UNESCO
- October 14 - Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Indian Untouchable leader, converts to Buddhism along with 385,000 followers. See Neo-Buddhism.
- October 15 - RAF retires its last Lancaster bomber
- October 15 - Fidel Castro and Che Guevara depart from Tuxpan, Mexico enroute to Santiago de Cuba aboard ship Granma with 82 men. After the ship passes a storm, it lands on Belici, Cuba, December 2
- October 23 - Hungarian revolution against the pro-Soviet government. Soviet Union intervenes. Hungary attempts to leave the Warsaw Pact.
- October 26 - Warsaw Pact troops invade Hungary.
- October 29 - Suez Crisis begins: Israel invades the Sinai Peninsula and push Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.
- October 29 - Tangier Protocol signed: The international city Tangier is reintegrated into Morocco.
- October 31 - Suez Crisis: The United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal.

November-December

- November 4 - 1956 Hungarian Revolution: Soviet troops invade Hungary to crush a revolt that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded and nearly a quarter million leave the country.
- November 6 - U.S. presidential election, 1956: Republican incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower is reelected by defeating Democrat challenger Adlai E. Stevenson in a rematch of their contest four years earlier.
- November 6 - Enoch A. Holtwick defeated as presidential candidate of Prohibition Party.
- November 7 - Suez Crisis: The United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution calling for the United Kingdom, France and Israel to withdraw their troops from Egypt immediately.
- November 14 - Fighting ends in Hungary.
- November 16 - Suez canal blocked.
- November 20 - In Yugoslavia, former prime minister Milovan Sjilas is arrested after he critisized Josip Broz Tito
- November 22 - Beginning of the Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia.
- November 23 - Suez Crisis causes petrol rationing in Britain.
- December 2 - Fidel Castro and his followers land on Cuba in the boat Granma.
- December 2 - A pipe bomb explodes at a movie theater in Brooklyn (work of George Metesky), injuring six people.
- December 5 - Rose Heilbron becomes Britain's first female judge
- December 12 - Japan becomes member of the United Nations.
- December 23 - British and French troops leave Suez Canal region

Unknown date

- Eindhoven University of Technology founded in Eindhoven, The Netherlands
- First hard disk (5MB) invented by IBM.
- Minamata disease discovered

Births

January-February

- January 3 - Mel Gibson, Australian actor and director
- January 4 - Bernard Sumner, British guitarist (Joy Division and New Order)
- January 5 - Chen Kenichi, Japanese chef
- January 7 - David Caruso, American actor
- January 10 - Shawn Colvin, American singer
- January 14 - Ben Heppner, Canadian tenor
- January 16 - Martin Jol, Dutch football manager
- January 17 - Paul Young, English musician
- January 20 - Bill Maher, American actor, comedian, and political analyst
- January 21 - Geena Davis, American actress
- January 27 - Mimi Rogers, American actress
- January 31 - Johnny Rotten, British singer (Sex Pistols)
- February 3 - Nathan Lane, American actor
- February 11 - Didier Lockwood, French jazz violinist
- February 13 - Peter Hook, British bassist (Joy Division and New Order)
- February 14 - Tom Burlinson, Australian actor
- February 14 - Ron Shore, American film and television composer and producer
- February 15 - Desmond Haynes, West Indian cricketer
- February 18 - Thomas Gradin, Swedish hockey player
- February 19 - Roderick MacKinnon, American biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- February 24 - Paula Zahn, American television journalist
- February 26 - Keisuke Kuwata, Japanese musician
- February 29 - Randy Jackson, American musician
- February 29 - Bob Speller, Canadian politician
- February 29 - Aileen Carol Wuornos, American serial killer (d. 2002)

March-April

- March 11 - Rob Paulsen, American voice actor
- March 21 - Ingrid Kristiansen, Norwegian runner
- April 3 - Ray Combs, American game show host and comedian
- April 4 - Kerry Chikarovski, Australian politician
- April 4 - David E. Kelley, American writer and television producer
- April 6 - Dilip Vengsarkar, Indian cricketer
- April 12 - Andy Garcia, American actor
- April 13 - Peter 'Possum' Bourne, Australian race car driver (d. 2003)
- April 13 - Alison Wheeler, British political activist
- April 14 - Barbara Bonney, American soprano
- April 16 - David M. Brown, United States Naval Captain, NASA astronaut (d. 2003)
- April 16 - Lise-Marie Morerod, Swiss skier
- April 19 - Sue Barker, British tennis player and television presenter
- April 23 - Judy Davis, Australian actress
- April 26 - Koo Stark, British actress
- April 28 - Jimmy Barnes, Australian musician
- April 30 - Jorge Chaminé, Portuguese baritone
- April 30 - Lars von Trier, Danish film director

May-June

- May 4 - David Guterson, American writer
- May 4 - Ulrike Meyfarth, German high jumper
- May 7 - Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime Minister of the Netherlands
- May 13 - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Indian guru
- May 13 - Steve Blackwood, American actor and musician
- May 15 - Dan Patrick, American sportscaster
- May 16 - Olga Korbut, Russian gymnast
- May 17 - Sugar Ray Leonard, American boxer
- May 17 - Bob Saget, American actor
- May 19 - James Gosling, Canadian software engineer
- May 20 - Ingvar Ambjørnsen, Norwegian author
- May 21 - Judge Reinhold, American actor
- May 23 - Buck Showalter, baseball player and manager
- June 6 - Björn Borg, Swedish tennis player
- June 9 - Patricia Cornwell, American novelist
- June 11 - Joe Montana, American football player
- June 23 - Glenn Danzig, American musician (Danzig)
- June 25 - Boris Trajkovski, President of the Republic of Macedonia (d. 2004)
- June 27 - Heiner Dopp, German field hockey player
- June 30 - Ronald Winans, American musician (d. 2005)

July-August

- July 2 - Jerry Hall, American model and actress
- July 9 - Tom Hanks, American actor
- July 14 - Ran Andrews, Canadian painter
- July 15 - Ian Curtis, British musician (Joy Division) (d. 1980)
- July 15 - Barry Melrose, Canadian hockey player, coach, and commentator
- July 15 - Marky Ramone American drummer (The Ramones)
- July 16 - Tony Kushner, American playwright
- July 31 - Michael Biehn, American actor
- August 5 - Maureen McCormick, American actress
- August 14 - Rusty Wallace, American race car driver
- August 20 - Joan Allen, American actress
- August 21 - Kim Cattrall, Canadian actress
- August 22 - Paul Molitor, baseball player
- August 23 - Andreas Floer, German mathematician (d. 1991)
- August 24 - John Culberson, American politician
- August 31 - Masashi Tashiro, Japanese television performer

September-December

- September 11 - Phil Bissett, American politican
- September 12 - Ricky Rudd, American race car driver
- September 14 - Costas Caramanlis, Greek politician
- September 14 - Ray Wilkins, English footballer and coach
- September 20 - Gary Cole, American actor
- September 22 - Masayuki Suzuki, Japanese singer (Rats & Star)
- September 26 - Linda Hamilton, American actress
- September 30 - Fran Drescher, American actress
- October 11 - Nicanor Duarte Frutos, President of Paraguay
- October 17 - Mae Jemison, astronaut
- October 18 - Martina Navratilova, Czech-born tennis player
- October 19 - Carlo Urbani, Italian physician (d. 2003)
- November 18 - Warren Moon, American football player
- November 23 - Shane Gould, Australian swimmer
- November 23 - Steve Harvey, American actor and comedian
- November 26 - Dale Jarrett, American race car driver
- November 27 - William Fichtner, American actor
- November 28 - Lucy Gutteridge, British actress
- November 28 - Andreas Augustin, Austrian author
- November 29 - Leo Laporte, Candian author and television host
- December 5 - Krystian Zimerman, Polish pianist
- December 5 - Brian Backer, American actor
- December 7 - Larry Bird, American basketball player
- December 7 - Mark Rolston, American actor
- December 8 - Warren Cuccurullo, American musician (Missing Persons and Duran Duran)
- December 12 - Johan Van der Velde, Dutch cyclist
- December 18 - Ron White, American comedian
- December 23 - Michele Alboreto, Italian race car driver
- December 23 - Dave Murray, British guitarist
- December 26 - David Sedaris, American essayist
- December 28 - Nigel Kennedy, English violinist

Deaths

January-April

- January 3 - Alexander Grechaninov, Russian composer (b. 1864)
- January 5 - Mistinguett, French singer (b. 1875)
- January 13 - Lyonel Charles Feininger, German painter (b. 1871)
- January 24 - Sir Alexander Korda, Hungarian-born film director (b. 1893)
- January 27 - Erich Kleiber, German conductor (b. 1890)
- January 29 - H. L. Mencken, American writer (b. 1880)
- January 31 - A. A. Milne, English author (b. 1882)
- February 8 - Connie Mack, baseball executive and manager (b. 1862)
- February 18 - Gustave Charpentier, French composer (b. 1860)
- March 17 - Irène Joliot-Curie, French physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (b. 1897)
- March 20 - Fanny Durack, Australian swimmer
- March 25 - Robert Newton, English film actor (b. 1905)
- March 30 - Edmund Clerihew Bentley, English inventor (b. 1875)
- March 31 - Ralph DePalma, Italian-born race car driver (b. 1884)
- April 30 - Alben Barkley, Vice-President of the United States (b. 1877)

May-December

- May 12 - Louis Calhern, American actor (b. 1895)
- May 17 - Austin Osman Spare, English magician (b. 1886)
- May 18 - Maurice Tate, English cricketer (b. 1895)
- May 20 - Max Beerbohm, English theater critic (b. 1872)
- May 26 - Al Simmons, baseball player (b. 1902)
- May 31 - Diedrich Hermann Westermann, German linguist (b. 1875)
- June 17 - Paul Rostock, German official, surgeon, and university professor (b. 1892)
- June 23 - Reinhold Glière, Russian composer (b. 1875)
- July 7 - Gottfried Benn, German poet (b. 1886)
- August 2 - Albert Woolson, last surviving Union veteran of the American Civil War (b. 1847)
- August 11 - Jackson Pollock, American painter (b. 1912)
- August 14 - Bertolt Brecht, German playwright (b. 1898)
- August 16 - Bela Lugosi, Hungarian-born film actor (b. 1882)
- August 23 - Peaches Browning, American actress (b. 1910)
- August 25 - Alfred Kinsey, American sex researcher (b. 1894)
- September 21 - Anastasio Somoza García, President of Nicaragua (b. 1896)
- September 22 - Frederick Soddy, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1877)
- September 27 - Babe Didrikson Zaharias, American athlete and golfer (b. 1911)
- October 12 - Don Lorenzo Perosi, Italian composer (b. 1872)
- October 19 - Isham Jones, American musician (b. 1894)
- October 26 - Walter Gieseking, French conductor (b. 1895)
- November 24 - Guido Cantelli, Italian conductor (b. 1920)
- December 6 - Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Indian untouchable leader (b. 1891)
- December 7 - Huntley Gordon, Canadian actor (b. 1887)
- December 16 - Nina Hamnett, Welsh artist (b 1890)

Unknown dates

- James Alexander Allan, Australian poet (b. 1889)

Nobel Prizes

- Physics - William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain
- Chemistry - Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov
- Physiology or Medicine - André Frédéric Cournand, Werner Forssmann, Dickinson W. Richards
- Literature - Juan Ramón Jiménez
- Peace - not awarded Category:1956 ko:1956년 ms:1956 ja:1956年 simple:1956 th:พ.ศ. 2499

1950s

----

Events and trends

The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the the baby boom from returning GIs who went to college under the Montgomery G.I. Bill and settled in suburban America. Most of the internal conflicts that had developed in earlier decades like women's rights, civil rights, imperialism, and war were relatively suppressed or neglected during this time as a returning world from the brink hoped to see a more consistent way of life as opposed to liberalism and radicalism of the 1930s and 1940s. The effect of suppressing social problems in the 50s would backfire in the 60s with the counter-culture movement. The 1950s were also marked with a rapid rise in conflict with the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union that would heighten the Cold War to an unprecedented level which would include the Arms Race, Space Race, McCarthyism, and Korean War. Stalin's death in 1953 left an enormous impact in Eastern Europe that forced the Soviet Union to create more liberal policies internally and externally. The rise of Suburbia as well as the growing conflict with the East are the two generally accepted reasons for the conservative domination of this decade.

Technology

- United States tests the first fusion bomb. See History of nuclear weapons
- Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, and thus the Sputnik crisis
- The De Havilland Comet enters service as the world's first jet airliner
- Charles Townes builds a maser in 1953 at Columbia University.

Science

- Urey-Miller experiment shows that under simulated conditions resembling those thought to have existed shortly after Earth first accreted, many of the basic organic molecules that form the building blocks of modern life are able to spontaneously form
- Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the helical structure of DNA at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge
- Bruce Heezen discovers the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
- Polio vaccine
- The first organ transplants are done in Boston and Paris in 1954.

War, peace, and politics

- Korean War
- Red Scare, McCarthy Hearings
- Suez Crisis
- European Common Market founded.
- Warsaw pact founded.
- Most aboveground nuclear test explosions happened during this decade.
- The United States CIA orchestrated the overthrow of the Guatemalan government.
- Hungarian revolution of 1956 brutally suppressed by Soviet Union's troops.
- Fidel Castro gains power in Cuba.
- Mahmoud Abbas becomes involved in Palestinian politics in Qatar.
- Decolonization: Algeria, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
- Early history of the People's Republic of China, of the state of Israel, and of the Indonesian state.

Economics

- "Economic miracle" in West Germany and Italy.

Culture, religion

- Traditional pop music reaches its climax; early rock and roll music was embraced by teenagers/youth culture while generally dismissed or condemned by older generations.
- Brylcreem and other hair tonics have a period of popularity
- Television replaces radio as the dominant mass medium in industrialized countries.
- In the West, the generation traumatized by the Great Depression and World War II creates a culture with emphasis on normality and calm conformity.
- Juvenile delinquency said to be at unprecedented epidemic proportions in USA, though some see this era as relatively low in crime compared to today. Continuing poverty in some regions during recessions later on in this decade.
- Fairly high rates of unionization, government social spending, taxes, and the like in the US and European countries. Mostly liberal or moderate Western governments, though communism/Cold War play a role in reaction to, and within, domestic politics.
- Beatnik culture/ The Beat Generation
- Optimistic visions of semi-Utopian technological future including such devices as the flying car.
- The Day the Earth Stood Still hits movie theaters.
- Along with the appearance of the sentence Kilroy was here across the United States, graffiti as an art form develops, especially among urban African Americans; graffiti eventually becomes one of the four elements of hip hop
- Considerable racial tension with military and schools desegregation in the US, though controversy never truly erupts as later on in the 1960s.
- The Catcher in the Rye
- The Twilight Zone premiers as the first major science-fiction show. Rise of evangelical Christianity including Youth for Christ (1943); the National Association of Evangelicals, the American Council of Christian Churces, the Billy Graham Evagelistic Association (1950), and the Campus Crusade for Christ (1951). Christianity Today was first published in 1956. 1956 also marked the beginning of Bethany Fellowship, a small press that would grow to be a leading evangelical press.
- Carl Stuart Hamblen religious radio broadcaster.

Others

- Wartime rationing ends in the United Kingdom.

People

World leaders

- Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent (Canada)
- Prime Minister John Diefenbaker (Canada)
- Chairman Mao Zedong (People's Republic of China)
- President Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China on Taiwan)
- President Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt)
- Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (India)
- Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Israel)
- Emperor Hirohito (Japan)
- Pope Pius XII
- Pope John XXIII
- Taoiseach John A. Costello (Ireland)
- Taoiseach Eamon de Valera (Ireland)
- Taoiseach Sean Lemass (Ireland)
- Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union)
- Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet Union)
- King George VI (United Kingdom)
- Queen Elizabeth II (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Robert Menzies (Australia)
- Prime Minister George Borg Olivier (Malta)
- President Harry S. Truman (United States)
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower (United States)
- Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (West Germany)
- President Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia)

Entertainers

- Desi Arnaz
- Abbott and Costello
- Paul Anka
- Lucille Ball
- Jack Benny
- Chuck Berry
- Humphrey Bogart
- Marlon Brando
- Maria Callas
- Dalida
- James Dean
- Bo Diddley
- Margot Fonteyn
- Ava Gardner
- The Goons
- Cary Grant
- Tony Hancock
- Audrey Hepburn
- Charlton Heston
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Buddy Holly
- Grace Kelly
- Ernie Kovacs
- Mario Lanza
- Jerry Lewis
- Dean Martin
- Groucho Marx
- Marilyn Monroe
- Paul Newman
- Laurence Olivier
- Elvis Presley
- George Reeves
- Little Richard
- James Stewart
- Gale Storm
- Jerry Lee Lewis
- Jacques Tati
- Elizabeth Taylor
- John Wayne
- Jack Webb
- Ed Wynn

Sports figures

- Alberto Ascari (Italian racing driver)
- Roger Bannister (English track and field athlete)
- Yogi Berra (American baseball player)
- Maureen Connolly (American tennis player)
- Colin Cowdrey (England cricketer)
- Juan Manuel Fangio (Argentinian racing driver)
- Neil Harvey (Australian cricketer)
- Gordie Howe (Canadian ice hockey player)
- Len Hutton (England cricketer)
- Rocky Marciano (American boxer)
- Stanley Matthews (English soccer player)
- Willie Mays (American baseball player)
- Ferenc Puskás (Hungarian soccer player)
- Maurice Richard (Canadian ice hockey player)
- Sugar Ray Robinson (American boxer)
- Bill Russell (American basketball player)
- Gary Sobers (West Indies cricketer)
- Brian Statham (England cricketer)
- Frank Tyson (England cricketer)
- Frank Worrell (West Indies cricketer)
- Lev Yashin (Russian soccer player)

External links

- [http://www.fiftiesweb.com The FiftiesWeb]
- [http://vlib.iue.it/history/USA/ERAS/20TH/1950s.html WWW-VL: 1950s History] Category:1950s ko:1950년대 ja:1950年代 simple:1950s

1960s

The 1960s in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. The Sixties has come to refer to the complex of inter-related cultural and political events which occurred in approximately that period, in western countries, particularly Britain, France, the United States and West Germany. Social upheaval was not limited to just these nations, reaching large scale in nations such as Japan, Mexico and Canada as well. The term is used both nostalgically by those who participated in those events, and pejoratively by those who regard the time as a period whose harmful effects are still being felt today. The decade was also labelled the Swinging Sixties because of the libertine attitudes that emerged during the decade. Popular memory has conflated into the Sixties some events which did not actually occur during the period. For example, although some of the most dramatic events of the American civil rights movement occurred in the early 1960s, the movement had already began in earnest during the 1950s. On the other hand, the rise of feminism and gay rights began only in the very late 1960s and did not fully flower until the Seventies. However, the "Sixties" has become synonymous with all the new, exciting, radical, subversive and/or dangerous (according to one's viewpoint) events and trends of the period.

Events and trends

Many of the trends of the 1960s were due to the demographic changes brought about by the baby boom generation, the height of the Cold War, and the dissolution of European colonial empires. The rise in social revolution, civil rights movements, human rights movement, anti-War movements, and the Counterculture movement are only some of the characteristics that defined the 1960s. Many experts attribute the 1960s "counter-culture revolution" as being the result of the major social and political factors that rose in the 1950s like brinksmanship, continued fighting in the 3rd world, and a return to pre-WWII lifestyle. The new generation was determined to reject a pre-WWII conformist lifestyle with men in suits and women in the kitchen. While many believed it to be just a "Western" phenomenon, the '60s revolution spread far beyond the borders of America and Western Europe. In South America, revolutions were at a height, in the Eastern Bloc, movements were made inspired by the Hungarian Revolution to reject Soviet domination, and in the Middle East attempted to resist Soviet and American domination (see Non-Aligned Movement). Overall, the '60s affected almost the entire globe. It was during this time that protectionist, command, and mixed economies reached their peak...

Technology

Non-Aligned Movement Non-Aligned Movement]
- USSR puts first man (Yuri Gagarin) and first woman (Valentina Tereshkova) in outer space
- The United States puts man on Earth's Moon (see Apollo 11)
- Geosynchronous satellites revolutionize global communications
- Start of the development of algorithmic information theory
- The ARPAnet, precursor of the Internet, is founded in 1969 as a United States Department of Defense project. The numbered series of Request For Comments (RFC) documents begins in order to document the standards and practices of this network, and continues to this day
- Direct Use of the Sun's Energy by pioneer solar-energy scientist Farrington Daniels is published (1964)
- Compact audio cassette introduced; begins to displace reel-to-reel audio tape recording for home users

Science

- Discovery of plate tectonics revolutionizes understanding of continental drift
- Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob discover the lac operon
- Rise of the science of ecology in the awareness of the intelligentsia

War, peace and politics

intelligentsia"]] intelligentsia]
- Cultural Revolution in mainland China causes political and economic chaos.
- Nigerian Civil War begins.
- 6-Day War between Israelis and Arabs in 1967.
- Beginning of The Troubles in Northern Ireland
- Berlin Wall built in 1961.
- Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, the United States sponsored an attempt to overthrow Cuba's socialist government and Fidel Castro.
- Civil rights movement in the United States; end of official segregation and disenfranchisement of African-Americans; racial tensions continue with large race riots in Watts (Los Angeles) in 1966, Detroit in 1967, and Hough and Glenville in Cleveland.
- Sino-Indian War in late 1962. China attacks India and gains some land in Kashmir.
- Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
- Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 over Kashmir ends in a stalemate.
- The Vietnam War and protests, leading to Kent State University shootings in May, 1970.
- Suppression of uprising in Czechoslovakia.
- The Stonewall Riots in New York City give birth to the gay rights movement, June 1969.
- United Nations imposes sanctions against South Africa to protest the policy of Apartheid.
- Students protesting perceived problems with the status-quo are suppressed with violence by police and soldiers in USA, France, Mexico, Czechoslovakia. See New Left.
- The Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille) begins in Quebec - precipitous decline of the Roman Catholic church, liberalism, social-democratic programs, and the birth of modern Quebec nationalism.
- The rise of radical feminism.

Economics

- Many countries in The West experience high economic growth (4 to 8% per year)

Culture

- Rock and roll develops, diversifies, and becomes very hip. The Beatles eclipse Elvis Presley and become the most popular musical artists in the world. "Topical" artists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez worked social commentary into their music.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey hits movie theaters
- The long running BBC family science fiction show Doctor Who begins in 1963
- Star Trek makes its debut in 1966
- James Bond movies begin. Dr. No is the first of the series in 1962, starring Sean Connery as Bond
- Hippies, drug culture & rock and roll converge at the Woodstock festival, 1969
- In the West, the growing popularity of religions other than Christianity (for example, as discussed in the writings of Alan Watts), and of atheism; Time Magazine asks: "Is God Dead?" See Fourth Great Awakening, Consciousness Revolution
- Memorable expositions, or "World's Fairs," are held in Seattle (1962), New York (1964/1965), Montreal (1967) and San Antonio (1968)
- Progressive rock emerges
- The fine arts begins to move away from exclusively consisting of painting, drawing, and sculpture and begins to incorporate elements from popular culture (Pop art) and begins to favour the ideas behind a work, rather than the work itself (Conceptual art)

Others

Conceptual art built in 1969]]
- Post-Colonialism; many new or previously colonized countries achieve independence in Africa, Asia
- U.S. president John F. Kennedy assassinated in 1963; his brother Robert F. Kennedy assassinated in 1968
- U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated on April 4, 1968
- Charles Manson gave up his ambitions of becoming a popular song writer to become a cult leader and mass murderer, 1969
- Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X assassinated on February 21, 1965
- U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society program
- In the United States, increase in crime; riots in Los Angeles in 1965 and Chicago, Illinois at the 1968 Democratic National Convention
- Rise of the baby boom generation to adulthood
- First widespread availability of practical birth control pill for women; See sexual revolution
- Sweden switches from driving on the left to the right, in order to harmonise with neighbouring countries. See Rules of the road

Big changes during the Sixties

In the United States

The movement for civil and political rights for African Americans (in the early '60s usually called Negroes and in the later '60s Blacks), initially a non-violent movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Gandhian figures but later producing radical offshoots such as the Black Power movement and competing with the Black Panther Party and the Black Muslims for primacy in the African-American community. The beginning of what was generally seen as a new political era with the election of President John F. Kennedy in 1960, and its ending in tragedy and disillusionment with Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the assassinations of King and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and the collapse of Lyndon Johnson's presidency. The rise of a mass movement in opposition to the Vietnam War, culminating in the massive Moratorium protests in 1969, and also the movement of resistance to conscription (“the Draft”) for the war. The antiwar movement was initially based on the older 1950s "Peace movement" controlled by the Communist Party USA, but by the mid '60s it outgrew this and became a broad-based mass movement centred on the universities and churches. Stimulated by this movement, but growing beyond it, the large numbers of student-age youth, beginning with the Free University of California, Berkeley]] in 1964, peaking in the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois and reaching a climax with the shootings at Kent State University in 1970. The rapid rise of a "New Left," employing the rhetoric of Marxism but having little organizational connection with older Marxist organizations such the Communist Party, and even less connection with the supposed focus of Marxist politics, the organized labor movement, and consisting of ephemeral campus-based Trotskyist, Maoist and anarchist groups, some of which by the end of the 1960s had turned to terrorism. terrorism The overlapping, but somewhat different, movement of youth cultural radicalism manifested by the hippies and the counter-culture, whose emblematic moments were the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967 and the Woodstock Festival in 1969. The rapid spread, associated with this movement, of the recreational use of cannabis and other drugs, particularly new synthetic psychedelic drugs such as LSD. The breakdown among young people of conventional sexual morality and the flourishing of the sexual revolution. Initially geared mostly to heterosexual male gratification, it soon gave rise to contrary trends, Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation. The rise of an alternative culture among affluent youth, creating a huge market for rock and blues music produced by drug-culture influenced bands such as The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane and The Doors, and also for radical music in the folk tradition pioneered by Bob Dylan.

In other Western countries

The peak of the student and New Left protests in 1968 coincided with political upheavals in a number of other countries. Although these events often sprang from completely different causes, they were influenced by reports and images of what was happening in the United States and France. Students in Mexico City, for example, protested against the corrupt regime of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz: in the resulting Tlatelolco massacre hundreds were killed. The influence of American culture and politics in Western Europe, Japan and Australia was already so great by the early 1960s that most of the trends described above soon spawned counterparts in most Western countries. University students rioted in London, Paris, Berlin and Rome, huge crowds protested against the Vietnam War in Australia and New Zealand (both of which had committed troops to the war), and politicians such as Harold Wilson and Pierre Trudeau modelled themselves on John F. Kennedy. An important difference between the United States and Western Europe, however, was the existence of a mass socialist and/or Communist movement in most European countries (particularly France and Italy), with which the student-based new left was able to forge a connection. The most spectacular manifestation of this was the May 1968 student revolt in Paris, which linked up with a general strike called by the Communist-controlled trade unions and for a few days seemed capable of overthrowing the government of Charles de Gaulle.

In non-Western countries

In Eastern Europe, students also drew inspiration from the protests in the west. In Poland and Yugoslavia they protested against restrictions on free speech by Communist regimes. In Czechoslovakia, 1968 was the year of Alexander Dubček’s Prague Spring, a source of inspiration to many Western leftists who admired Dubček's "socialism with a human face." The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August ended these hopes, and also fatally damaged the chances of the orthodox Communist Parties drawing many recruits from the student protest movement. In the People's Republic of China the mid 1960s were also a time of massive upheaval, and the Red Guard rampages of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution had some superficial resemblances to the student protests in the West. The Maoist groups that briefly flourished in the West in this period saw in Chinese Communism a more revolutionary, less bureaucratic model of socialism. Most of them were rapidly disillusioned when Mao welcomed Richard Nixon to China in 1972. People in China, however, saw the Nixon visit as a victory in that they believed the United States would concede that Mao Zedong thought was superior to capitalism (this was the Party stance on the visit in late 1971 and early 1972). The Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara also became an iconic figure for the student left, although he was in fact an orthodox Communist.

People

World leaders

Ernesto "Che" Guevara]]
- Prime Minister Robert Menzies (Australia)
- Prime Minister Harold Holt (Australia)
- Prime Minister John McEwen (Australia)
- Prime Minister John Diefenbaker (Canada)
- Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson (Canada)
- Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Canada)
- Chairman Mao Zedong (People's Republic of China)
- President Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China on Taiwan)
- President Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt)
- President Charles de Gaulle (France)
- Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (India)
- Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri (India)
- Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (India)
- Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Israel)
- Prime Minister Levi Eshkol (Israel)
- Emperor Hirohito (Japan)
- Pope John XXIII
- Pope Paul VI
- Prime Minister Basil Brooke (Northern Ireland)
- Prime Minister Terence O'Neill (Northern Ireland)
- Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark (Northern Ireland)
- Governor Luis A. Ferré (Commonwealth of Puerto Rico)
- Taoiseach Sean Lemass (Republic of Ireland)
- Taoiseach Jack Lynch (Republic of Ireland)
- Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet Union)
- Leonid Brezhnev (Soviet Union)
- Queen Elizabeth II (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Harold Wilson (United Kingdom)
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower (United States)
- President John F. Kennedy (United States)
- President Lyndon Johnson (United States)
- President Richard Nixon (United States)
- Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (West Germany)
- Chancellor Ludwig Erhard (West Germany)
- Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger (West Germany)
- President for Life Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia)

Writers and intellectuals

- Isaac Asimov
- J. G. Ballard
- Truman Capote
- Andy Capp
- Rachel Carson
- Noam Chomsky
- Judith Christ
- Philip K. Dick
- Louise Fitzhugh
- Milton Friedman
- Allen Ginsberg
- Seamus Heaney
- Robert A. Heinlein
- Frank Herbert
- Ken Kesey
- Timothy Leary
- Norman Mailer
- Marshall McLuhan
- Jules Pfeiffer
- Carl Sagan
- Charles Schulz
- Dr. Seuss
- John Steinbeck
- Hunter S. Thompson
- Joseph Heller
- Gore Vidal
- Kurt Vonnegut
- Alan Watts
- Tom Wolfe

Sports figures

- Lance Alworth (American football player)
- Richie Benaud (Australian cricket captain)
- George Best (Northern Irish football player)
- Nino Benvenuti (Italian boxer)
- Jim Brown (American football player)
- Wilt Chamberlain (American basketball player)
- Bobby Charlton (English football player)
- Jim Clark (Scottish racing driver)
- Cassius Clay later known as Muhammad Ali (American boxer)
- Roberto Clemente (Puerto Rican baseball player)
- Eusebio (Portuguese football player)
- Peggy Fleming (American figure skater)
- Bob Gibson (American baseball player)
- Cookie Gilchrist (American football player)
- Bobby Hull (Canadian hockey player)
- Gordie Howe (Canadian hockey player)
- Franz Klammer (Austrian skier)
- David Kopay (American football player)
- Sandy Koufax (American baseball player)
- Denis Law (Scotland footballer)
- Vince Lombardi (American football coach)
- Willie Mays (American baseball player)
- Stan Mikita (Slovak-Canadian hockey player)
- Bobby Moore (English football player)
- Joe Namath (American football player)
- Jack Nicklaus (American golfer)
- Arnold Palmer (American golfer)
- Gary Player (South African golfer)
- Bobby Orr (Canadian ice hockey player)
- Pelé (Brazilian football player)
- Richard Petty (American NASCAR racing driver)
- Frank Robinson (American baseball player)
- Bill Shankly (Liverpool FC football manager)
- Gary Sobers (Barbados & West Indies cricket captain and all-rounder)
- Alfredo di Stefano (Argentinian/Spanish football player)
- Fred Trueman (Yorkshire & England cricketer)

Entertainers

cricket
- Bud Abbott
- Steve Allen
- Ursula Andress
- Julie Andrews
- Fred Astaire
- John Astin
- Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello
- Joan Baez
- Lucille Ball
- Brigitte Bardot
- Billy Barty
- The Beach Boys
- The Beatles
- Tony Bennett
- Jack Benny
- Milton Berle
- Joey Bishop
- Ray Bolger
- Ernest Borgnine
- Charles Bronson
- Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner
- Johnny Brown
- Carol Burnett
- George Burns
- The Byrds
- Sid Caesar
- Godfrey Cambridge
- Diane Cannon
- Cantinflas
- Capucine
- Vicki Carr
- Diahann Carrol
- Johnny Carson
- Violet Carson
- Art Carney
- Jack Cassidy
- Ted Cassidy
- Carol Channing
- Roy Clark
- Imogene Coca
- Nat King Cole
- Sean Connery
- Tim Conway
- Bill Cosby
- Joan Crawford
- Bing Crosby
- Gary Crosby
- Phillip Crosby
- Tony Curtis
- Dalida
- Bette Davis
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
- Doris Day
- John Derrick
- Neil Diamond
- Angie Dickenson
- Walt Disney
- The Doors
- Donovan
- Mamie Van Doren
- Kirk Douglas
- Patty Duke
- Jimmy Durante
- Dick Van Dyke
- Bob Dylan
- Clint Eastwood
- Barbara Eden
- Linda Evans
- Robert Evans
- Henry Fonda
- Jane Fonda
- Peter Fonda
- Eileen Fulton
- Judy Garland
- James Garner
- Gerry & the Pacemakers
- Jack Gilford
- Jackie Gleason
- Cary Grant
- Kathryn Grant aka Kathryn Crosby
- Grateful Dead
- Dick Gregory
- Andy Griffith
- Merv Griffin
- Fred Gwynne
- Buddy Hackett
- Joey Heatherton
- Jimi Hendrix
- Audrey Hepburn
- Katharine Hepburn
- Charlton Heston
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Dustin Hoffman
- Bob Hope
- Dennis Hopper
- Ron Howard
- Rock Hudson
- The Jackson 5
- Chad and Jeremy
- Antonio Carlos Jobim
- Carolyn Jones
- Shirley Jones
- Tom Jones
- Janis Joplin
- Boris Karloff
- Danny Kaye
- Buster Keaton
- Gene Kelly
- Don Knotts
- Jimmy Komac
- Harvey Korman
- Nancy Kwan
- Bert Lahr
- Peter Lawford
- Norman Lear
- Bruce Lee
- Janet Leigh
- Jack Lemmon
- Jerry Lewis
- Art Linkletter
- Gina Lollobrigida
- Sophia Loren
- Peter Lorre
- Paul Lynde
- Shirley Maclaine
- Ann Margret
- Dean Martin
- Groucho Marx
- James Mason
- David McCallum
- Country Joe McDonald
- Steve McQueen
- Barry Melton
- The Monkees
- Mary Tyler Moore
- Rita Moreno
- Pat Morita
- Howard Morris
- Zero Mostel
- Paul Newman
- Jack Nicholson
- David Niven
- Roy Orbison
- Gregory Peck
- Peter & Gordon
- Oscar Peterson
- Patricia Phoenix
- Pink Floyd
- Sidney Poitier
- Vincent Price
- Richard Pryor
- Elvis Presley
- Otis Redding
- Robert Redford
- Steve Reeves
- Debbie Reynolds
- Don Rickles
- Chita Rivera
- The Rolling Stones
- Mickey Rooney
- Dan Rowan and Dick Martin
- Peter Sellers
- Rod Serling
- David Seville
- Dick Shawn
- Dinah Shore
- Simon & Garfunkel
- Frank Sinatra
- Frank Sinatra, Jr.
- Nancy Sinatra
- Red Skelton
- The Smothers Brothers
- Elke Sommer
- Sonny and Cher
- Jill St. John
- Connie Stevens
- Inger Stevens
- Stella Stevens
- James Stewart
- Ed Sullivan
- The Supremes
- Russ Tamblyn
- Jacques Tati
- Elizabeth Taylor
- Danny Thomas
- Marlo Thomas
- The Three Stooges
- Spencer Tracy
- Robert Wagner
- William Wagoner
- Burt Ward
- John Wayne
- Tuesday Weld
- Raquel Welch
- Orson Welles
- Adam West
- The Who
- Gene Wilder
- Andy Williams
- Flip Wilson
- Natalie Wood
- Stevie Wonder
- Ed Wynn
- Keenan Wynn
- Led Zeppelin
- Bradley Football
- Cass Elliot -- The Mamas & the Papas
- Carl Stuart Hamblen

Further Viewing

To see examples of the idealism of the Sixties, view the Woodstock Movie.

External links

- [http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rjackson/webbibl.html The 1960s: A Bibliography] Category:1960s ko:1960년대 ja:1960年代 simple:1960s

Cultural Revolution

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (; often abbreviated to 文化大革命 wénhuà dà gémìng, literally "Great Cultural Revolution", or simply 文革 wéngé, literally "Cultural Revolution") in the People's Republic of China was a revolutionary upsurge by Chinese students and workers against the bureaucrats of the Chinese Communist Party. It was launched by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 to secure Maoism (known domestically as Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought) in China as the state's dominant ideology and eliminate political opposition. Though Mao himself officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, the term is today widely used to also include the period between 1969 and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976. This dating of the Cultural Revolution is significant and represented a victory for supporters of Deng Xiaoping as it allowed them to portray all of the events between 1966 and 1976 as a single movement under the leadership of the Gang of Four. Between 1966 and 1969, Mao encouraged revolutionary committees containing Red Guards to take power from the Chinese Communist Party authorities of the state. In the chaos that ensued, many died and millions more were imprisoned. Although the period after 1969 was less chaotic, the leaders of the Cultural Revolution proper remained in power and this is now widely considered to have been a period of economic stagnation. The Communist Party of China officially repudiated the Cultural Revolution in 1981, placing responsibility for it on Mao Zedong. According to a Central Committee resolution adopted on June 27, 1981, the Cultural Revolution was carried out "under the mistaken leadership of Mao Zedong who was used by the counterrevolutionaries Lin Biao and Jiang Qing and brought serious disaster and turmoil to the Party and the Chinese people."

Background

Great Leap Forward

Main Article: Great Leap Forward In 1957, after China's first Five-Year Plan, Mao Zedong called for an increase in the speed of growth of "actual socialism" in China (as opposed to "dictatorial socialism"). To accomplish this goal, Mao began the Great Leap Forward, establishing special communes in the countryside through the usage of collective labor and mass mobilization. The Great Leap Forward was intended to increase the production of steel and to raise agricultural production to twice 1957 levels. However, the Great Leap turned into an utter disaster. 1958 had excellent weather, and should have been a good year for agricultural production, but as the peasants were working in urban centers on steel production, much of the crop was left unharvested. Industries went into turmoil, because peasants were producing nothing but steel. Furthermore, the peasants, as farmers, were ill-equipped and ill-trained to produce steel, partially relying on such mechanisms as backyard furnaces to achieve production goals, which had been mandated by the threatening local cadres. Meanwhile, farming implements like rakes were melted down for steel, making agricultural production impossible. This led to declines in production of everything but steel. To make matters worse, in order to avoid punishment, local authorities continually reported grossly unrealistic production numbers, which hid the problem for years, intensifying it. Having barely recovered from decades of war, the Chinese economy was headed into disaster. Steel production did show significant growth, to over 14 million tons of steel a year, from the previous 5.2 million. The original goal was to produce a completely unrealistic 30 million tons of steel, though that was later revised down to 20 million. However, much of the steel produced was impure and useless. In the 1959 Lushan meeting of the Central Committee, Peng Dehuai criticized Mao's policies in the Great Leap with a private letter. Peng wrote that the Great Leap was plagued by mismanagement, and "petty-bourgeois fanaticism". Although Mao made repeated self-criticisms in speeches for the Great Leap and called for dismantling the communes in 1959, he did not want to surrender the overall evaluation that the Great Leap was 70% correct. Politically, Mao formed an alliance with Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, in which he granted them day-to-day control over the country, in return for framing Peng and accusing him of being a "right opportunist". The attack on Peng was also combined with an attack on the Soviet Union and the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. This change was also a part of the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations begun by the Korean War (see Sino-Soviet split). Among Liu's and Deng's reforms were a partial retreat from collectivism, which had miserably failed.

Increasing conflict between Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi

In China, the three years beginning with 1960 were known as the Three Years of Natural Disasters. Food was in desperate shortage, and production fell dramatically. By the end of the Three Years of Natural Disasters, which was the direct result of the failed Great Leap Forward campaign, an estimated 20 million people had died from widespread famine. Liu Shaoqi decided to end many Leap policies, such as rural communes, and to restore the economic policies used before the Great Leap Forward. Because of the "success" of their economic reforms, Liu had won prestige in the eyes of many party members both in the central government and among the masses. Together, Liu began planning to gradually retire Mao from any real power, and to turn him into a figure-head. To restore his political base, and to eliminate his opposition, Mao initiated the Social Education Movement, in 1963. Mao later admitted to some general mistakes, while strongly defending the Great Leap Forward, in concept. One great irony of the Social Education Movement is that it called for grassroots action, yet was directed by Mao himself. This movement, aimed primarily at school-children, did not have any immediate effect on Chinese politics, but it did influence a generation of youths, upon whom Mao could draw for later support in the future. In 1963, Mao began attacking Liu Shaoqi openly, stating that the idealism of "the struggle of the classes" must always be fully understood and applied; yearly, monthly, and daily. By 1964, the Social Education Movement had become the new "Four Cleanups Movement", with the stated goal of the cleansing of politics, economics, ideas, and organization. The Movement was directed politically against Liu.

Influences elsewhere

Four Cleanups Movement In early 1960, historian and Beijing Deputy Mayor Wu Han published the first version of a historical drama entitled "Hai Rui Dismissed from Office" (pinyin: Hai Rui Ba Guan). In the play, a virtuous official was dismissed by a corrupt emperor. The story initially received praise from Mao. In 1965 Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing and her protégé Yao Wenyuan—who at the time was a little-known editor of a prominent newspaper in Shanghai—published an article criticising "Hai Rui Dismissed from Office". Jiang and Yao saw the play, which they labeled as "poisonous weeds", as an attack on Mao, using the allegory of Mao Zedong as the corrupt emperor and Peng Dehuai as the virtuous official. The publication of the Shanghai newspaper article received much publicity nationwide, with many other prominent newspapers asking for publication rights to the same article. Beijing Mayor Peng Zhen, a supporter of Wu Han, established a committee studying the recent publication and emphasizing that the criticism had gone too far, but denunciations, whether public or under the table, came from Jiang Qing and Lin Biao. This committee, called "Group of Five in Charge of the Cultural Revolution", on February 12, 1966 issued "Theses on the ongoing scientific discussion". In May, 1966, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan once again published various articles with content denouncing both Wu Han and Peng Zhen. On May 16, 1966, under Jiang Qing's influence, a formal notice was issued, representing figuratively the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In this document, titled "Message from the Central Committee of CCP", Peng Zhen and his theses were deeply criticized, and the "Group of Five" was disbanded. "Completely penetrated with double-dealing, the theses furiously attacked the Great cultural revolution, personally developed and managed by comrade Mao Zedong, the instructions of comrade Mao Zedong concerning criticism of Wu Han", stated the "Message". One year later, on May 18, 1967 this "Message" was called "a great historical document developed under direct management of our great leader comrade Mao Zedong" in the editorial of People's Daily. People's Daily In a later meeting of the CCP Politburo in 1966, the new Group in Charge of the Cultural Revolution (GCCR) was formed. On May 18, Lin Biao said in a speech that "Chairman Mao is a genius, everything the Chairman says is truly great; one of the Chairman's words will override the meaning of ten thousands of ours." Thus started the first phase of Mao's cult of personality led by Jiang Qing, Lin Biao, and others. At this time, Jiang and Lin had already seized some actual power. On May 25, a young teacher of philosophy at Beijing University, Nie Yuanzi, wrote a dazibao (poster) where the rector of the university and other professors were labeled as "the black anti-Party gangsters". Some days later, Mao Zedong ordered to broadcast the text of this dazibao nationwide and called it "the first Marxist dazibao in China". On May 29, 1966, in the Middle School of Tsinghua University, the first organization of Red Guards was formed. It was aimed at eliminating intellectuals, and Mao's political enemies. On June 1, 1966, the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the CCP, stated that all "imperialists", "people with affiliations with imperialists", "imperialistic intellectuals", et al., must be purged. Soon a movement began, that was aimed at purging university presidents and other prominent intellectuals. On July 28, 1966, representatives of the Red Guards wrote a formal letter to Mao, stating that mass purges, and all such-related social and political phenomena were justified, and right. Thus began the Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution

1966: "The road to democracy" begins

1966 On August 8, 1966, the Central Committee of CCP passed a bill, "Decisions on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". This bill stated that the official position of China's government was now supportive of the purging of intellectuals and imperialists. Most of these purges were to be the work of Mao's Red Guards. "Now our goal is to smash those capitalist roaders in power, to criticize the reactionary bourgeois "authorities" in science, to criticize the ideology of bourgeoisie and all other exploiter classes, to transform education, to transform the literature and art, to transform all areas of the superstructure mismatching economic base of socialism, to promote the strengthening and development of the socialist system", said the bill. On August 16, millions of Red Guards from all over the country gathered in Beijing for a peek at the Chairman. On top of the Tiananmen Square gate, Mao and Lin Biao made frequent appearances to approximately 11 million Red Guards, receiving cheers each time. Mao praised their actions in the recent campaigns to develop socialism and democracy. For three years, until 1969, the Red Guards expanded their areas of authority, and accelerated their work of socialist reconstruction. The Red Guards began by passing out leaflets explaining their actions to develop and strengthen socialism, and posting the names of suspected "counter-revolutionaries" on bulletin boards. They assembled in large groups, and wrote educational plays. The Red Guards held public meetings with suspected "counter-revolutionaries", and gave them the opportunity to make a self-criticism. (This would be used against them later, at their trials as "counter-revolutionaries." Most of those found guilty would be publicly executed as examples to the people, or exiled to gulags and worked to death as slave labor.) By 1966, the Red Guards had become the foremost authority of China. People that were labeled as the "Bourgeoisie" (middle-class capitalists) were criticised at public meetings. Soon, the Red Guards went even further. The whole of China joined in the democratic processes of the Cultural Revolution. Liu Shaoqi was sent to a detention camp, where he later died in 1969. Deng Xiaoping, who was himself sent for a period of re-education three times, was sent to work in an engine factory, until he was brought back years later by Zhou Enlai. But most of those accused were not so lucky, and many of them never returned. The work of the Red Guards was praised by Mao Zedong. On August 22, 1966, Mao issued a public notice, which stopped "all police intervention in Red Guard tactics and actions." Those in the police force who dared to defy this notice, were labeled as "counter-revolutionaries". On September 5, 1966, yet another notice was issued, encouraging all Red Guards to come to Beijing, over a stretch of time. All fees, including accommodations and transportation, were to be paid by the government. On October 10, 1966, Mao's ally, General Lin Biao, publicly criticised Liu and Deng as "capitalist roaders" and "threats". Later, Peng Dehuai was brought to Beijing to be publicly displayed and ridiculed; he was then purged.

1967: Political power struggles

On January 3, 1967, Lin Biao and Jiang Qing were behind the "January Storm", in which many prominent Shanghai municipal government leaders were heavily criticised and purged. This raised Wang Hongwen into real power in the city, and in the city's CCP power apparatus. In Beijing, Liu and Deng were once again the targets of criticism, but others, who were not as engaged in the CCP criticism sessions, like Chen Boda and Kang Sheng, pointed at the wrong-doings of the Vice-Premier of the State Council Tao Zhu. Thus started a political struggle among central government officials and local party cadres, who seized the Cultural Revolution as an opportunity to accuse rivals of "counter-revolutionary activity" as the paranoia spread. On January 8, Mao praised these actions through the People's Daily, urging all local governmental leaders to rise in self-criticism, or criticism and purging of others. This started the massive power struggles of purge after purge among some local governments, which stopped functioning altogether. Involvement in some sort of "revolutionary" activity was the only way to avoid being purged, but it was by no means a certain way out of being purged. Once this terror was un-leashed, no one was safe. At the same time, many large and prominent Red Guard organizations rose in protest against other Red Guards organizations, further complicating the situation. This led to a notice to stop all unhealthy activity within the Red Guards. On April 6, Liu Shaoqi was openly, and widely-denouced by a Zhongnanhai faction. This was followed by a protest and mass demonstrations, most notably the one in Wuhan on July 20, which Jiang Qing openly denounced as "counter-revolutionary activity"; she later personally flew to Wuhan to criticise Chen Zaidao, the general in charge of the Wuhan area. On July 22, Jiang Qing directed the Red Guards to replace the People's Liberation Army when needed, and thereby to render the existing forces powerless. After the initial praise by Jiang Qing, the Red Guards started to steal and loot from barracks and other army buildings. This activity, which could not be stopped by any army general, went on until autumn 1968.

1968: Cult of personality

In the spring of 1968, a massive campaign began, that was aimed at promoting Mao Zedong to a god-like status. Mao was depicted as the origin, or source of life's necessities. Socialism had become the state religion, as well as the economic system running China. Also, at this time, Lin Biao began to gain power for himself. Mao had lost basic control over the country; he could not stop anything, from local looting to huge national protests. On July 27, the Red Guards' power over the army was officially ended, and the central government sent in units to protect many areas still being targeted by Red Guards. Mao had supported this idea, and promoted it, by allowing one of his "Highest Directions" to be heard by all of the people. A year later, the Red Guard factions were dismantled entirely; Mao feared that the chaos they caused and could still cause, might harm the very foundation of the Chinese Communist Party. In any case, their purpose had been largely fulfilled, and Mao had largely consolidated his political power, following the example of the Soviet leader, Stalin. In early October, Mao decided to purge many officials. They were sent to the countryside, to work in labor camps. In the same month, at the 12th Plenum of the 8th Party Congress, Liu Shaoqi was "forever expelled from the party", and Lin Biao was made the Party's Vice-Chairman, second only to Mao. In December 1968, Mao began the "Down to the Countryside Movement". During this Movement, which lasted for the next decade, young intellectuals were ordered to go into the country and receive "education" from "middle and poor peasants". Mao saw this disruption of ordinary social processes as a way to remove future emerging forces who could be a threat to the CCP. For many of the 'intellectuals,' most of whom were recently-graduated college students, this deployment to the countryside was in effect a kind of internal exile, and the conditions under which they were forced to labor were often harsh in the extreme; many deaths from malnutrition, overwork, and disease were reported, and many were not.

Time dominated by Lin Biao

Transition of the party apparatus

On April 1, 1969, at the CCP's Ninth Congress, Lin was the big winner, officially becoming China's second in charge, and also holding military power. Lin's biggest political rival, Liu Shaoqi, had been purged, and Zhou Enlai's power was gradually fading. The Ninth Congress started with Lin Biao delivering a Political Report, being critical of Liu and other "counter-revolutionaries", and continuously quoting Mao's Little Red Book. The second thing to be tackled was the new party constitution, when it was modified to officially design Lin as Mao's successor. Henceforth, at all occasions, Mao's name was to be linked with Lin's. Thirdly, a new Politburo was elected with Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, Chen Boda, Zhou Enlai, and Kang Sheng being the five new members of the Politburo Standing Committee. This new politburo consisted mostly of those whom had arisen because of the Cultural Revolution, with Zhou barely keeping his status; as he ranked fourth.

Attempts at expanding power base

After being confirmed as Mao's successor, Lin's focus lay on the restoration of the State President position, which was abolished by Mao, only because of Liu Shaoqi's dismissal from power. His aim was to become Vice-President, with Mao holding onto the position of State President. On August 23rd, 1970, the Second Plenum of the CCP's Ninth Congress was once again held in Lushan. Chen Boda was the first to speak, widely praising Mao, boasting of Mao's status (with the intentions of raising his own). At the same time, Chen was asking for the return of the position of State President. Mao was deeply critical of the speech delivered by Chen, and removed him from the position of Politburo Standing Committee member. With this event, there started a series of criticism sessions across the country for people who used "deceit" for gains, calling them "Liu Shaoqi's representative for Marxism, and political liars". Chen's removal from the Politburo Standing Committee was also seen as a warning, directed toward Lin Biao. After the Ninth Congress, Lin continuously asked for promotions within the party and the Central Government, leading Mao to think that Lin wanted supreme power, and intended to oust Mao himself. Chen's speech also added to Mao's apprehensions. If Lin were to become Vice-President, then after the President's death, he would legally have supreme power and control of the country -- a clear danger to Mao's safety.

Lin's attempted military coup

Marxism Because of Mao's refusal to let Lin gain more prominence within the party and the government, Lin became deeply angered. Moreover, his power base was shrinking day by day within the Party apparatus; Lin decided to use the military power still within his hands, to try to oust Mao in a coup. Soon afterwards, Lin and his son Lin Liguo and other loyal comrades, founded a coup organ in Shanghai (many Chinese believe that Lin's son was solely responsible for the coup, and Lin Biao didn't know anything about it, until the coup failed, and Lin was being hunted by the Chinese government), aimed solely at ousting Mao from power by the use of force. In one of the known documents, Lin stated in Shanghai that "A new power struggle has surged upon us, if indeed we could not take control of revolutionary activity, then these control powers will fall upon someone else." Lin's plan consisted mainly of aerial bombardments, and the widespead use of the Air Force. If the plan were to succeed, Lin could successfully arrest all of his political rivals, and gain the supreme power he wanted. But if his plan were to fail, there would be great and dire consequences awaiting him. Assassination attempts were made against Mao in Shanghai, from September 8 to September 10, 1971. It was learned that before these attacks upon Mao, there was initial knowledge of Lin's activities on the part of local police, who stated that Lin Biao had been coordinating a huge political plot, and Lin's loyal backers were receiving special training in the military. From these events onward, came continuous allegations and reports of Mao being attacked. One of these reports suggested that en route to Beijing in his private train, Mao was physically attacked; another alleged that Lin had bombed a bridge that Mao was to cross to reach Beijing, which Mao avoided because of intelligence suggesting such an incident -- causing him to change routes. In these nervous days, guards were placed every 10–20 meters on the railway tracks of Mao's route to avoid attempts at assassination. Although these reports were conflicting, and sometimes fabricated, it is known for sure that after September 11 of the same year, Lin never appeared in public again, nor did his backers, most of whom attempted to escape to Hong Kong. Most of these attempts failed, and around twenty army generals were arrested. It was also learned that on September 13, 1971, Lin Biao and his family travelled by plane to the Soviet Union. En route, Lin's plane crashed in Mongolia, killing all on-board. On the same day, the CCP Politburo met in an emergency session, to discuss matters pertaining to Lin Biao. Only on September 30, was the information of Lin's death confirmed in Beijing, which led to the cancellation of the National Day celebration events, that had been scheduled for the following day. The exact cause of the plane crash remains a mystery; although it is widely-believed that Lin's plane ran out of fuel, or that there was an abrupt engine failure. There was also speculation that the plane was shot down by the Chinese. It could also have been the Soviet forces, who later claimed the bodies of those on board. Nonetheless, Lin's attempted coup had failed, and it led to the complete destruction of his image in the CCP and China.

Times of the "Gang of Four"

Developments and Pi-Lin Pi-Kong Campaign

After Lin Biao's death in 1971, Mao, age 78, was busy trying to find a new successor. In September 1972, Shanghaiese Wang Hongwen was transferred to work in Beijing for the Central Government, becoming the Party Vice-Chairman, in the subsequent year. At the same time, under the influence of Premier Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping was transferred back to Beijing. In the preceding time, Mao was already shaken deeply by the Lin Biao plot, and had to rely on Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping again. Compared to Extreme Leftism, Mao was still no great enthusiast of the Right. In 1974, a campaign that appears absurd in retrospect, was started by Jiang Qing and several backers (later to be known as the Gang of Four): the Pi-Lin Pi-Kong campaign, or literally "Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius". This widely-publicised campaign was aimed at Premier Zhou Enlai, for he allegedly possessed "unhealthy" ideas related to Lin and to Confucius, but Zhou's name was never mentioned throughout the campaign. Since the death of Lin Biao, Zhou had become the main political rival of the Gang of Four for the succession to power. But the weary population was tired of the many campaigns that had proved useless or devastating, and had little interest in this one. This campaign failed to achieve its goals. In October, Premier Zhou Enlai became gravely ill, and was admitted into day-to-day hospital care. Deng Xiaoping was named First Vice-Premier, and was the actual one in charge of the daily business of the State Council. Deng continued to further expand Zhou's Four Modernizations idea for a better China. In September 1975, Mao himself was also admitted into hospital with a grave illness (possibly, advanced venereal disease).

1976: Cultural Revolution's end

1975 1976 became a very important year in the Cultural Revolution. On January 8, Zhou Enlai died of bladder cancer. The subsequent day, Beijing's Monument of the Martyrs already started filling up with wreaths expressing the people's mourning for the beloved Premier. The event was unprecedented. On January 15, Zhou's funeral was held, and events commemorating Zhou across the country were held. Deng Xiaoping delivered Zhou's official eulogy. In February, the rival Gang of Four had started to criticise the only one left to oppose them, Deng Xiaoping. With permission from Mao, Deng was once again demoted. But after Zhou's death, Mao did not select a member of the Gang of Four to become premier, but instead chose the relatively-unknown Hua Guofeng. April 5 was China's Qing Ming Festival, a traditional day of mourning for those who had passed away. People had already gathered since late March in Tiananmen Square, mourning the death of Zhou Enlai. At the same time, the people were also signaling an expression of anger towards the Gang of Four. Gradually, more and more people began writing and posting messages of hatred against the Gang of Four. On April 5, around 2 million people were gathered in and around Tiananmen Square, turning the assembly into a form of protest against the Gang of Four. The Gang of Four had ordered police to enter the area, clear the wreaths and messages of hate, and to disperse the crowds. The Gang of Four pointed to Deng Xiaoping as the planner of this expression of public dissatisfaction. This incident was later "politically rehabilitated" (i.e. the process by which people, events in the political process, or political party members, which have fallen into disgrace, are restored to public life) in the winter of 1978, and became known as the Qingming Tiananmen Square incident (not to be confused with the Tiananmen Massacre). On September 9, 1976, Mao Zedong died. Before dying, Mao had written a message on a piece of paper stating "With you in charge, I'm at ease", to Hua Guofeng. Hence, Hua became the Party's Chairman. (Although there has been controversy as to what the message really meant.) Before this event, Hua had been widely-considered to be one without too much political skill or urge, and as posing no threat to the Gang of Four in the power succession. But under the influence of prominent generals like Ye Jianying, and partly under influence of Deng Xiaoping, and with the support of the Army, Hua ordered the arrest of the Gang of Four, following Mao's death. By October 10, the 8341 Special Regiment had all members of the Gang of Four arrested. Thus ended the Cultural Revolution.

After the Revolution

Even though Hua Guofeng publicly denounced and arrested the Gang of Four in 1976, he continued to invoke Mao to justify his policies. Hua opened what was known as the Two Whatevers, saying "Whatever policy originated from Chairman Mao, we must continue to support," and "Whatever directions were given to us from Chairman Mao, we must continue to work on their basis." Like Deng, Hua's goal was to reverse the damage of the Cultural Revolution; but unlike Deng, who was not against new economic models for China, Hua intended to move the Chinese economic and political system to resemble Soviet-style planning of the early 1950's. Soon afterwards, Hua found that without Deng Xiaoping, it was hard for him to continue on daily affairs of the state. On October 10th, Deng Xiaoping personally wrote a letter to Hua, asking to be transferred back to state and party affairs. Also, unconfirmed information allegedly stated that Politburo Standing Committee member Ye Jianying would resign, if Deng was not allowed back into the Central Government. With increasing pressure from all sides, Hua decided to bring Deng back into regular state affairs, first naming him Vice-Premier of the State Council, in July 1977, and to various other positions. In actuality, Deng had already become China's number two figure. In August, the Party's Eleventh Congress was held in Beijing, officially naming (in ranking order) Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping, Ye Jianying, Li Xiannian, and Wang Dongxing as the latest members of the Politburo Standing Committee. Li Xiannian In May, 1978, Deng seized an opportunity for protégé Hu Yaobang to be elevated into further power. Later, Hu published an article in the Bright Daily Newspaper to cleverly use Mao's quotations, while expanding Deng's power base. After reading this widely-publicized article, almost everyone supported Hu, and thus became Deng's supporters. On July 1st, Deng publicized Mao's self-criticism report of 1962, regarding the Great Leap Forward. With an expanding power base, in September 1978, Deng had already started to openly attack Hua Guofeng's "Two Whatevers." On December 18th, 1978, the Third Plenum of the Eleventh CCP Congress was held. Deng stated that "a liberation of thoughts" and "an accurate view leads to accurate results" was needed within the party. Hua Guofeng gave self-criticisms, stating his own "Two Whatevers" was wrong. Wang Dongxing, formerly Mao's trusted supporter, was also criticised. At the Plenum, the Qingming Tiananmen Square incident was also politically rehabilitated. Liu Shaoqi was allowed a belated state funeral. In the Fifth Plenum of the Eleventh CCP Congress, held in 1980, Peng Zhen and many others, who had been purged during the Cultural Revolution, were politically rehabilitated. Hu Yaobang was named General-Secretary of the CCP, and Zhao Ziyang, another of Deng's protégés, was named into the Central governing apparatus. In September, Hua Guofeng resigned, with Zhao Ziyang being named the new Premier. Deng was the Chairman of the Central Military Commission. By this time, Deng was the foremost and paramount figure in Chinese politics.

Effect

The effects of the Cultural Revolution directly, or indirectly touched essentially all of China's populace. During the Cultural Revolution, much economic activity was halted, with "revolution" being the primary objective of many. The start of the Cultural Revolution brought huge numbers of Red Guards to Beijing, with all of their expenses paid by the government, and the railway system was in turmoil. Countless ancient buildings, artifacts, antiques, books, and paintings were destroyed by Red Guards. By December 1967, 350 million copies of Mao's Quotations had been printed. Elsewhere, the ten years of Cultural Revolution also brought the education system to a virtual halt. The university entrance exams were cancelled during this period, only restored by Deng Xiaoping, in 1977. Many intellectuals were sent to rural labor camps. Many survivors and observers suggest that almost anyone with skills over that of the average person, was the target of political "struggle" in some way. According to most Western observers as well as followers of Deng Xiaoping, this led to almost a generation of inadequately-educated individuals. Mao Zedong Thought had become the central operative guide to all things in China. The authority of the Red Guards surpassed that of the army, local police authorities, and the law in general. China's traditional arts and ideas were ignored, and was Mao praised for doing so. People were encouraged to criticize cultural institutions, and to question their parents and teachers, which had been strictly forbidden in Confucian culture. This was emphasized even more during the Anti-Lin Biao; Anti-Confucius Campaign. However, no matter how much or how far the generations of one's parents and their ancestors could be questioned, one thing definitely could not, and these were the "thoughts of Mao Tse-tung". The Cultural Revolution also brought to the forefront numerous internal power struggles within the Communist party, many of which had little to do with the larger battles between Party leaders, but resulted instead from local factionalism and petty rivalries. Members of different factions often fought on the streets, and political assassination, particularly in the more rural provinces, was common. One example, given by the writer Patrick French in his book Tibet, Tibet, is of the 'Big' and 'Small' factions in the Wuxuan county of the Guangxi Zhang Autonomous Region, which fought gun battles and threw bombs on the streets. The leader of the Small Faction, Zhou Weian, was eventually murdered in 1968, and his eight-month pregnant widow, Wei Shulan, forced to kneel under his dismembered body and denounce him; a typical example of the climate of the times. There was devastating damage done to China's historical reserves, artifacts and sites of interest, as these were thought to cause "old ways of thinking". Many artifacts were seized from private homes, and often destroyed on the spot. There are no records of exactly how much was destroyed. Western observers suggest that much of China's five thousand years of dynamic history was in effect destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, in a short period of ten years, and such destruction of historical artifacts cannot be matched anywhere else in the world, at any time. Religious persecution, in particular, intensified during this period, as being opposed to Marxist-Leninist, and Maoist thinking. Some temples, however, such as the Longxing Temple near Shijiazhuang, survived because of the protection of local party members, who sometimes sent units of the PLA to protect the Temple from mobs of Red Guards. The effects of the Cultural Revolution were particularly devastating as to China's 56 ethnic minorities and their cultures. This supposedly stemmed from Jiang Qing's personal animosity towards, and contempt for ethnic minorities. "The centrality of the Han ethnic group" was a major theme throughout this period (similar to the Aryan super-man, in Nazi Germany). In Tibet, over 2,000 monasteries were destroyed, often with the complicity of local ethnic Tibetan Red Guards. In Inner Mongolia, many were executed during a ruthless witchhunt to find members of the allegedly "separatist" Inner Mongolian People's Party, which had actually been disbanded, decades before. In Xinjiang, Koran books of the Uighur people were burned, and Muslim imams were reportedly paraded around with paint splashed on their persons. In the ethnic Korean areas of northeast China, some killings occurred, and language schools were destroyed. In Yunnan Province, the palace of the Dai people's king was torched, and an infamous massacre of Hui Muslim people, at the hands of the People's Liberation Army, called the "Shadian Incident", claimed over 1,600 lives, in 1975. It is ironic that all this activity and violence was directed at so-called "foreign influences", when the driving force behind Maoist thinking, which was the doctrines of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, had come into China, from "foreign out-siders" themselves. The Cultural Revolution also caused external effects. Workers in Hong Kong went on strike, Quotes from Chairman Mao was published in many languages, to be circulated in many African and other third-world or developing countries, and China's image was considerably damaged in much of the West. "Revolutionary" movements in several African countries, often resulting in considerable damage, were inspired by the Cultural Revolution; it was also one of the models for Cambodia's Year Zero, under Pol Pot. The Cambodian genocide, which began in 1975, and has been called "the Killing Fields", can be directly attibuted to the influence of Chairman Mao, and the Cultural Revolution. Millions in China had their human rights reportedly discarded during the Cultural Revolution. Forced displacement of millions of people occurred. During the Cultural Revolution, young people from the cities were forcibly moved to the countryside. Once there, they were forced to abandon all forms of standard education, for the propaganda teachings of the Chinese Communist Party. Crimes against the government were brutally, and publicly punished. People were forced to walk through the streets naked, were flogged publicly, or forced, some report, to sit in the jetliner position for hours. Many deaths occurred in police custody, although they were often covered-up as "suicides". People had to carry two or more copies of Mao's Little Red Book, to avoid being accused of not supporting Mao. Numerous individuals were accused, often on the flimsiest of grounds, of being foreign spies; to have, or have had, any contact with the world outside of China, could be extremely dangerous. Accusations were often based upon 'symbolic' language or gestures, such as the omittance of certain strokes from a written character, or the placing of a picture of Mao in a subordinate position in a room. This paranoia may in part have derived from the tradition of Chinese revolutionaries, who used code-words and symbolic gestures in communication. Some commentators argue that the Cultural Revolution years saw the Chinese people leave behind many uncritical habits of conformist and authoritarian thinking. This can be seen in the words of some of the student leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. According to student leader Shen Tong in his book, Almost a Revolution, the trigger for the famous hunger-strikes of 1989 was a "dazibao", the big-character poster (leaflet) brought to fame in the Cultural Revolution as a means of public political discussion, and subsequently outlawed, after the Cultural Revolution. When students organized demonstrations in their millions, not seen since the Cultural Revolution, youths from outside Beijing rode the trains into Beijing, and relied on the hospitality of the train workers and Beijing residents, just as their counter-parts had ridden the trains freely, during the Cultural Revolution. Also, as in the Cultural Revolution, students formed factions, with names similar to those of Red Guard factions, using the term "Headquarters" for instance, and according to Shen Tong, these factions even went to the extent of kidnapping members of other factions, just as they did in the Cultural Revolution. Finally, in some small minority of cases, some of the student leaders of 1989 had been youth activists in high school during the Cultural Revolution. It was as a result of the Cultural Revolution, that criticism of high-level authority in public became more thinkable than ever in the PRC, although criticism of Mao Zedong still remained entirely off-limits. Estimates of the death toll, civilians and Red Guards, from [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm various Western and Eastern sources] are about 500,000 in the true chaos years of 1966–1969. However, these figures are increasingly being challenged, since many deaths went unreported, or were actively covered up by the police or local authorities. The true death toll may range from hundreds of thousands to a few million, but the state of Chinese demographics at the time, combined with the reluctance of the PRC to allow serious research into the period, means that the real figures are unlikely ever to be known.

World reaction

The reaction abroad was mixed, and inevitably, tied to political movements of the time. The opposition to the Vietnam War fostered a sympathy for communist revolutions, and many Western observers, predominantly on the Left of the political spectrum, were sympathetic with the Cultural Revolution. Reports of violence and excess were often explained with excuses, or dismissed as 'rightwing propaganda'. An example of the political atmosphere among Left-leaning intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution can be gleaned from a debate in 1967, where Noam Chomsky, during a discussion with Susan Sontag and Hanah Arendt [http://www.chomsky.info/debates/19671215.htm] on "The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act?", said "... take China, modern China; one also finds many things that are really quite admirable. ... But I do think that China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step." Reactions were muted, or non-existent among many on the Left, once the full extent of the destruction became known. Sympathies for the Cultural Revolution were also famously denounced by John Lennon of the Beatles, in the song "Revolution", showing that the issue was of some controversy in the late 1960's West. Whatever the case, several self-described "Maoist" political parties survive today, throughout the globe.

Historical views

Today, the Cultural Revolution is seen by most people inside and outside of China, including the Communist Party of China and Chinese democracy movement supporters, as an unmitigated disaster, and as an event to be avoided in the future. There are no politically significant groups within China that defend the Cultural Revolution, aside from the still-ruling Communist Party. However, there are many workers and peasants in China who, left behind by economic liberalization and the widening rich-poor gap, feel nostalgia towards the Cultural Revolution (as well as the Maoist Era in general), during which the proletariat was glorified. Author Gao Mobo has written essays praising the Cultural Revolution, as a "golden age" of urban and rural development. Among those who condemn the Cultural Revolution, the causes and meaning of the Cultural Revolution remain highly controversial. Supporters of the Chinese democracy movement see the Cultural Revolution as an example of what happens when democracy is lacking, and place responsibility for the Cultural Revolution at the hands of the Communist Party of China. Similarly, human rights activists, and conservatives in the West also see the Cultural Revolution as examples of the dangers of statism. Briefly put, these views of the Cultural Revolution attribute its cause to "too much government, and too little popular participation". By contrast, the official view of the Communist Party of China sees the Cultural Revolution as what can happen when one person establishes a cult of personality, and manipulates the public in such a way as to destroy party and state institutions. In the view of the Communist Party, the Cultural Revolution is an example of too much popular participation in government, rather than too little; and that it is an example of the dangers of anarchy rather than statism. The Communist Party also strongly de-emphasises the extent of Mao's involvement in the creation of the Cultural Revolution, preferring to shift most of the blame onto the Gang of Four, as the convenient culprit. The consequence of this view, is the consensus among the Chinese leadership that the lesson of the Cultural Revolution is that China must be governed by a strong party institution, in which decisions are made collectively and according to the rule of law, and in which the public has only limited input. These contradictory views of the Cultural Revolution were put into sharp relief during the Tiananmen Protests of 1989, when both the demonstrators and the government justified their actions as being necessary to avoid another Cultural Revolution. Despite some knowledge of the Cultural Revolution by many Chinese, there has not been a single museum dedicated to its events on the mainland, until recently. In mid-2005, a privately-funded museum opened in Guangdong province, created by Peng Qi'an, 74, a former deputy mayor of Shantou. Peng himself was almost executed during the Cultural Revolution, and survived only due to a last-minute reprieve. He stated that he wanted future generations of Chinese to realise how large an impact the period had on China, and how far ordinary Chinese suffered. However after its opening, authorities made it clear that open discussion of the issues it raises were still not on the official agenda.

Epilogue

In present day, the Chinese Government offered to help those who suffered from the Red Guards by allowing them to reclaim the property they lost during the Cultural Revolution, as long as they got some "evidence" to prove their property -- for example a photo or ownership paper. However, the majority of the victims' descendants face great difficulty in reclaiming the property, because of the lack of evidence due to the Red Guards' vandalism.

References

- Simon Leys (penname of Pierre Ryckmans) was one of the first analysts to describe the reality of Cultural Revolution in these four books:
- Broken Images: Essays on Chinese Culture and Politics (1979). ISBN 0805280693.
- The Burning Forest: Essays on Chinese Culture and Politics (1986). ISBN 0030050634; ISBN 0586086307; ISBN 0805003509; ISBN 0805002421.
- The Chairman's New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (1977; revised 1981). ISBN 0850312086; ISBN 0805280804; ISBN 031212791X; ISBN 0850312094; ISBN 0850314356 (revised ed.).
- Chinese Shadows (1978). ISBN 0670219185; ISBN 0140047875.
- Chan, Anita. 1985. Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
- Chan, Che Po. 1991. From Idealism to Pragmatism: The Change of Political Thinking among the Red Guard Generation in China. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara.
- Liu, Guokai. 1987. A Brief Analysis of the Cultural Revolution. edited by Anita Chan. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe.
- Yang, Guobin. 2000. China's Red Guard Generation: The Ritual Process of Identity Transformation, 1966-1999. Ph.D. diss., New York University.

External links

- [http://chinadigitaltimes.net China Digital Times]
- [http://www.orientalabels.com/ Labels with Cultural Revolution Posters, Badges, and History]
- [http://www.morningsun.org/ Morning Sun - A Film and Website about Cultural Revolution]
- [http://members.fortunecity.com/stalinmao/China/Cultural/Cultural.html Another website about the Cultural Revolution]
- [http://www.chinese-memorial.org/ Attempts to document using eyewitness accounts events during the Cultural Revolution]
- [http://debrisson.free.fr/maoism.html Chinese propaganda posters, Cultural Revolution statuettes, maoist stuff and revolutionary songs]
- [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1693116,00.html Exhibition causes stir with candid views of 'great' Mao] The Times, July 14, 2005
- [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/02/AR2005060201916.html Chinese Museum Looks Back in Candor: Groundbreaking New Exhibit on Cultural Revolution Sparks Official Displeasure but Visitors' Pra

1977

:For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). 1977 (MCMLXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1977 calendar).

Events

January-February

- January 1 - First woman Episcopal priest ordained.
- January 10 - Major eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in eastern Zaire.
- January 17 - Gary Gilmore executed by a firing squad in Utah
- January 18 - Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious "legionnaire's disease"
- January 18 - Australia experiences its worst railway disaster at Granville, near Sydney, in which 83 people died.
- January 19 - President Gerald Ford pardons Iva Toguri D'Aquino (aka "Tokyo Rose").
- January 19 - Snow falls in Miami, Florida. This is the only time in the history of the city that this occurred, and the farthest south a snowfall has been recorded in the United States.
- January 20 - Gerald Rudolph Ford, 38th President of the United States is succeeded by Jimmy Carter.
- January 21 - President Jimmy Carter pardons Vietnam War draft evaders.
- January 27 - Record company EMI sacks the controversial UK punk rock group the Sex Pistols.
- February 7 - The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 24.
- February 11 - A 20.2-kg (44-lb.-9-oz.) lobster is caught off Nova Scotia (heaviest known crustacean).
- February 18 - The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle goes on its maiden "flight" while sitting on top of a Boeing 747.

March-April

- March 1 - Sara Lowndes Dylan files for divorce from her husband of 11 years, Bob Dylan
- March 4 - 1977 Bucharest Earthquake - kills more than 1,500
- March 9 - Approximately a dozen armed Hanafi Muslims take over three buildings in Washington, DC, killing one person and taking more than 130 hostages. The hostage situation ends two days later.
- March 27 - A collision between KLM and PanAm Boeing 747s at Tenerife, Canary Islands, kills 583, worst plane crash ever
- April 1 - Hay-on-Wye declares independence
- April 7 - German Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his driver are shot by two Red Army Faction members while waiting at a red light near his home in Karlsruhe. "The Ulrike Meinhof Commando" later claims responsibility
- April 7 - Toronto Blue Jays play their first-ever game of baseball against the Chicago White Sox
- April 28 - Stuttgart court sentences RAF members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe to life imprisonment

May-June

- May 17 - The Likud lead by Menachem Begin wins the elections in Israel.
- May 23 - Scientists report using bacteria in lab to make insulin
- May 23 - Moluccan terrorists take over a school in Bovensmilde, northern Netherlands (105 hostages) and a passenger train in Bovensmilde-Assen route nearby (90 hostages) at the same time. June 11 Dutch Royal Marines storm the train - six terrorists and two hostages are killed
- May 25 - Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope opens in theaters.
- May 26 - George Willig climbed the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
- May 28 - In Southgate, Kentucky, the Beverly Hills Supper Club is engulfed in fire, killing 165 inside.
- June 5 - A coup takes place in Seychelles.
- June 7 - After campaigning by Anita Bryant and her anti-Gay "Save Our Children" crusade, Dade County, Florida voters overwhelmingly vote to repeal the county's Gay rights ordinance, igniting a wave of violence against Gays across the United States.
- June 6-June 9 - Jubilee celebrations are held in the United Kingdom to celebrate twenty-five years of Elizabeth II's reign.
- June 10 - James Earl Ray escapes from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee (he was recaptured on June 13).
- June 15 - Spain has its first democratic elections after 41 years under the Franco regime.
- June 20 - The Supreme Court of the United States rules that states are not required to spend Medicaid funds on elective abortions.
- June 20 - Anglia Television broadcasts fake documentary "Alternative 3". it enters into conspiracy theory canon.
- June 22 - Robert Hillsborough, a Gay San Franciscan, is brutally stabbed to death just steps from his home by four youths, calling him "fag" and "queer" and allegedly shouting "this one's for Anita Bryant".
- June 25 - US man Roy Sullivan in struck by lightning for the 7th time
- June 26 - Some 200,000 Gays march through the streets of San Francisco, protesting Anita Bryant's homophobia and Robert Hillsborough's murder.

July-August

- July 4 - Manchester United manager Tommy Docherty is sensationally sacked by the club's directors.
- July 5 - Military coup in Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto the very first elected Prime Minster of Pakistan overthrown.
- July 13 - The New York City Blackout of 1977 lasts for 25 hours and results in looting and other disorder.
- July 15 - Anti Drugs Campainer Donald Mackay disappears near Griffith N.S.W (New South Wales) presumed Murdered
- July 22 - The purged Chinese communist leader Deng Xiaoping is restored to power as the "Gang of Four" is expelled from the Communist Party of China.
- July 28 - First oil through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System reaches Valdez, Alaska
- July 30 - Left-wing German terrorists Susanne Albrecht[http://www.baader-meinhof.com/who/terrorists/raf/albrechtsusanne.html], Brigitte Mohnhaupt[http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigitte_Mohnhaupt] and a third person assassinate Jürgen Ponto[http://www.dresdner-bank.com/content/03_unternehmen/05_gesellschaftliches_engagement/02_ponto_stiftung/], chairman of the Dresdner Bank in Oberursel, West Germany
- August 3 - United States Senate Hearing on MKULTRA.
- August 4 - US President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy
- August 12 - NASA space shuttle makes its first test flight off the back of a jetliner
- August 15 - The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by The Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the "WOW!" signal for notation made by a volunteer on the project.
- August 16 - Rock singer Elvis Presley dies in Tennessee.
- August 19 - Groucho Marx dies.
- August 19 - Indonesia Earthquake and Tsunami of 1977
- August 20 - Voyager program: The United States launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft

September

- September 5 - Voyager program: Voyager 1 is launched after a brief delay
- September 5 - Hanns-Martin Schleyer, President of the Employers Association, is kidnapped in Cologne, West Germany. Kidnappers kill three escorting police officers and his chauffeur. They demand release of Red Army Faction prisoners
- September 6 - (approx) - Steve Biko suffers a massive head injury in police custody in South Africa.
- September 7 - Treaties between Panama and the United States on the status of the Panama Canal are signed. The US agrees to transfer control of the canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century
- September 8 - INTERPOL issues a resolution against piracy of video tapes and other material, which is still cited in warnings on videotapes and DVDs now.
- September 10 - Hamida Djandoubi is the last guillotine execution in France.
- September 11 - The last "wild" infection of smallpox is reported in Somalia.
- September 12 - Steve Biko dies of his injuries.
- September 21 - Nuclear-proliferation pact, curbing spread of nuclear weapons, is signed by 15 countries including the United States and USSR.
- September 28 - Porsche 928 debuts at the Geneva Auto Convention

October-December

- October 13 - Four Palestinians hijack a Lufthansa Airlines flight to Somalia and demand release of 11 members of the Red Army Faction. See German Autumn
- October 17-October 18 - GSG-9 troopers storm a hijacked Lufthansa passenger plane in Mogadishu, Somalia - three of the four hijackers die
- October 18 - Red Army Faction members Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe and Gudrun Ensslin commit suicide in Stammheim prison. Irmgard Möller fails. Their supporters continue to claim they were murdered. Bodies are buried October 27
- October 19 - Kidnapped industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer is found killed in Mulhoull, France
- October 20 - Three members of rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd die in charter plane crash
- October 21 - The European Patent Institute is founded
- October 26 - The last natural case of smallpox was discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination and, by extension, of modern science.
- November 6 - The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia, fails, killing 39
- November 19 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel when he meets with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaks before the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement (much of the Arab world is outraged by the visit).
- November 22 - British Airways inaugurates regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service
- December 1 - First flight of Lockheed's top-secret stealth project aircraft designated Have Blue, the precursor to the US F-117A Nighthawk.
- December 4 - Jean-Bédel Bokassa, president of the Central African Republic, crowns himself Emperor.
- December 4 - Malaysia Airlines Flight 653 is hijacked and crashed in Johor, Malaysia, killing 100.

Unknown dates

- 2060 Chiron, first of the outer solar system asteroids known as Centaurs, discovered by Charlie Kowal.
- Color TV Game 6 is created by Nintendo.
- Portugal's traditional naming conventions change such that children's surnames can come from either the mother or the father, not just from the father.

Births

January-March

- January 7 - Dustin Diamond, American actor
- January 8 - Amber Benson, American actress
- January 13 - Orlando Bloom, British actor
- January 22 - Hidetoshi Nakata, Japanese footballer
- January 26 - Vince Carter, American basketball player
- January 28 - Daunte Culpepper, American football player
- January 28 - Joey Fatone, American musician
- February 2 - Shakira, Colombian musician
- February 3 - Daddy Yankee, Latin Reggaeton musician
- February 5 - Ben Ainslie, British sailor
- February 8 - Yucef Merhi, Venezuelan artist
- February 11 - Randy Moss, American football player
- February 11 - Mike Shinoda, American musician
- February 16 - Ian Clarke, Irish computer scientist
- February 20 - Stephon Marbury, American basketball player
- February 21 - Kevin Rose, American television host
- March 1 - Rens Blom, Dutch athlete
- March 5 - Wally Szczerbiak, Spanish-born basketball player
- March 7 - Mitja Zastrow, German-born swimmer
- March 14 - Mervyn Colley, British kabbalist and ceremonial magician
- March 28 - Devon, American actress

April-June

- April 13 - Gerard Way, American singer (My Chemical Romance)
- April 14 - Sarah Michelle Gellar, American actress
- April 14 - Chandra Levy, American federal government intern (d. 2001)
- April 21 - Jamie Salé, Canadian figure skater
- April 22 - Andruw Jones, Antillean baseball player
- April 23 - John Cena, American professional wrestler
- April 24 - Carlos Beltrán, Puerto Rican baseball player
- April 26 - Tom Welling, American actor
- May 13 - Samantha Morton, British actress
- May 14 - Roy Halladay, American baseball player
- May 14 - Ada Nicodemou, Australian actress
- May 23 - Ilia Kulik, Russian figure skater
- May 26 - Misaki Ito, Japanese actress
- June 1 - Danielle Harris, American voice actress
- June 8 - Kanye West, American rapper and record producer
- June 9 - Peja Stojakovic, Serbian basketball player
- June 14 - Chris McAlister, American football player
- June 16 - Kerry Wood, American baseball player
- June 19 - Peter Warrick, American football player
- June 20 - Stefán H. Ófeigsson, Icelandic space engineer.
- June 27 - Raúl, Spanish footballer

July-November

- July 1 - Jarome Iginla, Canadian hockey player
- July 1 - Liv Tyler, American actress
- July 8 - Milo Ventimiglia, American actor
- July 8 - Wang Zhizhi, Chinese basketball player
- July 10 - Schapelle Corby, Australian in Indonesian prison
- July 14 - Victoria, Princess of Sweden
- July 27 - Martha Anne Madison, American actress
- July 28 - Emanuel Ginóbili, Argentine basketball player
- July 31 - Tim Couch, American football player
- August 2 - Dave Farrel, American musician
- August 3 - Angela Beesley, British Internet entrepreneur
- August 3 - Tom Brady, American football player
- August 9 - Chamique Holdsclaw, American basketball player
- August 12 - Plaxico Burress, American football player
- August 13 - Michael Klim, Australian swimmer
- August 15 - Igor Cassina, Italian gymnast
- August 17 - Thierry Henry, French footballer
- August 25 - Jonathan Togo, American actor
- August 27 - Deco, Portuguese footballer
- September 1 - Aaron Schobel, American football player
- September 11 - Ludacris, American rapper
- September 13 - Fiona Apple, American musician
- September 28 - Se Ri Pak, South Korean golfer
- October 7 - Meighan Desmond, New Zealand actress
- October 11 - Claudia Palacios, Colombian journalist and newsreader
- October 14 - Kelly Schumacher, Canadian basketball player
- October 25 - Birgit Prinz, German footballer
- October 29 - Brendan Fehr, Canadian actor
- November 1 - Alistair Griffin, British singer/songwriter
- November 2 - Randy Harrison, American actor
- November 3 - Aria Giovanni, American model and actress
- November 10 - Brittany Murphy, American actress
- November 13 - Chanel Cole, New Zealand-born singer
- November 16 - Oksana Baiul, Ukrainian figure skater
- November 17 - Ryk Neethling, South African swimmer
- November 19 - Kerri Strug, American gymnast
- November 21 - Jonas Jennings, American football player
- November 28 - DeMya Walker, American basketball player

December

- December - Ahmed al-Nami, Saudi Arabian hijacker (d. 2001)
- December 3 - Adam Malysz, Polish ski jumper
- December 7 - Fernando Vargas, American boxer
- December 12 - Dahm triplets:
- December 12 - Erica, American model
- December 12 - Jaclyn, American model
- December 12 - Nicole, American model
- December 18 - Ryan Scott Ottney, American comic book writer
- December 23 - Alge Crumpler, American football player
- December 30 - Laila Ali, American boxer
- December 30 - Kenyon Martin, basketball player

Deaths

January-March

- January 2 - Errol Garner, American musician (b. 1921)
- January 14 - Anthony Eden, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1897)
- January 14 - Peter Finch, English-born actor (b. 1916)
- January 14 - Anaïs Nin, French author (b. 1903)
- January 17 - Gary Gilmore, American murderer (executed) (b. 1940)
- January 19 - Yvonne Printemps, French singer and actress (b. 1895)
- January 29 - Buster Nupen, South African cricketer (b. 1902)
- January 29 - Freddie Prinze, American actor and comedian (b. 1954)
- February 4 - Brett Halliday, American writer (b. 1904)
- February 11 - Louis Beel, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (b. 1902)
- February 27 - Allison Hayes, American actress (b. 1930)
- February 28 - Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, American actor (b. 1905)
- March 4 - Andrés Caicedo, Colombian writer (b. 1951)
- March 11 - Ulysses S. Grant IV, American geologist and paleontologist (b. 1893)
- March 16 - Kamal Jumblatt, leader of the Lebanese Druze (b. 1917)
- March 18 - Marien Ngouabi, President of The Republic of the Congo (assassinated) (b. 1938)
- March 22 - A.K. Gopalan, Indian communist leader (d. 1904)

April-August

- April 21 - Gummo Marx, American actor and comedian (b. 1892)
- May 5 - Ludwig Erhard, Chancellor of Germany (b. 1897)
- May 10 - Joan Crawford, American actress (b. 1905)
- June 3 - Archibald Vivian Hill, English physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1886)
- June 16 - Werner von Braun, German-born rocket scientist (b. 1912)
- June 19 - Lady Olave Baden-Powell, English Chief Girl Guide (b. 1889)
- June 19 - Ali Shariati, Iranian sociologist (b. 1933)
- July 2 - Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born writer (b. 1899)
- July 13 - Carl Gustav von Rosen, Swedish pilot (b. 1909)
- July 23 - Arsenio Erico, Paraguayan footballer (b. 1915)
- August 4 - Edgar Douglas Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian, English physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1889)
- August 14 - Ron Haydock, American actor, writer, and musician (b. 1940)
- August 16 - Elvis Presley, American singer and actor (b. 1935)
- August 19 - Groucho Marx, American actor and comedian (b. 1890)

September-December

- September 1 - Ethel Waters, American singer (b. 1896)
- September 6 - John Edensor Littlewood, British mathematician (b. 1885)
- September 12 - Steve Biko, South African activist (b. 1946)
- September 13 - Leopold Stokowski, English conductor (b. 1882)
- September 16 - Marc Bolan, English musician (b. 1947)
- September 16 - Maria Callas, American-born soprano (b. 1923)
- October 14 - Bing Crosby, American singer and actor (b. 1903)
- October 20 - Members of the American rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd killed in a plane crash:
- Cassie Gaines (b. 1948)
- Steve Gaines (b. 1949)
- Ronnie Van Zant (b. 1948)
- November 5 - René Goscinny, French comic book writer (b. 1926)
- November 8 - Bucky Harris, baseball player (b. 1896)
- November 11 - Greta Keller, Vienna-born cabaret singer and actress (b. 1903)
- November 15 - Princess Charlotte of Monaco (b. 1898)
- November 25 - Tommy Prince, Canadian war hero (b. 1915)
- December 19 - Jacques Tourneur, French director (b. 1904)
- December 25 - Charlie Chaplin, English-born comedian (b. 1889)

Nobel Prizes

- Physics - Philip Warren Anderson, Sir Nevill Francis Mott, John Hasbrouck van Vleck
- Chemistry - Ilya Prigogine
- Physiology or Medicine - Roger Guillemin, Andrew V. Schally, Rosalyn Yalow
- Literature - Vicente Aleixandre
- Peace - Amnesty International
- Economics - Bertil Ohlin, James Meade

Templeton Prize

- Chiara Lubich Category:1977 als:1977 ko:1977년 ja:1977年 simple:1977 th:พ.ศ. 2520

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Initials

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Other

People's Daily

The People's Daily () is a Simplified-Chinese-language newspaper published worldwide with a circulation of 3 to 4 million. It is the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China. The first issue of the paper was published in June 15, 1948 in Pingshan, Hubei as the paper of a regional branch of the Communist Party. The offices were moved to Beijing in March 1949 and it became the official paper of the Communist Party of China in August of that year. As an organ of the Communist Party, the newspaper often provides direct information about the policies and viewpoints of the Party. During the Cultural Revolution, the People's Daily was one of the few sources of information from which either foreigners or Chinese could figure out what the Chinese government was doing. During this period, an editorial in the People's Daily would be considered an authoritative statement of government policy. Newspaper articles in the People's Daily are often not read for content, so much as placement. A large number of articles devoted to a political figure or idea is often taken as a sign that that official is rising. The People's Daily is the chief mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. In addition, editorials in the People's Daily are also still regarded as fairly authoritative statements of government policy. It is important here to make the distinction between editorials, commentaries, and opinions. Although all must be government approved, they different sharply on the amount of official authoritativeness they contain. For example, although an opinion piece is unlikely to contain views that are opposed to those of the government, they may express a viewpoint or contain a debate which is still under consideration and may reflect only the opinions of the writer. By contrast, an official editorial, which are rather infrequent, means that the government has reached a final decision on an issue. Since the mid-1990s, the People's Daily has faced a decline of governmental subsidies combined with increasing competition from international news sources and Chinese tabloids. As part of its effort to modernize, it began an online edition in 1997, and the web bulletin forums, such as the Strong Nation Forum in the Chinese edition, has been known for their surprisingly candid content. The complexity of the People's Dailys situation can be seen by the fact that it is a dot-com, with banner advertising for washing machines and Coca-Cola next to banners promoting the Communist Party.
See also

- Xinhua News Agency
- Media in China
External links

- [http://www.peopledaily.com.cn People's Daily Home Page]
- [http://english.peopledaily.com.cn People's Daily English Edition] Category:Chinese newspapers Category:English-language newspapers category:People's Republic of China category:Chinese-language newspapers (Simplified Chinese) zh-cn:人民日报

People's Daily

Big5

:For other uses, see big five (disambiguation). Big-5 or Big5 is a character encoding method used in Taiwan (Republic of China) and Hong Kong for Traditional Chinese characters. Its Mainland China equivalent is GB.

Name

Big5's Chinese name, 五大碼 (pinyin: wǔdà mǎ), means "Big Five Encoding." The name refers to the original design goal to support the five major software packages used in Taiwan at the time, or to the five leading computer companies in Taiwan—Acer (宏碁, hóng qí), [http://www.mitac.com.tw MiTAC] (神通, shén tōng), [http://www.jiajiawuye.com/ 佳佳] (jiājiā), [http://www.zerone.com.tw Zero One] (零壹, líng yī), and [http://www.fic.com.tw FIC] (大眾, dà zhòng)—that collaborated to develop the code. The English name of the encoding, "Big5", was subsequently incorrectly translated back to Chinese as 大五碼 (dàwǔ mǎ). Both Chinese names are now in use.

Organization

The original Big5 character set is sorted first by usage frequency, second by stroke count, lastly by KangXi Radicals. The original Big5 character set lacked many commonly used characters. To solve this problem, each vendor developed its own extension. The ETen extension became part of the current Big5 standard through popularity. The structure of Big5 does not conform to the ISO 2022 standard, but rather bears a certain similarity to the Shift JIS encoding. It is a double-byte character set (DBCS) with the following structure: Certain variants of the Big5 character set, for example the HKSCS, uses an expanded range for the lead byte including values in the 0x80 to 0xA0 range (similar to Shift JIS). If the second byte is not in the correct range, behaviour is undefined (i.e., varies from system to system). The numerical value of individual Big5 codes are frequently given as a 4-digit hexadecimal number, which describes the two bytes that comprise the Big5 code as if the two bytes were a big endian representation of a 16-bit number. For example, the Big5 code for a full-width space, which are the bytes 0xa1 0x40, is usually written as 0xa140 or just A140. Strictly speaking, the Big5 encoding contains only DBCS characters. However, in practice, the Big5 codes are always used together with an unspecified, system-dependent single-byte character set (ASCII, or a 8-bit character set such as code page 437), so that you will find a mix of DBCS characters and single-byte characters in Big5-encoded text. Bytes in the range 0x00 to 0x7f that are not part of a double-byte character are assumed to be single-byte characters. (For a more detailed description of this problem, please see the discussion on "The Matching SBCS" below.) The meaning of non-ASCII single bytes outside the permitted values that are not part of a double-byte character varies from system to system. In old MSDOS-based systems, they are likely to be displayed as 8-bit characters; in modern systems, they are likely to either give unpredictable results or generate an error.

A more detailed look at the organization

In the original Big5, the encoding is compartmentalized into different zones: The "graphical characters" actually comprise punctuation marks, partial punctuation marks (e.g., half of a dash, half of an ellipsis; see below), dingbats, foreign characters, and other special characters (e.g., presentational "full width" forms, digits for Suzhou numerals, zhuyin fuhao, etc.) In most vendor extensions, extended characters are placed in the various zones reserved for user-defined characters, each of which are normally regarded as associated with the preceding zone. For example, additional "graphical characters" (e.g., punctuation marks) would be expected to be placed in the 0xa3c0–0xa3fe range, and additional ideograms would be placed in either the 0xc6a1–0xc8fe or the 0xf9d6–0xfefe range. Sometimes, this is not possible due to the large number of extended characters to be added; for example, Cyrillic letters and Japanese kana have been placed in the zone associated with "frequently-used characters".

What a Big5 code actually encodes

Contrary to popular belief, an individual Big5 code does not always represent a complete semantic unit. The Big5 codes of ideograms are always ideograms, but codes in the "graphical characters" section are not always complete "graphical characters". What Big5 encodes are particular graphical representations of characters or part of characters that happen to fit in the space taken by two monospaced ASCII characters. This is a property of double-byte character sets as normally used in CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) computing, and is not a unique problem of Big5. (The above might need some explanation by putting it in historical perspective, as it is theoretically incorrect: Back when text mode personal computing was still the norm, characters were normally represented as single bytes and each character takes one position on the screen. There was therefore a practical reason to insist that double-byte characters must take up two positions on the screen, namely that off-the-shelf, American-made software would then be usable without modification in a DBCS-based system. If a character can take an arbitrary number of screen positions, software which was written with the assumption that one byte of text takes one screen position would produce incorrect output. Of course, if a computer never had to deal with the text screen, the manufacturer would not enforce this artificial restriction; the Apple Macintosh is an example. Nevertheless, the encoding itself must be designed so that it works correctly on text-screen-based systems.) To illustrate this point, consider the Big5 code 0xa14b (…). To English speakers this looks like an ellipsis and the Unicode standard identifies it as such; however, in Chinese, the ellipsis consists of six dots that fit in the space of two Chinese characters (……), so in fact there is no Big5 code for the Chinese ellipsis, and the Big5 code 0xa14b just represents half of a Chinese ellipsis. It represents only half of an ellipsis because the whole ellipsis should take the space of two Chinese characters, and in many DBCS systems one DBCS character must take exactly the space of one Chinese character. Characters encoded in Big5 do not always represent things that can be readily used in plain text files; an example is "citation mark" (0xa1ca, ﹋), which is, when used, required to be typeset under the title of literary works. Another example is the Suzhou numerals, which is a form of scientific notation that requires the number to be laid out in a 2-D form consisting of at least two rows.

The Matching SBCS

In practice, Big5 cannot be used without a matching SBCS; this is mostly to do with a compatibility reason. However, as in the case of other CJK DBCS character sets, the SBCS to use has never been specified. Big5 has always been defined as a DBCS, though when used it must be paired with a suitable, unspecfied SBCS and therefore used as what some people call an MBCS; nevertheless, Big5 by itself, as defined, is strictly a DBCS. The SBCS to use being unspecified implies that the SBCS used can theoretically vary from system to system. Nowadays, ASCII is the only possible SBCS one would use. However, in old DOS-based systems, Code Page 437—with its extra special symbols in the control code area including position 127—was much more common. Yet, on a Macintosh system with the Chinese Language Kit, or on a Unix system running the cxterm terminal emulator, the SBCS paired with Big5 would not be Code Page 437. Outside the valid range of Big5, the old DOS-based systems would routinely interpret things according to the SBCS that is paired with Big5 on that system. In such systems, characters 127 to 160, for example, were very likely not avoided because they would produce invalid Big5, but used because they would be valid characters in Code Page 437. The modern characterization of Big5 as an MBCS consisting of the DBCS of Big5 plus the SBCS of ASCII is therefore historically incorrect and potentially flawed, as the choice of the matching SBCS was, and theoretically still is, quite independent of the flavour of Big5 being used.

History

The Big5 encoding was defined by the Institute for Information Industry of Taiwan in 1984. According to some accounts, Big5 was popularized by its adoption in several commercial software packages, especially the ET Chinese system which ran on MS-DOS. The Republic of China government declared it their standard in mid-1980s since Big5 was already the de facto standard by that time. Hong Kong also adopted Big5 for character encoding. However, Cantonese uses many archaic and some colloquial Chinese characters that were not available in the normal Big5 character set. To solve this problem, the Hong Kong Government created the Big5 extensions Government Chinese Character Set in 1995 and Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set in 1999. The Hong Kong extensions were commonly distributed as a patch. It is still being distributed as a patch by Microsoft, but a full Unicode font is also available from the Hong Kong Government’s web site.

External links

- [http://kura.hanazono.ac.jp/paper/codes.html Chinese character codes: an update] by Christian Wittern
- [http://www.cns11643.gov.tw CNS 11643 official web site] has information about the Big5e character set (an extended version of Big5) in the "Chinese Information Code" section
- [http://www.info.gov.hk/digital21/eng/hkscs/ Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set Info]

References

- Lunde, Ken (1999). CJKV Information Processing. First Edition. O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. ISBN 1565922247. Category:Character sets zh-min-nan:Big-5 ja:BIG5

One country, two systems

"One country, two systems" (Simplified Chinese: 一国两制; Traditional Chinese: 一國兩制; pinyin: yì; guó liǎng zhì; Jyutping: jat1 gwok3 loeng5 zai3; Yale: yāt gwok leúhng jai), is an idea originally proposed by Deng Xiaoping, then Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC), for the unification of China.

Hong Kong and Macau

In 1984, Deng Xiaoping proposed to apply the principle to Hong Kong in the negotiation talks with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher over the future of Hong Kong when the lease of the New Territories (including New Kowloon) of Hong Kong to Britain was to expire in 1997. The same principle was proposed in the talks with Portugal over Macau. The principle is that upon reunification, despite the practice of socialism in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, which were formerly colonies of the United Kingdom and Portugal respectively, can continue to practice capitalism under a high degree of autonomy for fifty years after reunification. The establishment of these regions, called Special Administrative Regions (SARs), is authorized by Article 31 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, which states that the State may establish SARs when necessary, and that the systems to be instituted in them shall be prescribed by law enacted by the National People's Congress in light of the specific conditions. The SARs of Hong Kong and Macau were formally established on July 1, 1997 and December 20, 1999 respectively, immediately after the People's Republic of China (PRC) resumed the exercise of sovereignty over the respective regions.

Framework

The two SARs of Hong Kong and Macau are responsible for their domestic affairs, including, but not limited to, the judiciary and courts of last resort, immigration and customs, public finance, currencies and extradition. Diplomatic relations and national defense of the two SARs are, however, the responsibility of the Central People's Government in Beijing. Hong Kong continues using English common law. Macau continues using the Portuguese civil law system.

Implementation

In Hong Kong, the system has been implemented through the Basic Law of Hong Kong, which serves as the mini-constitution of the region, and consistent with the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Similar arrangements are in place with Macau. Under the respective basic laws, the SARs have a high degree of autonomy and enjoys executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication. They formulate their own monetary and financial policies, maintain their own currencies, formulate their own policies on education, culture, sports, social welfare system, etc. within the framework of the basic laws. As stipulated by the basic laws, while the Central People's Government of the PRC is responsible for foreign affairs and defence in relation to the SARs, representatives of the Government of the SARs may participate, as members of delegations of the PRC, in diplomatic negotiations that directly affect the Regions, and in other international organizations or conferences limited to states and affecting the region. For those international organizations and conferences not limited to states, the SARs may participate using the names in the form of "Hong Kong, China". As separate economic entities, both SARs of Hong Kong and Macau are members of the World Trade Organization. Hong Kong is also one of the member economies of APEC. The basic laws also provide constitutional protection on various fundamental human rights and freedoms. Specifically, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is given a constitutional status through the basic laws. Some international observers and human rights organisations have expressed doubts over the future freedom of expressing political opinions, and on the pledge of high degree of autonomy in Hong Kong. They considered, for example, that the proposals on Article 23 of the Basic Law in 2003 (which was withdrawn due to mass opposition) might have undermined freedoms. Some also criticized that Beijing's influence on the democratic developments in Hong Kong could undermine the pledge of a high degree of autonomy. Nonetheless, the governments of the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong both consider that the principle has been successfully implemented, quoting official reports of both the United Kingdom and the United States. Public polls have also shown that among the various areas of governance, the public is most satisfied with the degree of freedoms enjoyed.

Taiwan

This system has also been proposed by the PRC government for Taiwan, but the Republic of China government has refused this offer.(It was also claimed that the system was originally designed for Taiwan.) Special provisions for a Taiwanese military have also been proposed. The concept of "one country, two systems" tends to be highly unpopular in Taiwan, with polls consistently showing 80% opposition and only about 10% support. All of the major parties in Taiwan, including those that lean toward Chinese reunification have come out strongly against "one country, two systems." One of the very few Taiwanese who have publicly supported "one country, two systems" is novelist Li Ao.

External links

- [http://www.gov.hk/info/sar5/e12.htm "One Country, Two Systems", HKSAR Government web site] Category:Politics of Hong Kong 1 Category:People's Republic of China Category:Hong Kong law Category:Special territories Category:Macau Category:Mainland China Category:Government of Hong Kong

1969

1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday :For other uses, see Number 1969. :For the movie, see 1969 (movie). :For the Velvet Underground live album, see 1969: The Velvet Underground Live.

Events

January

- January 1 - Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch purchases the largest selling British Sunday newspaper The News Of The World
- January 3 - Pele scores his 1000th goal
- January 5 - The Derry Riots leave over 100 people injured
- January 10 - After 147 years, the last issue of the Saturday Evening Post is published
- January 12 - Super Bowl III: the New York Jets defeat the Baltimore Colts
- January 14 - An explosion aboard the USS Enterprise near Hawaii kills 25
- January 15 - The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 5
- January 16 - Ten paintings defaced in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art
- January 16 - Student Jan Palach sets himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union. Three days later he dies.
- January 20 - Richard Nixon succeeds Lyndon Johnson as President of the United States of America
- January 24 - Martial Law declared in Madrid, the University is closed and over 300 students are arrested
- January 27 - 14 men, nine of them Jews, were executed in Baghdad for spying for Israel
- January 27 - Reverend Ian Paisley, hardline Protestant leader in Northern Ireland, is jailed for three months for illegal assembly.
- January 30 - The Beatles' last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records. The impromptu concert was broken up by the police

February

- February 1 - Birth, in Paris, France, of Denis Cheyrouze, French media guru.
- February 4 - In Cairo Yasser Arafat is appointed Palestinian Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress and takes command the next day
- February 8 - The last issue of the Saturday Evening Post hits magazine stands
- February 13 - FLQ terrorists bomb the Stock Exchange in Montreal, Quebec
- February 24 - Launch of the Mariner 6 Mars probe
- February 24 - Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (Case against pure speech in schools)
- February 25 - George Jones marries Tammy Wynette

March

- March 1 - Major league baseballer Mickey Mantle announces his retirement.
- March 1 - During a performance at Miami's Dinner Key Auditorium, Jim Morrison of the Doors is arrested for exposing himself during the show. Morrison is officially charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, indecent behavior, open profanity and public drunkenness.
- March 1 - John Kerry officially leaves active duty in Vietnam
- March 2 - In Toulouse, France the first Concorde test flight is conducted
- March 2 - Soviet and Chinese forces clash at a border outpost on the Ussuri River
- March 3 - In a Los Angeles, California court, Sirhan Sirhan admits that he killed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy
- March 3 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 9 to test the lunar module
- March 10 - In Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. Ray would later retract his guilty plea
- March 13 - Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module
- March 17 - Golda Meir of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, becomes Prime Minister of Israel
- March 17 - The Longhope lifeboat in Scotland is lost, the entire crew of eight die.
- March 19 - British paratroopers and Marines land on the island of Anguilla.
- March 28 - Dwight D Eisenhower dies after a long illness in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington DC.

April

- April 1 - The Hawker Siddeley Harrier enters service with the RAF
- April 4 - Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart
- April 13 - Queensland: The final day of the Brisbane Tramways after 84 years of operation.
- April 20 - British troops arrive in Northern Ireland to reinforce the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
- April 22 - Robin Knox-Johnston becomes the first person to sail around the world solo without stopping
- April 28 - General de Gaulle steps down as president of France after having suffered a defeat in a referendum the day before.
- April 29 - First anniversary of the Broadway production of the musical Hair is celebrated with free concert at Wollman Skating Rink

May

- May 10 - Zip to Zap, a harbringer of the Woodstock Concert, ends with dispersal and eviction of youth and young adults at Zap, North Dakota by the National Guard.
- May 10 - The Battle of Dong Ap Bia, also known as the Hamburger Hill, begins in Vietnam War
- May 13 - May 13th Incident: Race riots occur in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- May 16 - Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet spaceprobe, lands on Venus
- May 17 - Venera program: Soviet Venera 6 begins to descend into Venus' atmosphere sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure
- May 17 - Tom McClean completes the first solo transatlantic crossing by a rowboat
- May 18 - Apollo program: Apollo 10 launches
- May 19-20 - French Foreign Legion paratroopers land onto Kolwezi, Zaire, to rescue Europeans in a middle of a civil war
- May 20 - National Guard helicopters spray skin-stinging powder on anti-war protesters in California
- May 22 - Apollo program: Apollo 10's lunar module flies within 15,400 m of the moon's surface
- May 26 - Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the upcoming first manned moon landing
- May 26-June 2: John Lennon and Yoko Ono conduct their Bed-In at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec, and record the song "Give Peace a Chance."
- May 29 - Mashina Vremeni Russian rock band official birthday
- May 30 - Riots in Curaçao, marking the start for a movement for Afro-Caribbean civil rights on the island.

June

- June 2 - In Ottawa, Canada the National Arts Centre opens its doors to the public for the first time
- June 2 - Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne collides with the US destroyer Frank E. Evans in the South China Sea - 74 US sailors dead
- June 8 - After the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) cancels the program, the last Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour airs
- June 8 - President Nixon and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet at Midway Island. Nixon announced that 25,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn by September.
- June 20 - Georges Pompidou elected President of France
- June 23 - Warren E. Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States by retiring chief Earl Warren.
- June 24 - United Kingdom and Rhodesia sever diplomatic ties
- June 28 - The Stonewall riots mark the start of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S.

July

gay rights movement
- July 5 – Assassination of Mboya, Kenyan Minister of Development
- July 7 - French is made equal to English throughout the Canadian national government
- July 8 - Vietnam War: The very first U.S. troop withdrawals are made
- July 10 - Trimaran the Teignmouth Electron of Donald Crowhurst is found drifting and unoccupied - Crowhurst might have committed suicide
- July 14 - Football War - after Honduras loses a soccer game against El Salvador, rioting breaks out in Honduras against Salvadoran migrant workers. Of the 300,000 Salvadorean workers in Honduras, tens of thousands are expelled, prompting a brief Salvadoran invasion of Honduras. The OAS works out a cease-fire on July 18, taking effect on July 20
- July 18 - Ted Kennedy drives off a bridge on his way home from a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign aide to his brother who was in the car with him, dies in the incident
- July 20 - Apollo program: The human race, represented by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, lands on the Moon. Apollo 11 lifted off for the moon on July 16 and returned safely on July 24
- July 25 - Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon declares the Nixon Doctrine stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This was the start of the "Vietnamization" of the war
- July 30 - Vietnam War: US President Richard M. Nixon makes an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam and meets with President Nguyen Van Thieu and with US military commanders
- July 31 - Halfpenny ceases to be legal tender in the UK

August

- August 4 - Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, US representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail
- August 5 - Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars (3,524 kilometers)
- August 8 - Fire in the Bannerman's Castle in the Hudson River - most of the roof collapses
- August 9 - Members of a cult led by Charles Manson murder five people including Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring and, Abigail Folger. The next day The Family would murder Rosemary and Leno LaBianca
- August 10 - Manson family kills Leno and Rosemary LaBianca
- August 12 - Jack Lynch, Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, makes a speech to the United Nations in which he asks them to deploy a peace-keeping mission in Northern Ireland.
- August 13 - Serious border clash between Soviet Union and People's Republic of China
- August 14 - British troops deployed in Northern Ireland
- August 15 - The Woodstock Festival of music begins in upstate New York lasting three days and featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era
- August 17 - Category 5 Hurricane Camille hits the Mississippi coast killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars)
- August 21 - Part of the al-Aqsa Mosque is destroyed by arson

September

- September 1 - A coup in Libya oust King Idris and brings Col. Moammar Qaddafi to power
- September 2 - The first automatic teller machine in the United States is installed in Rockville Centre, New York.
- September 5 - My Lai Massacre: Lt. William Calley is charged with six specifications of premeditated murder for the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai
- September 22 - 25 Islamic conference in Rabat, Morocco after al-Aqsa Mosque fire (Augusr 21) condemns Israeli occupation of Jerusalem
- September 28 - Social Democrats and Free Democratic Party have received a majority of votes in the German parliamentary elections and decide to form a common government

October

- October 1 - In Sweden, Olof Palme is elected Labour party leader, replacing Tage Erlander as prime minister on October 14
- October 9 - In Chicago, Illinois, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection to the trial of the "Chicago Eight" (trial started on September 24)
- October 15 - Vietnam War: Hundreds of thousands of people take part in National Moratorium antiwar demonstrations across the United States
- October 16 - The ("miracle") New York Mets win the World Series, beating the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles, four games to one.
- October 17 - Willard S. Boyle and George Smith invent the CCD at Bell Laboratories. Today, this technology is widely used in digital cameras.
- October 21 - Willy Brandt becomes Chancellor of West Germany
- October 21 - Siad Barre comes to power in Somalia in a coup
- October 31 - Wal-Mart incorporates as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

November

- November - Creation of ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet
- November 3 - Vietnam War: US President Richard M. Nixon addresses his nation on television and radio asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War effort and to support his policies
- November 9 - Group of Amerindians lead by Richard Oakes seize the Alcatraz island for 19 months, inspiring a wave of renewed Indian pride and government reform
- November 12 - Vietnam War: My Lai Massacre - Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the My Lai story
- November 13 - Vietnam War: Anti-war protesters in Washington, DC stage a symbolic "March Against Death"
- November 14 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon (landed on the Moon on November 19)
- November 15 - Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea
- November 15 - Vietnam War: In Washington, DC, 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the war
- November 15 - Regular colour television broadcasts begin on BBC1 and ITV in UK.
- November 17 - Cold War: Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki to begin SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides
- November 19 - Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon
- November 20 - Vietnam War: The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam
- November 20 - Richard Oakes returns with 90 followers and offers to buy the Alcatraz for $24 (he leaves the island January 1970)
- November 21 - U.S. President Nixon and Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato agree in Washington on the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, U.S. retains rights to military bases on island, but must be nuclear-free.
- November 21 - The first ARPANET link is established
- November 21 - The senate voted down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth, the first such rejection since 1930.
- November 24 - Apollo program: The Apollo 12 spacecraft splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon
- November 25 - John Lennon returns his OBE to protest the British government's support of the US war in Vietnam

December

- December 1 - Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II (on January 4, 1970, the New York Times ran a long article, "Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random")
- December 2 - The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its debut. It carries 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, from Seattle to New York City.
- December 4 - Black Panther members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot dead in their sleep during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers.
- December 12 - Piazza Fontana Slaughter in Italy (Strage di Piazza Fontana). A U.S. officer and C.I.A. agent called David Carrett involved.

Undated events

- Parker Morris Standards became mandatory for all Council housing in the UK.
- Summer saw the invention of Unix
- In the autumn, the first four nodes of the ARPAnet went up
- ACM SIGGRAPH founded

Ongoing events

- Vietnam War (1964 - 1975)
- War of Attrition, between Egypt and Israel, which lasted until August 1970. This conflict was characterized by escalating artillery duels, air raids and commando missions

Births

January

- January 2 - Christy Turlington, American fashion model
- January 2 - Tommy Morrison, American boxer
- January 3 - Michael Schumacher, German race car driver
- January 5 - Marilyn Manson, American singer
- January 14 - Jason Bateman, American actor
- January 14 - David Grohl, American drummer and composer (Nirvana; later, Foo Fighters)
- January 16 - Roy Jones Jr., American boxer
- January 17 - Lukas Moodysson, Swedish film director
- January 20 - Patrick K. Kroupa, American writer, hacker
- January 20 - Skeet Ulrich, American actor

February

- February 1 - Gabriel Batistuta, Argentine footballer
- February 3 - Retief Goosen, South African golfer
- February 5 - Bobby Brown, American singer
- February 11 - Jennifer Aniston, American actress
- February 12 - Hong Myung-Bo, South Korean footballer
- February 17 - Tuesday Knight, American actress

March

- March 1 - Javier Bardem, Spanish actor
- March 1 - Dafydd Ieuan, Welsh drummer (Super Furry Animals)
- March 19 - Connor Trinneer, American actor

April

- April 6 - Bret Boone, baseball player
- April 10 - Billy Jayne, American actor
- April 11 - Cerys Matthews, Welsh singer
- April 17 - Henry Ian Cusick, Peruvian actor
- April 19 - Susan Polgar, Hungarian chess player
- April 25 - Joe Buck, baseball and American football broadcaster
- April 25 - Darren Woodson, American football player
- April 25 - Renée Zellweger, American actress

May

- May 2 - Brian Lara, West Indian cricketer
- May 3 - Daryl F. Mallett, American author and actor
- May 7 - Eagle Eye Cherry, Swedish-born musician
- May 10 - Dennis Bergkamp, Dutch soccer player
- May 13 - Nikos Aliagas, French-born television host
- May 14 - Cate Blanchett, Australian actress
- May 15 - Emmitt Smith, American football player
- May 16 - Tracey Gold, American actress
- May 16 - Steve Lewis, American athlete
- May 18 - Martika, American singer
- May 21 - Georgiy R. Gongadze, Ukrainian journalist (d. 2000)

June

- June 11 - Steven Drozd, American drummer (The Flaming Lips)
- June 14 - Steffi Graf, German tennis player
- June 15 - Oliver Kahn, German football goalkeeper
- June 17 - Paul Tergat, Kenyan athlete
- June 18 - Pål Pot Pamparius, Norwegian guitarist and keyboardist (Turbonegro)
- June 24 - Sissel Kyrkjebø, Norwegian singer
- June 25 - Matt Gallant, American television host

July

- July 5 - John LeClair, American hockey player
- July 10 - Gale Harold, American actor
- July 18 - Masanori Murakawa, Japanese professional wrestler
- July 20 - Josh Holloway, American actor
- July 24 - Jennifer Lopez, American actress and singer
- July 27 - Triple H, American professional wrestler

August

- August 2 - Fernando Couto, Portuguese footballer
- August 6 - Elliott Smith, American musician (d. 2003)
- August 9 - Troy Percival, baseball player
- August 13 - Midori Ito, Japanese figure skater
- August 18 - Edward Norton, American actor
- August 18 - Christian Slater, American actor
- August 19 - Matthew Perry, American actor
- August 28 - Jack Black, American actor

September

- September 2 - Cedric "K-Ci" Hailey, American singer
- September 5 - Dweezil Zappa, American actor and musician
- September 9 - Rachel Hunter, New Zealand model and actress
- September 13 - Shane Warne, Australian cricketer
- September 24 - Donald DeGrate, Jr., American music producer
- September 25 - Hansie Cronje, South African cricketer (d. 2002)
- September 25 - Hal Sparks, American actor and comedian
- September 25 - Catherine Zeta-Jones, Welsh actress

October

- October 1 - Igor Ulanov, Russian hockey player
- October 3 - Gwen Stefani, American singer (No Doubt)
- October 8 - Julia Ann, American porn actress
- October 10 - Brett Favre, American football player
- October 13 - Nancy Kerrigan, American figure skater
- October 14 - David Strickland, American actor (d. 1999)
- October 17 - Ernie Els, South African golfer
- October 19 - Trey Parker, American television producer
- October 20 - Juan Gonzalez, baseball player
- October 30 - Clay Enos, American photographer

November

- November 4 - Matthew McConaughey, American actor
- November 7 - Michelle Clunie, American actress
- November 7 - Hélène Grimaud, French pianist
- November 7 - Bryant H. McGill, American poet
- November 11 - Carson Kressley, American fashion expert
- November 12 - Heinz-Christian Strache, Austrian politician
- November 17 - Jean-Michel Saive, Belgian table tennis player
- November 18 - Sam Cassell, basketball player
- November 20 - AQi Fzono, Japanese composer
- November 21 - Ken Griffey, Jr., baseball player
- November 28 - Bosco Tesanovic, Bosco accountancy franchiser
- November 29 - Mariano Rivera, Panamanian Major League Baseball player
- November 29 - Pierre van Hooijdonk, Dutch footballer

December

- December 4 - Jennifer Unger, Public health researcher
- December 15 - Rick Law, American illustrator and producer
- December 19 - Kristy Swanson, American actress
- December 21 - Julie Delpy, French actress
- December 23 - Martha Byrne, American actress and singer
- December 28 - Linus Torvalds, Finnish computer programmer
- December 30 - Jay Kay, English singer (Jamiroquai)

Deaths

January

- January 4 - Violet and Daisy Hilton, English conjoined twin actresses (b. 1908)
- January 8 - Albert Hill, British athlete (b. 1889)
- January 19 - Jan Palach Czech student protester (suicide) (b. 1948)
- January 25 - Irene Castle, English dancer (b. 1893)
- January 29 - Allen Dulles, American director of the Central Intelligence Agency (b. 1893)
- January 30 - Georges Pire, Belgian monk, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1910)

February

- February 4 - Thelma Ritter, American actress (b. 1905)
- February 9 - Gabby Hayes, American actor (b. 1885)
- February 20 - Ernest Ansermet, Swiss conductor (b. 1883)
- February 23 - King Saud of Saudi Arabia (b. 1902)
- February 26 - Levi Eshkol, Prime Minister of Israel (b. 1895)

March

- March 4 - Nicholas Schenck, Russian-born film empresario (b. 1881)
- March 11 - John Wyndham, British author (b. 1903)
- March 21 - Pinky Higgins, American baseball player and manager (b. 1909)
- March 26 - John Kennedy Toole, American author (b. 1937)
- March 27 - B. Traven, German writer
- March 28 - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States (b. 1890)

May

- May 4 - Osbert Sitwell, English writer (b. 1892)
- May 14 - Frederick Lane, Australian swimmer (b. 1888)
- May 19 - Coleman Hawkins, American musician (b. 1904)

June-December

- June 21 - Maureen Connolly, American tennis player (b. 1934)
- June 22 - Judy Garland, American actress and singer (b. 1922)
- July 5, Walter Gropius, German architect (b. 1883)
- July 18 - Mary Jo Kopechne, American campaign aide to U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (b. 1940)
- July 24 - Witold Gombrowicz, Polish novelist and dramatist (b. 1904)
- August 9 - Cecil Frank Powell, British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1903)
- August 9 - Sharon Tate, American actress (murdered) (b. 1943)
- August 17 - Otto Stern, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1888)
- August 27 - Ivy Compton-Burnett, English novelist (b. 1884)
- August 27 - Erika Mann, German writer (b. 1905)
- August 31 - Rocky Marciano, American boxer (b. 1923)
- September 2 - Ho Chi Minh, President of Vietnam (b. 1890)
- October 4 - Natalino Otto, Italian singer (b. 1912)
- October 12 - Sonja Henie, Norwegian figure skater (b. 1912)
- October 21 - Jack Kerouac, American author (b. 1922)
- October 21 - Waclaw Sierpinski, Polish mathematician (b. 1882)
- October 30 - Pops Foster, American musician
- November 12 - William F. Friedman, American cryptanalyst (b. 1891)
- November 15 - Iskander Mirza, first President of Pakistan
- November 18 - Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., American politician (b. 1888)
- December 4 - Fred Hampton, Black Panther (shot by police) (b. 1948)
- December 4 - Mark Clark, Black Panther (shot by police) (b. 1896)
- December 12 - Magic Sam, American musician (b. 1937)
- December 31 - leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

January-February

- January 12 - UN Security Council votes 11-1 to admit the Palestinian Liberation Organization
- January 15 - Would-be Gerald Ford presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life in prison
- January 16 - Trial against jailed members of the Red Army Faction begins in Stuttgart, West Germany
- January 18 - The Scottish Labour Party is formed
- January 21 - The first commercial Concorde flight takes off.
- January 25 - 12 PIRA bombs explode in London's East End
- January 27 - The trial of SLA member Patty Hearst begins. She is found guilty of robbery on March 20
- February 4 - In Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000.
- February 4 - 1976 Winter Olympics open in Innsbruck, Austria
- February 11 - Clifford Alexander Jr is confirmed as 1st African-American Secretary of US Army.
- February 20 - The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands
- February 24 - Cuba's current constitution enacted.
- February 27 - Western Sahara declares independence
- February 28 - Spain gives up territories in Sahara but retains its enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta

March

- March 1 - Merlyn Rees ends Special Category Status for those sentenced for crimes relating to the civil violence in Northern Ireland
- March 3 - Fleetwood Mac records Rumours, which will be a blockbuster album in 1977
- March 9-March 11 - Two coal mine explosions claim 26 lives at the Blue Diamond Coal Co. Scotia Mine, Letcher County, Ky
- March 17 - Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is retried
- March 18 - Harold Wilson resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- March 19 - Actor Nicholas Downs born in Des Moines, Iowa at 6:45am
- March 20 - Patty Hearst is found guilty of armed robbery of a San Francisco bank
- March 24 - Argentina military forces depose president Isabel Peron
- March 27 - The first 4.6 miles of the Washington, DC subway system opens
- March 29 - Military junta of general Jorge Videla comes to power in Argentina
- March 31 - New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Ann Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator. She remains comatose and dies in 1985

April-May

- April 1 - Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
- April 4 - Prince Norodom Sihanouk resigns as leader of Cambodia and is placed under house arrest
- April 5 - Jim Callaghan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- April 5 - Large crowds lay wreaths at Beijing's Monument of the Martyrs in commemoration of the death of Premier Zhou Enlai. Poems against the Gang of Four are also displayed. This was followed by a police crackdown and became known as the Tiananmen Incident.
- April 13 - An explosion in an ammunition factory in Lapua, Finland kills 40
- April 16 - In India the minimum age for marriage is raised to 21 years for men and 18 years for women; it is to curb population growth
- April 21 - Great Bookie Robbery in Melbourne. Bandits steal A$1.4 Million in bookmakers settlements in Queen Street, Melbourne
- April 23 - Powerful punk rock group The Ramones release their first album which starts a new form of music
- April 25 - Portugal's new constitution enacted
- May 4 - Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 revolutionizes world of wine.
- May 9 - Ulrike Meinhof of RAF is found hanging in an apparent suicide in her cell in Stuttgart-Stannheim prison
- May 11 - President Gerald Ford signs Federal Election Campaign Act.
- May 24 - Washington, DC Concorde service begins

June

- June 1 - UK and Iceland end the Cod War
- June 5 - Teton Dam collapses in southeast Idaho in the U.S., killing 11 people.
- June 14 - the trial begins at Oxford Crown Court of Donald Neilson, the killer known as the Black Panther.
- June 16 - Soweto riots in South Africa mark the beginning of the end of apartheid
- June 20 - Hundreds of Western tourists are moved from Beirut and taken to safety in Syria by the US military, following the murder of the US ambassador.
- June 20 - Czechoslovakia beat West Germany 5-3 on penalties to win Euro 76, after the game had ended 2-2 after extra time.
- June 27 - Palestinian extremists hijack an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They take it to Entebbe, Uganda, where Israeli commandos storms it on July 4
- Sismik incident starts when the Turkish survey ship Sismik entered Greek waters.

July

- July 2 - North Vietnam and South Vietnam united to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam - a Communist country
- July 3 - Supreme Court of the United States rules on Gregg v. Georgia and decides that death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual and is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment
- July 3 - The great heat wave in the United Kingdom, which is currently suffering from drought conditions, reaches its peak.
- July 4 - United States Bicentennial
- July 4 - Israeli airborne commandos free 103 hostages being held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda's Entebbe Airport; one Israeli and several Ugandan soldiers are killed in raid.
- July 7 - German left-wing terrorists Monika Berberich, Gabriella Rollnick, Juliane Plambeck and Inge Viett escape from Lehrterstrasse maximum security prison in West Berlin
- July 10 - Explosion in Seveso, Italy, kills a large number of people
- July 16-July 20 - Albert Spaggiari and his gang break into the vault of the Societe Generale Bank in Nice, France
- July 17 - The 1976 Summer Olympics begin in Montreal, Canada.
- July 17 - East Timor is declared the 27th province of Indonesia
- July 19 - Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal is created.
- July 20 - Viking program: The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars
- July 21 - A bomb kills Christopher Ewart, British ambassador to the Irish Republic
- July 27 - United Kingdom breaks diplomatic relations with Uganda
- July 28 - Tangshan earthquake flattens Tangshan,China, killing 242,769 people, and 164,851 people are heavily injured
- July 29 - In New York City, the "Son of Sam" pulls a gun from a paper bag killing one and seriously wounding another in the first of a series of attacks that terrorized the city for the next year.
- July 30 - In Santiago, capital of Chile, Cruzeiro from Brazil wins River Plate from Argentina and are the Copa Libertadores de América champions.
- July 31 - NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1

August

- August 1 - the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago becomes a republic, replacing Queen Elizabeth II with an elected president as their Head of State.
- August 2 - A gunman murders Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr, and injures Priscilla Davis and Gus Gavrel in an incident at Priscilla's Mansion at Mockingbird Lane in Fort Worth, Texas. T. Cullen Davis, Priscilla's husband and one of the richest men in Texas, was tried and found innocent for Andrea's murder. He was later found innocent of a plot to kill several people, including Priscilla and a judge, and a wrongful death lawsuit. Cullen went broke afterwards
- August 4 - First outbreak of Legionnaire's disease kills 29 at the American Legion convention in Philadelphia
- August 5 - Racing Champion Niki Lauda suffers serious burns in the German Grand prix; the Great Clock of Westminster (or Big Ben) suffers internal damage and stops running for over nine months
- August 6 - Former UK Postmaster General John Stonehouse is sentenced for seven years for fraud
- August 7 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars
- August 14 - 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women demonstrate for peace in Northern Ireland
- August 14 - The Senegalese political party PAI-Rénovation is legally recognized. PAI-Rénovation thus becomes the third legal party in the country.
- August 18 - In North Korea at Panmunjom, two US soldiers are killed while trying to chop down part of a tree in the Demilitarized Zone which had obscured their view
- August 24 - Uruguayan army captures Marcelo Gelman and his pregnant wife. Marcelo is later killed and his wife and child disappears

September-October

- September 3 - Viking program: The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars takes the first close-up, color photos of the planet's surface
- September 6 - Cold War: Soviet air force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido in Japan and requests political asylum from the United States
- Military Junta in power in Argentina.
- September 17 - Space Shuttle Enterprise rolled out.
- September 21 - Seychelles joins the United Nations.
- September 21 - Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
- October - The Damned release New Rose - the first ever single released / marketed as "punk rock".
- October 6 - Cubana Flight 455 crashes due to a bomb placed by anti-Castrist militants, after taking off from Bridgetown, Barbados. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4535661.stm]
- October 6 - Students gathering at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand to protest the return of ex-dictator Thanom are massacred by a coalition of right-wing paramilitary and government forces, triggering the return of the military to government.
- October 12 - The People's Republic of China announces that Hua Guofeng is the successor to the late Mao Tse-tung as chairman of Communist Party of China
- October 19 - Copyright Act of 1976 extends copyright duration for an additional 20 years in the United States
- October 22 - Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, fifth President of Ireland, resigns after being publicly insulted by the Minister for Defence.
- October 25 - Full pardon given to Clarence Norris, last known survivor of the Scottsboro Boys.

November-December

- November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1976: Jimmy Carter defeats incumbent Gerald Rudolph Ford to become first candidate from deep south to win since the Civil War.
- November 15 - First Megamouth Shark is discovered off Oahu in Hawaii
- November 26 - Little known company Microsoft is officially registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.
- December 1 - Angola joins the United Nations
- December 3 - Patrick Hillery is elected unopposed as the sixth President of Ireland.
- December 15 - Samoa joins the United Nations
- December 23 - New volcano, Murara, began erupting in eastern Zaire.

Unknown dates

- Christopher Maier, American murder victim born, died 1997
- First laser printer introduced by IBM - the IBM 3800
- Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, invented by Seymour Cray
- California's sodomy law repealed.
- The term memetics first proposed by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene.
- Toronto Blue Jays created
- CN Tower built in Toronto - The tallest free standing land structure.
- Diffie-Hellman cryptography proposed
- Plans to move the Nigerian capital from Lagos to Abuja are approved.
- Ebola is first discovered in Zaire
- Women For Sobriety established.

Births

January-March

- January 2 - Paz Vega, Spanish actress
- January 7 - Éric Gagné, Canadian Major League Baseball player
- January 7 - Alfonso Soriano, Dominican Major League Baseball player
- January 11 - Amanda Peet, American actress (born really 1972?)
- January 20 - Gretha Smit, Dutch speed skater
- January 21 - Emma Bunton, English musician (Spice Girls)
- January 28 - Mark Madsen, American basketball player
- January 31 - Buddy Rice, American race car driver
- February 2 - James Hickman, British swimmer
- February 4 - Cam'ron, Harlem, New York rapper
- February 9 - Vladimir Guerrero, Dominican Major League Baseball player
- February 10 - Lance Berkman, baseball player
- February 12 - Silvia Saint, Czech actress
- February 15 - Brandon Boyd, American musician (Incubus)
- February 20 - Ed Graham, British drummer (The Darkness)
- February 28 - Ja Rule, American rapper
- March 5 - Sarunas Jasikevicius, Lithuanian basketball player
- March 8 - Freddie Prinze Jr., American actor
- March 20 - Chester Bennington, American musician (Linkin Park)
- March 22 - Teun de Nooijer, Dutch field hockey player
- March 22 - Reese Witherspoon, American actress
- March 23 - Keri Russell, American actress
- March 24 - Aaron Brooks, American football player
- March 24 - Peyton Manning, American football player
- March 25 - Juvenile, American rapper
- March 26 - Amy Smart, American actress

April-June

- April 6 - Candace Cameron, American actress
- April 13 - Jonathan Brandis, American actor (d. 2003)
- April 18 - Melissa Joan Hart, American actress
- April 25 - Tim Duncan, West Indian basketball player
- April 25 - Rainer Schuettler, German tennis player
- May 3 - Beto, Portuguese footballer
- May 4 - Jason Michaels, baseball player
- May 15 - Tyler Walker, baseball player
- May 19 - Kevin Garnett, American basketball player
- May 20 - Ramón Hernández, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player
- May 25 - Miguel Tejada, Dominican Major League Baseball player
- May 31 - Colin Farrell, Irish actor
- June 8 - Lindsay Davenport, American tennis player
- June 10 - Freddy Garcia, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player
- June 13 - Jason 'J' Brown, English musician (5ive)
- June 23 - Brandon Stokley, American football player

July-September

- July 1 - Patrick Kluivert, Dutch footballer
- July 1 - Ruud van Nistelrooy, Dutch footballer
- July 3 - Andrea Barber, American actress
- July 2 - Gabriel Mughadam, Bodybuilder
- July 4 - Daijiro Kato, Japanese motorcycle racer
- July 8 - Ellen MacArthur, English yachtswoman
- July 9 - Shelton Benjamin, American professional wrestler
- July 9 - Fred Savage, American actor
- July 11 - Eduardo Najera, Mexican basketball player
- July 20 - Alex Yoong, Malaysian race car driver
- July 23 - Judit Polgar, Hungarian chess player
- July 31 - Annie Parisse, American actress
- August 6 - Melissa George, Australian actress
- August 9 - Jessica Capshaw, American actress
- August 9 - Rhona Mitra, English actress
- August 8 - JC Chasez, American singer
- August 12 - Antoine Walker, American basketball player
- August 14 - Alex Albrecht, American television personality
- August 15 - Boudewijn Zenden, Dutch football player
- August 27 - Carlos Moyà, Spanish tennis player
- August 27 - Mark Webber, Australian race car driver
- September 7 - Stevie Case (Killcreek), American video game celebrity
- September 7 - Shannon Elizabeth, American actress
- September 8 - Abi Titmuss, British TV presenter and model
- September 8 - Sjeng Schalken, Dutch tennis player
- September 10 - Gustavo Kuerten, Brazilian tennis player
- September 16 - Tina Barrett, English singer (S Club 7)
- September 22 - Ronaldo, Brazilian footballer
- September 25 - Chauncey Billups, American basketball player
- September 26 - Michael Ballack, German footballer
- September 29 - Andriy Shevchenko, Ukrainian footballer

October-December

- October 1 - Blu Cantrell, American rapper
- October 4 - Alicia Silverstone, American actress
- October 10 - Bob Burnquist, Brazilian skateboarder
- October 19 - Michael Young, baseball player
- October 23 - Ryan Reynolds, Canadian actor
- November 6 - Pat Tillman, American football player (d. 2004)
- November 7 - Mark Philippoussis, Australian tennis player
- November 19 - Jun Shibata, Japanese singer and songwriter
- November 24 - Chen Lu, Chinese figure skater
- November 29 - Anna Faris, American actress
- December 1 - Matthew Shepard, American murder victim (d. 1998)
- December 12 - Dan Hawkins, British guitarist (The Darkness)
- December 13 - Tom Delonge, American musician (Blink-182)
- December 15 - Baichung Bhutia, Indian footballer
- December 17 - Takeo Spikes, American football player
- December 18 - Koyuki, Japanese actress and model

Deaths

January-March

- January 8 - Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China (b. 1898)
- January 10 - Howlin' Wolf, American musician (b. 1910)
- January 12 - Agatha Christie, English writer (b. 1890)
- January 23 - Paul Robeson, American actor, singer, writer, and activist (b. 1898)
- January 30 - Mance Lipscomb, American singer (b. 1895)
- February 1 - Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)
- February 1 - George Whipple, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1878)
- February 2 - Zlatyu Boyadzhiev, Bulgarian painter (b. 1903)
- February 6 - Vince Guaraldi, American musician (b. 1928)
- February 9 - Percy Faith, Canadian-born musician and composer (b. 1908)
- February 11 - Lee J Cobb, American actor (b. 1911)
- February 11 - Alexander Lippisch, German aerodynamicist (b. 1894)
- February 11 - Charlie Naughton, Scottish actor (b. 1886)
- February 12 - Sal Mineo, American actor (b. 1939)
- February 13 - Lily Pons, American soprano (b. 1898)
- February 20 - René Cassin, French judge, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1887)
- February 22 - Florence Ballard, American singer (The Supremes) (b. 1943)
- March 6 - Max 'Slapsie Maxie' Rosenbloom, American boxer and actor (b. 1903)
- March 7 - Wright Patman, American politician (b. 1893)
- March 14 - Busby Berkeley, American choreographer and director (b. 1895)
- March 17 - Luchino Visconti, Italian theatre and film director (b. 1906)
- March 19 - Paul Kossoff, British guitarist (Free) (b. 1950)
- March 24 - Bernard Montgomery, British field marshal (b. 1897)

April-June

- April 1 - Max Ernst, German artist (b. 1891)
- April 5 - Howard Hughes, American aviation pioneer, film director, and eccentric (b. 1905)
- April 9 - Dagmar Nordstrom, American composer, pianist, one of The Nordstrom Sisters (b. 1903)
- April 18 - Henrik Dam, Dutch biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1895)
- April 26 - Sid James, South African actor (b. 1913)
- May 9 - Jens Bjørneboe, Norwegian author (b. 1920)
- May 9 - Ulrike Meinhof, German terrorist (b. 1934)
- May 11 - Alvar Aalto, Finnish architect (b. 1898)
- May 14 - Keith Relf, British musician (The Yardbirds) (b. 1943)
- May 26 - Martin Heidegger, German philosopher (b. 1889)
- May 27 - Hilde Hildebrand, German actress, (b. 1897)
- May 31 - Jacques Monod, French biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1910)
- June 10 - Adolph Zukor, Hungarian-born film producer (b. 1893)
- June 15 - Jimmy Dykes, baseball player and manager (b. 1896)
- June 25 - Johnny Mercer, American songwriter (b. 1909)
- June 30 - Firpo Marberry, baseball player (b. 1898)

July-September

- July 1 - Zhang Mintian, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (b. 1900)
- July 4 - Antoni Słonimski, Polish poet and writer (b. 1895)
- July 13 - Joachim Peiper, German military leader (b. 1915)
- August 6 - Gregor Piatigorsky, Russian cellist (b. 1903)
- August 22 - Juscelino Kubitschek, President of Brazil (b. 1902)
- August 25 - Eyvind Johnson, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1900)
- August 26 - Lotte Lehmann, German soprano (b. 1888)
- August 27 - Mukesh, Indian singer (b. 1923)
- September 2 - Stanisław Grochowiak, Polish writer (b. 1934)
- September 9 - Mao Zedong, Chinese leader (b. 1893)
- September 26 - Lavoslav Ružička, Croatian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1887)

October-December

- October 5 - Lars Onsager, Norwegian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1903)
- October 11 - Alfredo Bracchi, Italian author (b. 1897)
- November 12 - Walter Piston, American composer (b. 1894)
- December 2 - Danny Murtaugh, baseball player and manager (b. 1917)
- December 4 - Benjamin Britten, English composer (b. 1913)
- December 6 - João Goulart, President of Brazil (b. 1918)
- December 28 - Katharine Byron, U.S. Congresswoman (b. 1903)

Nobel Prizes

- Physics - Burton Richter, Samuel Chao Chung Ting
- Chemistry - William Nunn Lipscomb, Jr
- Physiology or Medicine - Baruch S. Blumberg, D Carleton Gajdusek
- Literature - Saul Bellow
- Peace - Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan
- Economics - Milton Friedman

Templeton Prize

- Cardinal Suenens Category:1976 ko:1976년 ja:1976年 simple:1976 th:พ.ศ. 2519

1986

1986 (MCMLXXXVI) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar.

Events

January

Gregorian calendar
- January 1 - Spain and Portugal enter the European Community
- January 1 - Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands and is separated from the Netherlands Antilles.
- January 9 - After losing a patent battle with Polaroid, Kodak leaves the instant camera business.
- January 12 - Space shuttle Columbia is launched with the first Hispanic-American astronaut, Dr. Franklin R. Chang-Diaz.
- January 20 - The United Kingdom and France announce plans to construct the Channel Tunnel.
- January 20 - The first federal Martin Luther King Day, honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
- January 24 - Voyager 2 space probe makes first encounter with Uranus
- January 28 - Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates 73 seconds after launch, killing its crew of six astronauts and a schoolteacher.
- January 29 - Yoweri Kaguta Museveni became President of the Republic of Uganda after leading a successful five-year liberation struggle.

February

- February 7 - 28 years of one-family rule end in Haiti, when President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees the Caribbean nation.
- February 9 - Mohinder Amarnath becomes the first batsman dismissed for handling the ball in one-day international cricket.
- February 9 - Comet Halley reaches its perihelion, the closest point to the Earth, during its second visit to the solar system in the 20th century.
- February 11 - Human Rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky is released by the USSR and leaves the country.
- February 16 - The Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov runs aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand
- February 19 - The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station
- February 19 - After waiting 37 years, the United States Senate approves a treaty outlawing genocide
- February 25 - EDSA Revolution: President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines goes into exile to USA after 20 years of rule; Corazon Aquino becomes the first Filipino woman president, first as in interim president.
- February 25 - Egyptian military police, protesting bad salaries, enter four luxury hotels near the pyramids, set fire to them and loot them
- February 27 - The United States Senate allows its debates to be televised on a trial basis
- February 28 - Swedish prime minister Olof Palme is shot dead on his way home from the cinema.

March

- March 8 - Japanese spacecraft Suisei flies by Halley's Comet, studying its UV hydrogen corona and solar wind.
- March 9 - United States Navy divers find the largely intact but heavily-damaged crew compartment of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The bodies of all seven astronauts were still inside.
- March 27 - A car bomb explodes at Russell Street Police HQ in Melbourne, killing 1 police officer.
- March 31 - A fire devastates Hampton Court Palace in Surrey, England.

April

England
- April 2 - A bomb explodes on a TWA flight from Rome to Athens - 4 dead
- April 5 - In the terroristic La Belle discotheque bombing the West-Berlin discotheque, a known hangout for U.S. soldiers, was bombed, killing 3 and injuring 230 people. Libya is held responsible.
- April 13 -- Pope John Paul II officially visits the Synagogue of Rome — the first time a modern Pope had visited a synagogue.
- April 14 - 2.2 lb (1 kg) hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92.
- April 15 - At least 100 people died after USA planes bombed targets in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and the Benghazi region as part of Operation El Dorado Canyon
- April 17 - British journalist John McCarthy kidnapped in Beirut (released in August 1991) - three others are found dead, Revolutionary Cells claims responsibility in retaliation for the US bombing of Libya.
- April 17 - Treaty signed, ending Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly.
- April 26 - In Ukraine, one of the reactors at the Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear plant explodes creating the world's worst nuclear disaster. 31 are killed directly by the incident, many thousands more were exposed to significant amounts of radioactive material, vast territories in Ukraine and Belarus rendered uninhabitable.
- April 27 - "Captain Midnight" interrupts HBO satellite feed

May-July

- May 2 - The 1986 World Exposition in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada opens.
- May 7 - Steaua Bucharest wins the European Champions Cup in Sevilla
- May 25 - Hands Across America
- May 26 - The European Community adopts the European flag.
- June 4 - Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.
- June 8 - Former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim is elected president of Austria.
- June 9 - The Rogers Commission releases its report on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
- June 17 - The The Legend of Zelda is release for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
- June 29 - Argentina defeat West Germany 3-2 to win the Football World Cup 1986
- June 22 - Pirate radio Euro Weekend begins to broadcast
- July 5 - The Statue of Liberty is reopened to the public after an extensive refurbishing
- July 23 - In London, Prince Andrew, Duke of York marries Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.
- July 30 - Estate agent Suzy Lamplugh vanishes after a meeting in London

August-September

- August 6 - A low pressure system moving from South Australia and redeveloping off the New South Wales coast dumps a record 328 millimetres of rain in a day on Sydney.
- August 18 - Australian Democrats leader Don Chipp retires from federal parliment and is succeded by Janine Haines, becoming the first woman to lead a political party in Australia
- August 19 - Picasso painting Weeping Woman is found in a locker at the Spencer Street Station in Melbourne, Australia. It had been stolen from the Victoria National Gallery two weeks earlier
- August 20 - In Edmond, Oklahoma, United States Postal Service employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers before committing suicide.
- August 21 - The Lake Nyos tragedy occurs, killing nearly 2000 people.
- August 31 - The Soviet passenger liner Admiral Nakhimov collides with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev in the Black Sea and sinks almost immediately, killing 398.
- August 31 - An Aeroméxico Douglas DC-9 collides with a Piper PA-28 over Cerritos, California, killing 67 on both aircraft and 15 on the ground.
- August 31 - Cargo ship Khian Sea departs from the docks of Philadephia, Pennsylvania, carrying 14,000 tons of toxic waste. It will wander the seas for the next 16 months trying to find a place to dump its cargo
- September 5 - Pan Am Flight 73 with 358 people on board is hijacked at Karachi International Airport.
- September 6 - In Istanbul, two Arab terrorists from Abu Nidal's terror organization kill 22 and wound six inside the Neve Shalom synagogue during Sabbath services.
- September 7 - Desmond Tutu becomes the first black to lead the Anglican Church in South Africa.

October

- October 1 - President Ronald Reagan signs the Goldwater-Nichols Act into law, making official the largest reorganization of the United States Department of Defense since the Air Force was made a separate branch of service in 1947.
- October 9 - United States District Court Judge Harry E. Claiborne becomes the fifth federal official to be removed from office through impeachment.
- October 10 - An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale strikes San Salvador, El Salvador, killing an estimated 1,500 people.
- October 11 - Cold War: Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavík, Iceland, in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe (the talks break down in failure).
- October 26 - Bus deregulation in the United Kingdom, except Greater London and Northern Ireland.
- October 27 - The New York Mets win the Major League Baseball World Series, beating the Boston Red Sox in seven games.
- October 28 - The centennial of the Statue of Liberty's dedication is celebrated in New York Harbor.
- October 28 - Jeremy Bamber is found guilty of the murder of his parents, sister and twin nephews and is given five life sentences.

November

- November 1 - Queensland, Australia: Joh Bjelke-Petersen wins his final election as Premier of Queensland with 38.6% of the vote. He resigns on December 1 1987 following revelations of his involvement corruption released in the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
- November 3 - Iran-Contra Affair: The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reports that the United States has been selling weapons to Iran in secret in order to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.
- November 9 - Romania: Ellection of Patriarch Teoctist Arǎpaşu/Theoctist
- November 11 - Sperry Rand and Burroughs merge to form Unisys, becoming the second largest computer company
- November 12 - Australian singer John Farnham releases the album "Whispering Jack", which becomes the highest selling album in Australia's history.
- November 21 - Iran-Contra Affair: National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents implicating them in the sale of weapons to Iran and channeling the proceeds to help fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
- November 25 - Iran-Contra Affair: US Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
- November 26 - Iran-Contra Affair: U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces that as of Monday, December 1 former Senator John Tower, former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft will serve as members of the Special Review Board looking into the scandal (they became known as the Tower Commission). Reagan denies involvement in the scandal.

December

- December 14 - Voyager, an experimental aircraft designed by Burt Rutan and piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, begins its flight around the world.
- December 19 - Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov is permitted to return to Moscow after years of internal exile
- December 23 - Voyager completes the first nonstop circumnavigation of the earth by air without refueling in 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds
- December 31 - A fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, kills 97 and injures 140.

Unknown dates

- Rajendra Sethia flees from England to India owing £170 million
- Atomic force microscope invented
- The National park passport stamps program begins.

Births

- January 24 - Mischa Barton, English-born American actress
- January 24 - Ricky Ullman, Israeli-born actor
- February 19 - Maria Mena, Norwegian singer
- February 21 - Charlotte Church, Welsh soprano
- February 25 - Justin Berfield, American actor
- March 9 - Brittany Snow, American actress
- March 14 - Jamie Bell, English actor
- April 3 - Amanda Bynes, American actress and variety show host
- June 3 - Rafael Nadal, Spanish tennis player
- June 11 - Shia LaBeouf, American actor
- June 13 - Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, American actresses and entrepreneurs
- June 25 - Aya Matsuura, Japanese singer
- July 2 - Lindsay Lohan, American actress and singer
- September 12 - Emmy Rossum, American actress and singer
- September 16 - Hasib Hussain, English suicide bomber (d. 2005)
- October 9 - Laure Manaudou, French swimmer
- November 3 - Jasmine Trias, American singer
- November 5 - BoA, Korean singer
- November 15 - Sania Mirza, Indian tennis player

Deaths

January-March

- January 1 - Alfredo Binda, Italian cyclist (b. 1902)
- January 8 - Pierre Fournier, French cellist (b. 1906)
- January 10 - Jaroslav Seifert, Czech writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)
- January 14 - Donna Reed, American actress (b. 1921)
- January 24 - L. Ron Hubbard, American writer and founder of Scientology (b. 1911)
- January 24 - Gordon MacRae, American actor, singer (b. 1921)
- January 24 - Vincente Minnelli, American director (b. 1903)
- January 27 - Lilli Palmer, actress (b. 1914)
- January 28 - Crew of Space Shuttle Challenger:
- Greg Jarvis (b. 1944)
- Christa McAuliffe (b. 1948)
- Ronald McNair (b. 1950)
- Ellison Onizuka (b. 1946)
- Judith Resnik (b. 1949)
- Francis R. Scobee (b. 1939)
- Michael J. Smith (b. 1945)
- February 1 - Alva Myrdal, Swedish politician, diplomat, and writer, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1902)
- February 11 - Frank Herbert, American author (b. 1920)
- February 27 - Jacques Plante, Canadian hockey player (b. 1929)
- February 28 - Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden (b. 1927)
- March 4 - Richard Manuel, American musician (The Band) (b. 1943)
- March 6 - Georgia O'Keeffe, American artist (b. 1887)
- March 10 - Ray Milland, Welsh actor (b. 1907)
- March 30 - James Cagney, American actor (b. 1899)

April-June

- April 3 - Peter Pears, English tenor (b. 1910)
- April 7 - Leonid Kantorovich, Russian economist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1912)
- April 14 - Simone de Beauvoir, French feminist writer (b. 1908)
- April 15 - Jean Genet, French writer (b. 1910)
- April 23 - Otto Preminger, Austrian-born film director (b. 1906)
- April 26 - Broderick Crawford, American actor (b. 1911)
- April 26 - Dechko Uzunov, Bulgarian painter (b. 1899)
- May 3 - Robert Alda, American-born actor (b. 1914)
- May 4 - Henri Toivonen, Finnish rally car driver (b. 1956)
- May 9 - Tenzing Norgay, Nepalese sherpa (b. 1914)
- May 12 - Elisabeth Bergner, Austrian actress (b. 1897)
- May 15 - Elio de Angelis, Italian race car driver (b. 1958)
- May 15 - Theodore H. White, American writer (b. 1915)
- May 23 - Sterling Hayden, American actor (b. 1916)
- May 25 - Chester Bowles, American politician (b. 1901)
- May 31 - James Rainwater, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1917)
- June 13 - Benny Goodman, American jazz musician (b. 1909)
- June 14 - Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine writer (b. 1899)
- June 16 - Maurice Duruflé, French composer (b. 1902)
- June 17 - Kate Smith, American singer (b. 1907))

July-December

- July 4 - Oscar Zariski, Russian mathematician (b. 1899)
- July 6 - Jagjivan Ram, Indian politician (b. 1908)
- July 8 - Hyman Rickover, American admiral (b. 1900)
- July 8 - Skeeter Webb, baseball player (b. 1909)
- July 14 - Raymond Loewy, French-born industrial designer (b. 1893)
- July 15 - Billy Haughton, American harness driver and trainer (b. 1923)
- July 24 - Fritz Albert Lipmann, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1899)
- August 2 - Roy Cohn, American lawyer and anti-Communist (b. 1927)
- August 20 - Milton Acorn, Canadian poet, writer, and playwright (b. 1923)
- August 31 - Urho Kekkonen, President of Finland (b. 1900)
- August 31 - Henry Moore, British sculptor (b. 1898)
- September 4 - Hank Greenberg, baseball player (b. 1911)
- September 25 - Nikolay Nikolayevich Semyonov, Russian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1896)
- September 27 - Cliff Burton, American bassist (Metallica) (b. 1962)
- October 5 - James H. Wilkinson, English mathematician (b. 1919)
- October 16 - Arthur Grumiaux, Belgian violinist (b. 1921)
- October 22 - Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1893)
- October 23 - Edward Adelbert Doisy, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1893)
- October 25 - Forrest Tucker, American actor (b. 1919)
- October 26 - Jackson Scholz, American runner (b. 1897)
- October 28 - Ian Marter, British actor and writer (b. 1944)
- October 31 - Robert S. Mulliken, American physicist and chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (b. 1896)
- November 6 - Elisabeth Grümmer, Alsatian soprano (b. 1911)
- November 8 - Artur London, Czech statesman (b. 1915)
- November 8 - Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet politician (b. 1890)
- November 21 - Dar Robinson, American film stuntman (b. 1947)
- November 22 - Scatman Crothers, American actor, musician (b. 1910)
- November 29 - Cary Grant, British actor (b. 1904)
- December 8 - Ben Dover, American actor (b. 1940)
- December 28 - Andrei Tarkovsky, Russian film director (b. 1932)
- December 29 - Harold Macmillan, British statesman (b. 1894)

Nobel Prizes

- Physics - Ernst Ruska, Gerd Binnig, Heinrich Rohrer
- Chemistry - Dudley R Herschbach, Yuan T Lee, John C Polanyi
- Physiology or Medicine - Stanley Cohen, Rita Levi-Montalcini
- Literature - Wole Soyinka
- Peace - Elie Wiesel
- Economics - James Buchanan Jr

Fields Medalists

- Simon Donaldson, Gerd Faltings, Michael Freedman

Templeton Prize

- Rev. Dr. James McCord

Right Livelihood Award

- Robert Jungk, Rosalie Bertell / Alice Stewart, Ladakh Ecological Development Group and Evaristo Nugkuag / AIDESEP

Fiction

Events in the Video Games Shenmue and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City take place. Category:1986 als:1986 ko:1986년 ms:1986 ja:1986年 simple:1986 th:พ.ศ. 2529

Fedia

Le genre Fedia, facile à identifier au sein de son groupe par ses fleurs à 2 étamines, ne comporte que 3 espèces annuelles distribuées dans le Bassin méditerranéen occidental : :
- Fedia cornucopiae (L.) Gaertn., du sud de la Péninsule ibérique et du nord du Maroc, :
- Fedia graciliflora Fisch.& Meyer, du nord-est du Maroc, du nord de l'Algérie et de la Tunisie, et des Baléares, :
- Fedia pallescens (Maire) Mathez, endémique du Maroc. La distinction entre ces trois espèces a longtemps été méconnue en raison d'un polymorphisme génétique très original dans la mesure où il porte sur la morphologie des fruits: dans une population de chaque espèce coexistent des individus différant par la forme de leurs fruits, qui appartiennent à plusieurs types très distincts (un phénomène semblable a été mis en évidence au sein du genre voisin Valerianella). Les premiers auteurs ont ainsi été incités à baser la distinction des espèces sur la forme des fruits, faute de réaliser que ce caractère était comparable au caractère "lisse" ou "ridé" des petits pois (espèce Pisum sativum) de Gregor Mendel. En revanche, la coloration et la forme des corolles permet une distinction facile des espèces. :Bibliographie: Xena de Enrech, N. & J. Mathez. 1990 ("1989"). Révision du genre Fedia Gaertn. emend. Moench (Valerianaceae). Nat. monsp. sér. Bot. 54: 3-77. Catégorie:Flore (noms scientifiques) Catégorie:Valerianaceae

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