Modern Chinese History — Glossary

An advanced cooperative was a fully collectivised Chinese agricultural unit, introduced from 1955–56, in which land and major means of production became collective property and members were paid by labour alone.

The Agrarian Reform Law of 1950 was the People's Republic of China statute that abolished landlord landownership and redistributed land to peasants nationwide.

The Agrarian Reform Law promulgated on 30 June 1950 was the People's Republic of China statute that abolished landlord land ownership and redistributed land to peasants.

The Anhui clique was a faction of Beiyang warlords led by Duan Qirui that dominated China's Beijing government from 1916 to 1920 during the Warlord Era.

An anti-corruption campaign is a sustained state-led drive to investigate, prosecute, and deter graft among officials, most prominently China's post-2012 campaign under Xi Jinping.

"Support the Qing, destroy the foreign" was the slogan of the Boxer movement, fusing loyalty to the Manchu dynasty with violent opposition to foreign imperialism and Christianity.

An anti-Qing peasant revolution is a mass armed uprising by China's rural classes against the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–1912), driven by agrarian distress, ethnic resentment, and dynastic decline.

The Anti-Rightist Campaign was a 1957–1959 political purge led by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party that persecuted intellectuals and dissenters labelled "rightists" following the Hundred Flowers Movement.

The Arrow Incident was the October 1856 seizure by Qing officials of a Chinese-owned, Hong Kong–registered lorcha named Arrow, used by Britain as the pretext for launching the Second Opium War.

The Boxer Protocol was the 1901 agreement that ended the Boxer Uprising, imposing a massive indemnity, foreign troop garrisons, and humiliating terms on Qing China.

The Cairo Declaration was the November 1943 Allied statement by China, the United Kingdom and the United States pledging to strip Japan of conquered territories and restore Chinese lands.

The Campaign to Suppress Counter-revolutionaries was a 1950–1953 mass political purge by the Chinese Communist Party to eliminate Kuomintang remnants, bandits, secret-society leaders and perceived regime enemies.

Causation and periodisation are the two core analytical operations of historical method: explaining why events occurred and dividing the past into bounded, named eras.

The Common Programme was the 1949 interim constitution of the People's Republic of China, adopted by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference until the 1954 Constitution superseded it.

The Common Programme was the interim constitutional document adopted by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in September 1949, governing the People's Republic of China until 1954.

The Convention of Peking is a set of three treaties signed in 1860 between Qing China and Britain, France, and Russia, ratifying the Treaty of Tientsin and expanding foreign privileges.

Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) was the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China who launched the post-1978 "Reform and Opening Up" policy that transformed China into a market-oriented economy.

The Fengtian clique was a Manchuria-based militarist faction led by Zhang Zuolin that dominated north-eastern China and twice seized Beijing during the warlord era (1916–1928).

A First Five-Year Plan is a state's inaugural medium-term economic blueprint setting production targets and investment priorities, deployed by both the People's Republic of China (1953–57) and India (1951–56).

The Five-anti Campaign was a 1952 Chinese Communist Party mass movement targeting urban capitalists for bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on contracts, and stealing economic intelligence.

The Five-Anti Campaign was a 1952 mass political movement in the People's Republic of China targeting the urban bourgeoisie and private capitalists for economic crimes.

A founding event is the dated, symbolically charged act—a proclamation, congress, or battle—from which a state, party, or regime dates its political legitimacy and origin.

The Gang of Four was a radical Maoist faction led by Jiang Qing that dominated Cultural Revolution politics and was arrested in October 1976 after Mao Zedong's death.

The Great Chinese Famine was a mass starvation across China from 1959 to 1961, triggered by Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, causing tens of millions of deaths.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a mass political movement launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 to purge capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society and reassert his ideological control.

Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, governed under the "one country, two systems" principle since the 1997 handover from Britain.

The Hundred Flowers Campaign was a 1956–57 Chinese Communist Party initiative inviting open criticism of governance, soon reversed into the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

An institutional body is a formally constituted organ vested with defined powers, membership, and procedures to perform a continuing governmental, administrative, or organisational function.

An interim constitutional order is a provisional legal instrument that temporarily governs a state's constitutional arrangements, often promulgated by an executive or transitional authority pending a permanent constitution.

Lin Biao (1907–1971) was a Chinese Communist marshal and Mao Zedong's designated successor whose death fleeing China after an alleged coup plot became a defining trauma of the Cultural Revolution.

Liu Shaoqi (1898–1969) was a Chinese Communist theoretician and statesman who served as President of the People's Republic of China from 1959 to 1968 before being purged during the Cultural Revolution.

The Lushan Conference was a 1959 meeting of the Chinese Communist Party leadership at which Mao Zedong purged Defence Minister Peng Dehuai for criticising the Great Leap Forward.

Macau is a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, a former Portuguese colony returned in 1999 and governed under the "one country, two systems" principle.

Mao Zedong Thought is the body of doctrine that adapts Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions, enshrined since 1945 as a guiding ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.

The May 16 Notification of 1966 was a secret circular issued by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee that formally launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The Outline Land Law was the Chinese Communist Party's 1947 agrarian statute that abolished landlord and clan landholding and redistributed land equally to peasants in areas under Communist control.

The People's Republic of China is the socialist state founded by the Chinese Communist Party on 1 October 1949, governing mainland China under single-party rule.

Russia is a transcontinental Eurasian state, successor to the Soviet Union and the world's largest country by area, a permanent UN Security Council member and nuclear-armed great power.

Taiwan is an island administered by the Republic of China since 1945, claimed by the People's Republic of China as an inalienable part of its territory under the One-China principle.

The Treaty of Nanjing, signed on 29 August 1842, ended the First Opium War between Britain and Qing China and became the first of the "unequal treaties."

The Treaty of Shimonoseki was the 1895 settlement ending the First Sino-Japanese War, under which Qing China ceded Taiwan, recognised Korean independence, and paid a large indemnity to Japan.