Kong Qingdong (born September 22, 1964) is a controversial Chinese academic, author, talk show host, and social commentator. Kong is a prominent Chinese media figure, known for his vulgar and often brusque critiques on political issues and various individuals and groups. Kong has often been portrayed in the media as a figure of the Chinese New Left , calling for a reversal of Chinese economic reforms and a return to Mao-style policies.
144-786: Kong was born to a worker's family during the Cultural Revolution era, and was devoted to studying Lu Xun early in his academic career. He proclaims himself as a 73rd generation descendant of Confucius . Kong first achieved fame as the author of various books describing his graduate student life in Peking University , in which the self-described "Drunkard of Peking University" commentated on many Chinese social issues. An avid reader and researcher of Chinese wuxia fiction, Kong briefly lectured on wuxia author Jin Yong on CCTV 's Lecture Room series, as well as giving
288-534: A Peking University student while giving a speech supporting free speech . The student supposedly asked Michelle Obama, "is America's strength a result of the U.S. secret services listening to the voices of its citizens? Could you tell me in America what the difference is between 'listening to' and 'listening in'?" in a reference to the NSA spying scandal . Kong further described Michelle Obama's response as “dumbfounded by
432-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
576-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
720-494: A "beachhead" for China's liberal media, reached out to Kong for an interview. Rejecting the request, Kong published on his microblog that "the treasonous newspaper has harassed me once again by asking to interview me"; Kong answered the request with a Chinese expression of profanity using the word mom three times ( Chinese : "去你妈的！滚你妈的！操你妈的！" ; lit. 'Go to your mom! Roll to your mom! Fuck your mom!'). The use of profanity drew Kong considerable criticism online, to
864-513: A "sinister" attempt to oppose the party and advance revisionism. Mao promptly endorsed Nie's poster as "the first Marxist big-character poster in China". Approved by Mao, the poster rippled across educational institutions. Students began to revolt against their school's party establishments. Classes were cancelled in Beijing primary and secondary schools, followed by a decision on 13 June to expand
1008-479: A Beijing court, seeking damages of 200,000 yuan , accusing Wu of tarnishing his reputation. However, the Beijing court ruled against Kong upon first review, stating that the news media has an interest in the "public good" since restricting news commentary to use only "civilized" language would unduly restrict for what is permissible on air and limit "sharp commentary" used to make valid points. Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution , formally known as
1152-522: A Briton or an American, been in the same situation, rather than a person from Mainland Chinese. Kong asserted that Hong Kong had some "positive traits", one of which is rule of law , which was enforced only because "the British spanked them [Hong Kongers]" if they broke the law; and, in response to Hong Kong's society, Kong said of Hong Kong people: "your society's order is maintained by law, which means that you have no self-restraint, which means that you are
1296-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
1440-460: A Chinese prize set up in response to Nobel Peace Prize , which was awarded to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo amid China's protest. Kong claims that the prize, which was awarded to Lien Chan and Vladimir Putin in its first two years (none of whom accepted it), accurately reflects Confucius 's vision of peace. Kong, in addition to being described as a nationalist, has also been described as
1584-486: A Chinese television program that the 2012 presidential election in Taiwan is "fake democracy" and is "comparable to a soap opera." He remarked that he did not see "much progress" in Taiwan during the four years of Ma Ying-jeou 's term in Taiwan, and that Ma's winning of six million votes was not impressive, "not even half the population of Beijing." Kong said that Ma's razor-thin margin of victory over his rival Tsai Ing-wen
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#17327869226391728-546: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
1872-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
2016-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
2160-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
2304-567: A corrupt emperor. While Mao initially praised the play, in February 1965, he secretly commissioned his wife Jiang Qing and Shanghai propagandist Yao Wenyuan to publish an article criticizing it. Yao described the play as an allegory attacking Mao; flagging Mao as the emperor, and Peng Dehuai, who had previously questioned Mao during the Lushan Conference , as the honest civil servant. Yao's article put Beijing mayor Peng Zhen on
2448-603: A far-reaching revolutionary coalition, one that displaced existing Red Guard groups. On January 3, 1967, with support from CRG heavyweights Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, the group of firebrand activists overthrew the Shanghai municipal government under Chen Pixian in what became known as the January Storm , and formed in its place the Shanghai People's Commune . Mao then expressed his approval. Shanghai's
2592-519: A figure of the Chinese New Left , a political faction that believes China's economic reforms have gone too far and the country needs to revert to a more socialist and egalitarian society with heavy state control. He was a supporter of quasi-Maoist political figure Bo Xilai prior to and after the politician's disgrace. He has criticized the Chinese government, calling it "shameless", ostensibly for its pursuit of capitalist-style policies. Kong
2736-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
2880-411: A million Red Guards from across the country gathered in and around Tiananmen Square for an audience with the chairman. Mao mingled with Red Guards and encouraged them, donning a Red Guard armband. Lin also took centre stage, denouncing perceived enemies in society that were impeding the "progress of the revolution". Subsequently, violence escalated in Beijing and quickly spread. The 18 August rally
3024-418: A new stage in the development of the socialist revolution in our country:" Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavour to stage a comeback. The proletariat must do the exact opposite: it must meet head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie ... to change
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#17327869226393168-600: A rally was held at the Great Hall of the People to announce the decision and reveal the tone of the movement to teachers and students. At the rally, Party leaders encouraged the masses to 'not be afraid' and take charge of the movement, free of Party interference. The work-teams issue marked a decisive defeat for Liu; it also signaled that disagreement over how to handle the CR's unfolding events would irreversibly split Mao from
3312-490: A report known as the February Outline . The Outline as sanctioned by the party center defined Hai Rui as a constructive academic discussion and aimed to distance Peng Zhen formally from any political implications. However, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan continued their denunciations. Meanwhile, Mao sacked Propaganda Department director Lu Dingyi , a Peng ally. Lu's removal gave Maoists unrestricted access to
3456-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
3600-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
3744-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
3888-625: A talk on the Chinese essayist and language reformer Lu Xun on the same series. After he was named a professor of Chinese studies by Peking University , Kong began publishing essays in which he espoused Chinese patriotism and communist orthodoxy . Kong has praised the North Korean government on various occasions, claiming that the Koreans "would surely die off", if not for "the great leader ( Kim Jong-il ) and his Workers' Party ". Additionally, Kong has organized study groups on Juche ,
4032-427: A time when almost all mass organizations claimed to be "leftist" or "revolutionary". PLA commanders had developed close working relations with the party establishment, leading many military units to repress radicals. Spurred by the events in Beijing, power seizure groups formed across the country and began expanding into factories and the countryside. In Shanghai, a young factory worker named Wang Hongwen organized
4176-506: A topic of controversy later. In May 1966, an expanded session of the Politburo was called in Beijing. The conference was laden with Maoist political rhetoric on class struggle and filled with meticulously prepared 'indictments' of recently ousted leaders such as Peng Zhen and Luo Ruiqing . One of these documents, distributed on 16 May, was prepared with Mao's personal supervision and was particularly damning: Those representatives of
4320-717: A total clampdown by the Portuguese government. The event set in motion Portugal's de facto abdication of control over Macau, putting Macau on the path to eventual absorption by China. By the beginning of 1967, a wide variety of grassroots political organizations had formed. Beyond Red Guard and student rebel groups, these included poor peasant associations, workers' pickets, and Mao Zedong Thought study societies, among others. Communist Party leaders encouraged these groups to "join up", and these groups joined various coalitions and held various cross-group congresses and assemblies. Mass organizations coalesced into two hostile factions,
4464-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
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4608-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
4752-660: A vile ( 賤 [jiàn] ) people". The remarks circulated widely on social media sites in Hong Kong and became the focus of controversy and protests in the territory in early 2012, causing further tensions in what were already strained Mainland Chinese-Hong Kong relations. Two candidates of the 2012 Hong Kong Chief Executive election , Leung Chun-Ying and Henry Tang , criticized Kong. Reactions were mixed in Mainland China to Kong's remarks. Some prominent Chinese academics came out to criticize Kong, but he also received support on
4896-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
5040-655: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
5184-435: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
5328-690: Is notorious for numerous forthright and expletive-ridden rants against a number of groups and individuals, and his polarizing views have frequently generated controversy, but have also rallied supporters. Kong once called former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a "bitch", and performing artist Jiang Kun a xiasanlan ( Chinese : 下三滥 ), a derogatory term for "three dirty professions" of prostitution, beggars, and street artists). Kong has repeatedly criticized China's liberal media, particularly Southern Chinese journals and newspapers, as " hanjian media". Kong has also called CCTV "inhuman". In November 2011, Southern Weekly , described as
5472-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
5616-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 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
5760-637: Is placed on you ... The world belongs to you. China's future belongs to you. During the Red August of Beijing, on August 8, 1966, the party's General Committee passed its "Decision Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," later to be known as the "Sixteen Points". This decision defined the Cultural Revolution as "a great revolution that touches people to their very souls and constitutes
5904-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
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6048-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
6192-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
6336-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
6480-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
6624-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
6768-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
6912-482: The 12-3 incident . The event was prompted by the colonial government's delays in approving a new wing for a CCP elementary school in Taipa . The school board illegally began construction, but the colonial government sent police to stop the workers. Several people were injured in the resulting melee . On December 3, 1966, two days of rioting occurred in which hundreds were injured and six to eight were killed, leading to
7056-521: The Anti-Rightist Movement and affirmed that she "will not give up the defense of my basic civil rights, because it affects the dignity and conscience of a person". Kong fiercely attacked Zhang in a lecture, referring to Zhang's social class as "the enemy of our government." Kong further defended the Anti-Rightist Movement and addressed to the "Old rightists" that "you (the rightists) think that you are proper heroes, so why are you asking
7200-758: The Five Black Categories . Intellectuals and scientists were considered to be the Stinking Old Ninth , and many were persecuted. The country's schools and universities were closed, and the National College Entrance Examination were cancelled. Over 10 million youth from urban areas were relocated under the Down to the Countryside Movement policy. In December 1978, Deng Xiaoping became
7344-508: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution , was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his death in 1976. Its stated goal was to preserve Chinese socialism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society . Though it failed to achieve its main objectives, the Cultural Revolution marked
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#17327869226397488-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
7632-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
7776-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
7920-739: The United Nations and reneged on its pledge to supply China with a nuclear weapon. Mao publicly denounced revisionism in April 1960. Without pointing at the USSR, Mao criticized its Balkan ally, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia . In turn, the USSR criticized China's Balkan ally, the Party of Labour of Albania . In 1963, CCP began to denounce the USSR, publishing nine polemics. One was titled On Khrushchev's Phoney Communism and Historical Lessons for
8064-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
8208-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
8352-599: The "16 May Notification", this document summarized Mao's ideological justification for CR. Initially kept secret, distributed only among high-ranking party members, it was later declassified and published in People's Daily on 17 May 1967. Effectively it implied that enemies of the Communist cause could be found within the Party: class enemies who "wave the red flag to oppose the red flag." The only way to identify these people
8496-425: The "Three Supports and Two Militaries" initiative, in which PLA troops were sent to schools and work units across the country to stabilize political tumult and end factional warfare. The three "Supports" were to "support the left", "support the interior", "support industry". The "two Militaries" referred to "military management" and "military training". The policy of supporting the left failed to define "leftists" at
8640-401: The "literary battle" against Peng raged, Mao fired Yang Shangkun —director of the party's General Office , an organ that controlled internal communications—making unsubstantiated charges. He installed loyalist Wang Dongxing , head of Mao's security detail. Yang's dismissal likely emboldened Mao's allies to move against their factional rivals. On 12 February 1966, the "Five Man Group" issued
8784-543: The British … To this day they think that they are dogs, not people." Kong stated that in their purported "colonial mentality", Hong Kong people are "dogs in front of the British, but wolves in front of the Chinese", comparing them to Korean and Taiwanese supporters of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Kong pointed out that the reaction on the MTR would not have been the same had a white person, e.g.,
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#17327869226398928-517: The Communist Party for vindication? … our cases have been overturned after the reforms began, but why do the big rightists want to demand hundreds more times in compensation from the people?" In January 2012, Kong commented on a viral video on his talk show. In the video, a Mainland Chinese mother on a Hong Kong MTR train engaged in an argument with a fellow passenger, a native Hong Konger who tried to stop her young child from eating on
9072-558: The Headquarters , rallying people to target the "command centre (i.e., Headquarters) of counterrevolution." Mao wrote that despite having undergone a communist revolution, a "bourgeois" elite was still thriving in "positions of authority" in the government and Party. Although no names were mentioned, this provocative statement has been interpreted as a direct indictment of the party establishment under Liu and Deng—the purported "bourgeois headquarters" of China. The personnel changes at
9216-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
9360-625: The People's Republic of China, symbolically bringing the decades-long Chinese Civil War to a close. Remaining Republican forces fled to Taiwan , and continued to resist the People's Republic in various ways. Many soldiers of the Chinese Republicans were left in mainland China, and Mao Zedong launched the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries to eliminate these soldiers left behind, as well as elements of Chinese society viewed as potentially dangerous to Mao's new government. This
9504-763: The Plenum reflected a radical re-design of the party hierarchy. Liu and Deng kept their seats on the Politburo Standing Committee, but were sidelined from day-to-day party affairs. Lin Biao was elevated to become the CCP's number-two; Liu's rank went from second to eighth and was no longer Mao's heir apparent. Along with the top leadership losing power the entire national Party bureaucracy was purged. The extensive Organization Department , in charge of party personnel, virtually ceased to exist. The top officials in
9648-611: The Propaganda Department were sacked, with many of its functions folded into the CRG. The Little Red Book was the mechanism that led the Red Guards to commit to their objective as China's future. Quotes directly from Mao led to actions by the Red Guards in the views of other Maoist leaders. By December 1967, 350 million copies had been printed. One of these quotes was the famous line " Political power grows out of
9792-418: The Soviet Union would assist "genuine communists" who overthrew Mao and his "erroneous course". Chinese leadership also feared the increasing military conflict between the United States and North Vietnam , concerned that China's support would lead to the United States to seek out potential Chinese assets. In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement , the Cultural Revolution's precursor. Mao set
9936-477: The USSR. In 1956, Khrushchev denounced his predecessor Josef Stalin and his policies , and began implementing economic reforms . Mao and many other CCP members opposed these changes, believing that they would damage the worldwide communist movement. Mao believed that Khrushchev was a revisionist , altering Marxist–Leninist concepts, which Mao claimed would give capitalists control of the USSR. Relations soured. The USSR refused to support China's case for joining
10080-404: The West. After the Apple Inc. co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs died in 2011, Kong remarked that "the more people like Steve Jobs die, the better". In 2007, the liberal writer Zhang Yihe ( 章诒和 , daughter of Zhang Bojun , a notable Chinese intellectual and victim of Mao Zedong 's Anti-Rightist Movement ) published the now banned Past Histories of Peking Opera Stars , in which she criticized
10224-465: The World , in which Mao charged that Khrushchev was a revisionist and risked capitalist restoration. Khrushchev's defeat by an internal coup d'état in 1964 contributed to Mao's fears, mainly because of his declining prestige after the Great Leap Forward. Other Soviet actions increased concerns about potential fifth columnists . As a result of the tensions following the Sino-Soviet split, Soviet leaders authorized radio broadcasts into China stating that
10368-461: The barrel of a gun ." The passage continues: Revolutionary war is an antitoxin which not only eliminates the enemy's poison but also purges us of our filth. Every just, revolutionary war is endowed with tremendous power and can transform many things or clear the way for their transformation. The Sino-Japanese war will transform both China and Japan; Provided China perseveres in the War of Resistance and in
10512-575: The bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and various spheres of culture are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Some of them we have already seen through; others we have not. Some are still trusted by us and are being trained as our successors, persons like Khrushchev for example, who are still nestling beside us. Later known as
10656-417: The class suspension nationwide. By early June, throngs of young demonstrators lined the capital's major thoroughfares holding giant portraits of Mao, beating drums, and shouting slogans. When the dismissal of Peng and the municipal party leadership became public in early June, confusion was widespread. The public and foreign missions were kept in the dark on the reason for Peng's ousting. Top Party leadership
10800-454: The conference, Liu, once a powerful moderate pundit, was placed under house arrest, then sent to a detention camp, where he was denied medical treatment and died in 1969. Deng was sent away for a period of re-education three times and was eventually sent to work in an engine factory in Jiangxi . Rebellion by party cadres accelerated after the conference. In Macau , rioting broke out during
10944-536: The country from sinking into the abyss of capitalism? Don't just sit there waiting for a lecture from professor Kong and lament the state of affairs, this world isn't just for heroes to save!" Kong has expressed admiration for the North Korean Juche ideology, in addition to its late leader Kim Jong-il . Kong is critical of Western culture . He has supported a boycott of the film Kung Fu Panda 2 , calling it an instrument of cultural invasion by
11088-407: The critics "dogs of America" and "traitors to China." Wu Xiaoping ( 吴晓平 ), host with Nanjing Television, analyzed a case surrounding Kong Qingdong on the former's show Tingwo Shaoshao ( 听我韶韶 ), with the provocative title "Kong Qingdong: Is he a jiàoshòu ( 教授 , "professor") or yěshòu ( 野兽 "savage")." Kong, insulted that he was called a "savage", responded by attempting to sue Wu for libel in
11232-639: The death toll vary widely, typically ranging from 1–2 million. Red Guards sought to destroy the Four Olds (old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits), which often took the form of destroying historical artifacts, cultural and religious sites, and targeting others deemed to be representative of the Four Olds. Tens of millions were persecuted, including senior officials: most notably, president Liu Shaoqi , as well as Deng Xiaoping , Peng Dehuai , and He Long . Millions were persecuted for being members of
11376-709: The defensive. Peng, Wu Han's direct superior, was the head of the Five Man Group , a committee commissioned by Mao to study the potential for a cultural revolution. Peng Zhen, aware that he would be implicated if Wu indeed wrote an "anti-Mao" play, wished to contain Yao's influence. Yao's article was initially published only in select local newspapers. Peng forbade its publication in the nationally distributed People's Daily and other major newspapers under his control, instructing them to write exclusively about "academic discussion", and not pay heed to Yao's petty politics. While
11520-399: 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 polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
11664-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
11808-492: The dismissal of Bo Xilai , a renowned leftist figure in China, Kong showered Bo with praise on his talk show, calling Bo a "mob-fighting hero." Kong called Bo's dismissal by the Chinese authorities "a counterrevolutionary coup." Kong also took a moment to "criticize the people, the masses... what have you done to construct socialism? What have you done for Chongqing, for China? If you are a supporter of Bo Xilai, then what have you done to support Bo Xilai? What have you done to save
11952-694: The effective return of Mao to the center of power in China after his political sidelining , in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward and the Great Chinese Famine . In May 1966, with the help of the Cultural Revolution Group , Mao launched the Revolution and said that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society with the aim of restoring capitalism. Mao called on young people to bombard
12096-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
12240-401: The expletives deliberately to "lure out" his enemies in the liberal Chinese media, having predicted that they would respond to him vehemently with what he called "counterrevolutionary encirclement." Some eighty media outlets reportedly criticized Kong for his remarks. Following the barrage of negative media attention, Kong then directly criticized the state-run Xinhua News Agency , saying that it
12384-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
12528-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
12672-521: The founding of the People's Republic of China. During this period, the term was used interchangeably with "cultural construction" and referred to eliminating illiteracy in order to widen public participation in civic matters. This usage of "cultural revolution" continued through the 1950s and into the 1960s, and often involved drawing parallels to the May Fourth Movement or the Soviet cultural revolution of 1928–1931. On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong declared
12816-565: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
12960-713: The headquarters , and proclaimed that "to rebel is justified". Mass upheaval began in Beijing with Red August in 1966. Many young people, mainly students, responded by forming cadres of Red Guards throughout the country. A selection of Mao's sayings were compiled into the Little Red Book , which became revered within his cult of personality . In 1967, emboldened radicals began seizing power from local governments and party branches, establishing new revolutionary committees in their place. These committees often split into rival factions, precipitating armed clashes among
13104-522: The internet backlash to be part of a well-executed conspiracy by fringe activists to silence him. In his defence, he stated that "there are good people and bad people everywhere; there are dogs everywhere. Some Beijing people are dogs." Kong has called a female Singaporean journalist "a whore", in addition to criticizing Singaporeans as "completely ignorant". Kong was quoted as saying "I've been to Singapore. Those people from Singapore... they basically don't know anything." On 28 January 2012, Kong asserted on
13248-482: The internet. Several days later, Kong fired back at the criticism leveled at him, saying that the media and internet users were on a witch hunt to "cherry pick" his words in order to attack him, asserting that he did not mean to say that Hong Kong people are dogs, or that non-Mandarin Chinese-speakers are dogs. He also said that he was confident the "majority of Hong Kongers" were not critical of him and that
13392-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
13536-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
13680-430: The mental outlook of the whole of society. At present, our objective is to struggle against and overthrow those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic "authorities" and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art and all other parts of the superstructure not in correspondence with
13824-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
13968-529: The most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the people, the country, and the party since the founding of the People's Republic." Given its broad scope and social impact, memories and perspectives of the Cultural Revolution are varied and complex in contemporary China. It is often referred to as the "ten years of chaos" ( 十年动乱 ; shí nián dòngluàn ) or "ten years of havoc" ( 十年浩劫 ; shí nián hàojié ). The terminology of cultural revolution appeared in communist party discourses and newspapers prior to
14112-521: The movement's most radical elements, fearing that the movement would spin out of control. In July, Mao, in Wuhan, crossed the Yangtze River, showing his vigor. He then returned from Wuhan to Beijing and criticized party leadership for its handling of the work-teams issue. Mao accused the work teams of undermining the student movement, calling for their full withdrawal on July 24. Several days later
14256-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
14400-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
14544-556: The new paramount leader of China , replacing Mao's successor Hua Guofeng . Deng and his allies introduced the Boluan Fanzheng program and initiated reforms and opening of China , which, together with the New Enlightenment movement , gradually dismantled the ideology of Cultural Revolution. In 1981, the Communist Party publicly acknowledged numerous failures of the Cultural Revolution, declaring it "responsible for
14688-676: The official ideology in North Korea , at Peking University; some sources, such as Southern Metropolis Daily , accuse the group of providing intelligence to North Korea. In the 2000s, Kong spent 2 years in South Korea , teaching at the Ewha Womans University . Kong hosts a talk show program and his microblog has a large following. Kong Qingdong has been involved in the Confucius Peace Prize ,
14832-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
14976-524: The party leadership. On 1 August, the Eleventh Plenum of the 8th Central Committee was convened to advance Mao's radical agenda. At the plenum, Mao showed disdain for Liu, repeatedly interrupting him as he delivered his opening day speech. On July 28, Red Guard representatives wrote to Mao, calling for rebellion and upheaval to safeguard the revolution. Mao then responded to the letters by writing his own big-character poster entitled Bombard
15120-415: The point of calling for his resignation, although he also received widespread support, with some online straw polls turning out in favor of Kong. Commentators pointed out that Kong's popularity is a symptom of the widespread resentment of the elite liberal media, which often run editorials critical of poor people and make economic arguments to justify the increasing wealth gap . Kong himself asserted he used
15264-471: The political left and right in China. His singling out of Wang Yang by name was cited as evidence of the intensifying struggle for China's future political direction. In November 2008, Qian Liexian (pen name of Xu Lai), a journalist at New Beijing , a newspaper affiliated with Southern Daily at the time, alleged in his blog that Kong Qingdong has been interrogated by the Beijing police for spying for North Korea . A few months later, in February 2009, Qian
15408-435: The political movement of the 1950s that squarely targeted intellectuals, the new movement was focused on established party cadres, many of whom were part of the work teams. As a result, the work teams came under increasing suspicion as thwarting revolutionary fervor. Party leadership subsequently became divided over whether or not work teams should continue. Liu Shaoqi insisted on continuing work-team involvement and suppressing
15552-532: The press. Mao delivered his final blow to Peng at a high-profile Politburo meeting through loyalists Kang Sheng and Chen Boda . They accused Peng of opposing Mao, labeled the February Outline "evidence of Peng Zhen's revisionism", and grouped him with three other disgraced officials as part of the "Peng-Luo-Lu-Yang Anti-Party Clique". On 16 May, the Politburo formalized the decisions by releasing an official document condemning Peng and his "anti-party allies" in
15696-519: The question, Michelle Obama eventually replied that she was not there to talk about politics." After Kong had made his allegations, reporters and students present at Michelle Obama's speech denied that the confrontation took place. Kong was subsequently widely panned for having fabricated the entire story, which critics have noted can subject him to arrest under the same criteria with which the police had arrested hundreds of people accused of spreading rumors online in mid-2013. In response, Kong simply called
15840-622: The radicals . After the fall of Lin Biao in 1971, the Gang of Four became influential in 1972, and the Revolution continued until Mao's death in 1976, soon followed by the arrest of the Gang of Four. The Cultural Revolution was characterized by violence and chaos across Chinese society, including a massacre in Guangxi that included acts of cannibalism , as well as massacres in Beijing, Inner Mongolia , Guangdong , Yunnan , and Hunan . Estimates of
15984-511: The radicals who backed Mao's purge of the Communist party, and the conservatives who backed the moderate party establishment. The "support the left" policy was established in January 1967. Mao's policy was to support the rebels in seizing power; it required the PLA to support "the broad masses of the revolutionary leftists in their struggle to seize power." In March 1967, the policy was adapted into
16128-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
16272-659: The realms of culture and religion. Historical sites throughout the country were destroyed. The damage was particularly pronounced in the capital, Beijing. Red Guards laid siege to the Temple of Confucius in Qufu , and other historically significant tombs and artifacts. Libraries of historical and foreign texts were destroyed; books were burned. Temples, churches, mosques, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed and sometimes converted to other uses, or looted and destroyed. Marxist propaganda depicted Buddhism as superstition, and religion
16416-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
16560-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
16704-411: The same day. In Heilongjiang, local party secretary Pan Fusheng seized power from the party organization under his own leadership. Some leaders even wrote the CRG asking to be overthrown. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
16848-408: The scene by " cleansing " powerful Beijing officials of questionable loyalty. His approach was not transparent, executed via newspaper articles, internal meetings, and by his network of political allies. In late 1959, historian and deputy mayor of Beijing Wu Han published a historical drama entitled Hai Rui Dismissed from Office . In the play, an honest civil servant , Hai Rui , is dismissed by
16992-463: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
17136-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
17280-503: The socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system. The implications of the Sixteen Points were far-reaching. It elevated what was previously a student movement to a nationwide mass campaign that would galvanize workers, farmers, soldiers and lower-level party functionaries to rise, challenge authority, and re-shape the superstructure of society. On 18 August in Beijing, over
17424-660: The strongest terms, disbanding his "Five Man Group", and replacing it with the Maoist Cultural Revolution Group (CRG). The Cultural Revolution can be divided into two main periods: The early phase was characterized by mass movement and political pluralization. Virtually anyone could create a political organization, even without party approval. Known as Red Guards, these organizations originally arose in schools and universities and later in factories and other institutions. After 1968, most of these organizations ceased to exist, although their legacies were
17568-695: The surface, incredible industrialization, but also caused some of the worst famines in modern history, while still falling short of projected goals. The Great Leap Forward soon came to be seen as one of Mao's greatest mistakes, eventually costing him some of his official status in the Communist Party . In the early 1950s, the PRC and the Soviet Union (USSR) were the world's two largest communist states. Although initially they were mutually supportive, disagreements arose after Nikita Khrushchev took power in
17712-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
17856-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
18000-538: The train. Kong lashed out on the Hong Kong passenger, criticizing the man's use of Cantonese (as opposed to the Mandarin used in Mainland China) and calling him a "colonial elitist" and a "bastard." He went on to make sweeping remarks about Hong Kong people in general, saying multiple times that "many Hong Kongers" are "bastards," and "dogs." Kong further claimed that the Hong Kong people are "willing dogs of
18144-413: The travel expenses of Red Guards. At the rallies, Lin called for the destruction of the "Four Olds"; namely, old customs, culture, habits, and ideas. Some changes associated with the "Four Olds" campaign were mainly benign, such as assigning new names to city streets, places, and even people; millions of babies were born with "revolutionary" names. Other aspects were more destructive, particularly in
18288-415: The united front, the old Japan will surely be transformed into a new Japan and the old China into a new China, and people and everything else in both China and Japan will be transformed during and after the war. The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope
18432-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
18576-414: The victims were teachers who were attacked or killed by their own students. The first such victim was Bian Zhongyun , the deputy principal of Beijing Normal University Female Middle School , who was killed on 5 August by Red Guards following several hours of physical abuse and public humiliation. The leader of the Red Guards, who had organised on campus only days prior, was 19-year-old Song Binbin , who
18720-476: The way for disorder in the capital. On 25 May, under the guidance of Cao Yi'ou [ zh ] —wife of Mao loyalist Kang Sheng— Nie Yuanzi , a philosophy lecturer at Peking University , authored a big-character poster along with other leftists and posted it to a public bulletin. Nie attacked the university's party administration and its leader Lu Ping. Nie insinuated that the university leadership, much like Peng, were trying to contain revolutionary fervor in
18864-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
19008-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
19152-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
19296-531: Was alleged to have participated personally in the murder of Bian. At a mass rally held on 18 August, Song met Mao, and gifted him a Red Guard armband by tying it around his arm. In September, Shanghai experienced 704 suicides and 534 deaths; in Wuhan, 62 suicides and 32 murders occurred during the same period. Peng Dehuai was brought to Beijing to be publicly ridiculed. Between August and November 1966, eight mass rallies were held, drawing in 12 million people, most of whom were Red Guards. The government bore
19440-455: Was assaulted and stabbed by Yang Chun, a personal assistant of Kong Qingdong, who accused Qian of offending "a friend". Southern Metropolis Daily , another newspaper affiliated with Southern Daily , criticized Kong Qingdong's involvement in the affairs. Kong has criticized the Shenzhen municipal government as " reactionary ", and the Chinese government "shameless." In March 2012, upon
19584-479: Was caught off guard by the sudden protest wave and struggled with how to respond. After seeking Mao's guidance in Hangzhou , Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping decided to send in 'work teams'—effectively 'ideological guidance' squads of cadres—to the city's schools and People's Daily to restore some semblance of order and re-establish party control. The work teams had a poor understanding of student sentiment. Unlike
19728-516: Was comparable to the population of Zhongguancun , a neighbourhood of Beijing, and that it still reflected a deeply divided Taiwanese society. Both the incumbent Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party have rebuked Kong's remarks. In early 2014, during the U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama 's state visit to China, Kong alleged on his Sina Weibo account that Michelle Obama was successfully confronted and rebuked by
19872-703: Was filmed and shown to approximately 100 million people in its first month of release. On 22 August, a central directive was issued to prevent police intervention in Red Guard activities, and those in the police force who defied this notice were labeled counter-revolutionaries. Central officials lifted restraints on violent behavior. Xie Fuzhi , the national police chief, often pardoned Red Guards for their "crimes". The campaign included incidents of torture, murder, and public humiliation. Many people who were indicted as counter-revolutionaries died by suicide. During Red August, 1,772 people were murdered in Beijing; many of
20016-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
20160-467: Was looked upon as a means of hostile foreign infiltration, as well as an instrument of the ruling class. Clergy were arrested and sent to camps; many Tibetan Buddhists were forced to participate in the destruction of their monasteries at gunpoint. In October 1966, Mao convened a "Central Work Conference", mostly to enlist party leaders who had not yet adopted the latest ideology. Liu and Deng were prosecuted and begrudgingly offered self-criticism. After
20304-417: Was no longer under the control of the Party's Central Committee but taking orders from Guangdong party chief Wang Yang , seen as the representative of China's political 'right.' The journalist in question later defended Kong, claiming that the profanity is "a later embellishment when Kong published his microblog post". Overseas media speculated that Kong's remarks was merely part of a much larger battle between
20448-590: Was one of the earliest examples of mass arrests, detainments, and killings across all of China that would later be mirrored in the Cultural Revolution. The Great Leap Forward, similar to the Five-year plans of the Soviet Union , was Mao Zedong's proposal to make the newly created People's Republic of China an industrial superpower. Beginning in 1958, the Great Leap Forward did produce, at least on
20592-470: Was the first provincial level government overthrown. Provincial governments and many parts of the state and party bureaucracy were affected, with power seizures taking place. In the next three weeks, 24 more province-level governments were overthrown. "Revolutionary committees" were subsequently established, in place of local governments and branches of the Communist Party. For example, in Beijing, three separate revolutionary groups declared power seizures on
20736-537: Was through "the telescope and microscope of Mao Zedong Thought ." While the party leadership was relatively united in approving Mao's agenda, many Politburo members were not enthusiastic, or simply confused about the direction. The charges against party leaders such as Peng disturbed China's intellectual community and the eight non-Communist parties . After the purge of Peng Zhen, the Beijing Party Committee effectively ceased to function, paving
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