1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Beijing
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Beijing is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China and the worlds third most populous city proper. It is also one of the worlds most populous capital cities, the city, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under the national government with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts. Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by population after Shanghai and is the nations political, cultural. It is home to the headquarters of most of Chinas largest state-owned companies, and is a hub for the national highway, expressway, railway. The citys history dates back three millennia, as the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political centre of the country for much of the past eight centuries. Beijing was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium A. D, the city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates. Its art treasures and universities have made it centre of culture, encyclopædia Britannica notes that few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural centre of an area as immense as China. Siheyuans, the traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing. The city hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and was chosen to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, many of Beijings 91 universities consistently rank among the best in China, of which Peking University and Tsinghua University are ranked in the top 60 universities in the world. Beijings Zhongguancun area is known as Chinas Silicon Valley and Chinas center of innovation. According to the 2016 InterNations Expat Insider Survey, Beijing ranked first in Asia in the subcategory Personal Finance Index, expats live primarily in urban districts such as Dongcheng and Chaoyang in the east, or in suburban districts such as Shunyi. Over the past 3,000 years, the city of Beijing has had other names. The name Beijing, which means Northern Capital, was applied to the city in 1403 during the Ming Dynasty to distinguish the city from Nanjing, the English spelling is based on the pinyin romanisation of the two characters as they are pronounced in Standard Mandarin. Those dialects preserve the Middle Chinese pronunciation of 京 as kjaeng, the single Chinese character abbreviation for Beijing is 京, which appears on automobile license plates in the city. The official Latin alphabet abbreviation for Beijing is BJ, the earliest traces of human habitation in the Beijing municipality were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where Peking Man lived. Homo erectus fossils from the date to 230,000 to 250,000 years ago. Paleolithic Homo sapiens also lived more recently, about 27,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found neolithic settlements throughout the municipality, including in Wangfujing, the first walled city in Beijing was Ji, a city from the 11th to 7th century BC
3.
State Council of the People's Republic of China
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The State Council, constitutionally synonymous with the Central Peoples Government since 1954, is the chief administrative authority of the Peoples Republic of China. It is chaired by the Premier and includes the heads of each governmental department, currently, the council has 35 members, the premier, one executive vice premier, three other vice premiers, five state councilors, and 25 additional ministers and chairs of major agencies. The State Council directly oversees the various subordinate Peoples Governments in the provinces, the State Council meets once every six months. Between meetings it is guided by a Standing Committee that meets weekly, the standing committee includes the premier, one executive vice premier, three vice premiers, and five other state councilors. The vice-premiers and state councilors are nominated by the premier, incumbents may serve two successive five-year terms. Each vice premier oversees certain areas of administration, each State Councilor performs duties as designated by the Premier. The secretary-general heads the General Office which handles the work of the State Council. The secretary-general has relatively little power and should not be confused with the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, commissions outrank ministries and set policies for and coordinate the related activities of different administrative organs. Offices deal with matters of ongoing concern, bureaus and administrations rank below ministries. In addition to the 25 ministries, there are 38 centrally administered government organizations that directly to the state council. The heads of these organizations attend full meetings of the committee on an irregular basis. The State Council and the Communist Party of China are also tightly interlocked, with rare exceptions, State Councilors are high-ranking members of the CPC. Although, as Party members, they are supposed to follow Party instructions and this results in a system which is unlike the Soviet practice in which the Party effectively controlled the State. Rather, the Party and State are fused at this level of government, the State Council is the functional center of state power and clearinghouse for government initiatives at all levels. With the governments emphasis on modernization, the State Council clearly acquired additional importance and influence. The State Council controls the Ministry for National Defense but does not control the Peoples Liberation Army, which is instead controlled by the Central Military Commission. e
4.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, 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, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
5.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
6.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
7.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
8.
Academia Sinica
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Academia Sinica, headquartered in the Nangang District of Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. It supports research activities in a variety of disciplines, ranging from mathematical and physical sciences, to life sciences. Academia Sinica is ranked 144th in Nature Publishing Index -2014 Global Top 200, the Academia Sinica was founded in Republic of China in 1928 by the Nationalist government. Its first meeting was held in Shanghai, after the Chinese Civil War, it was relocated to Taiwan. Thus Academia Sinica enjoys autonomy in formulating its own research objectives, at the time of Academia Sinicas founding there were already a number of other, smaller institutes in several cities in Republic of China. Many research fellows from Academia Sinica have an appointment or joint professorship at these universities. Through these mechanisms, the faculty at the Academia Sinica give lecture courses, since 2002, Academia Sinica set up the Taiwan International Graduate Program, open to local and international students for Ph. D. programs. All courses at TIGP are conducted in English, students can choose their advisor among a faculty selected for the program out of outstanding researchers and professors appointed at Academia Sinica or at one of the partner universities. Currently, admittance to the programme guarantees a monthly stipend of 34,000 NTD, applications can normally be sent starting in December and the submission deadline is usually set on March 31, for enrollment in September of the same year. Lectures start around the middle of September and end around the middle of June, the TIGP offers Ph. D. programs only in selected disciplines agreed upon by Academia Sinica and its national research universities partners. Successful applicants from around the world will receive for each month a stipend of 30,000 NTD, the program highlights include internship at an applicant-chosen host lab, visits to Academia Sinica facilities and partner institutions, field trips in Taiwan and basic Mandarin lessons. Academia Sinica also offers a program for gifted and talented high school students interested in the biological sciences. To enroll, students must first pass an exam at the start of 10th grade. During 10th grade, students attend lectures and visit the various laboratories on campus. During 11th and 12th grade, students enter a lab of their choice, to graduate from the program, an academic paper must be submitted and presented in front of professors and peers. The Convocation of the Academia Sinica consists of 281 Academicians, including 105 domestic and 176 overseas appointed scientists, seven Academicians of Academia Sinica are Nobel laureates. Academician membership is an honorary lifetime privilege without remuneration and they do not necessarily perform research or reside at the Academia Sinica campus. According to their own expertise, academicians are grouped into three divisions, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities, a maximum number of ten new members is allocated to each of the three divisions during the biennial Convocation
9.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
10.
Foreign Policy
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Foreign Policy is an American news publication, founded in 1970 and focused on global affairs, current events, and domestic and international policy. It produces content daily on its website, and in six print issues annually, Foreign Policy is under the leadership of CEO and Editor of The FP Group David Rothkopf, who joined FP in that role 2012 after being a regular contributor to the publication since 1997. Foreign Policy magazine and ForeignPolicy. com are published by The FP Group, the FP Group also produces FP Events, Foreign Policys events division, launched in 2012. Huntington hoped it would be serious but not scholarly, lively, in the Spring of 1978, after six years of close partnership, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace acquired full ownership of Foreign Policy. In 2000, a change was implemented from a slim quarterly academic journal to a bi-monthly magazine. Also, it launched international editions in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, in September 2008, Foreign Policy was bought by The Washington Post Company. In 2012, Foreign Policy grew to become the FP Group – an expansion of Foreign Policy magazine to include ForeignPolicy. com, in December 2013, FP expanded and modernized ForeignPolicy. com as part of a complete website redesign. The new site was designed to present FPs readers with an array of editorial features. Morning Brief - FPs daily digest of top global news, flash Points - Weekly reader of highlights from foreignpolicy. com delivered every Friday morning. Democracy Lab Weekly Brief - Reporting on a world in transition, south Asia Daily - A daily synthesis of news about Afghanistan, Pakistan and India Mideast Daily Brief - A daily morning overview of major news in the region. com. FP is the independent magazine that has won consecutive digital national magazine awards every year from being established in 2009. 2014 Foreign Policy received its first design recognition for The Surveillance State, “Turtle Bay, ” the reported blog by journalist Colum Lynch, won the Digital National Magazine Award for best reporting for a series of hard-hitting investigative articles about the United Nations. 2010 Foreign Policy’s “The Best Defense” column authored by Tom Ricks received the Digital National Magazine Award for best blog,2009 Foreign Policy won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in the 100,000 to 250,000 circulation category. Forbes RealClearWorld designated ForeignPolicy. com as a top international news site,2008 Folio Magazine Gold Editorial Excellence Award – Consumer Magazine, News/Commentary/General Interest, What America Must Do by Kenneth Rogoff, Jan/Feb 2008. FPs What America Must Do feature received the Eddie Award as a Gold Winner for the Consumer News/Commentary/General Interest category for a Single Article, Folio Magazine Silver Editorial Excellence Award – Consumer Magazine, News/Commentary/General Interest, A World Enslaved by Benjamin Skinner, Mar/Apr 2008. Folio Magazine Silver Editorial Excellence Award – Consumer Magazine, News/Commentary/General Interest, media Industry Newsletters Best of the Web Award in the blog category for Passport a blog by the editors of Foreign Policy. 2007 Foreign Policy won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in the 100,000 to 250,000 circulation category, Foreign Policy was presented as a Gold Winner by the Eddie Awards for “Who Wins in Iraq, ” in the Consumer News/Commentary/General Interest category. 2003 Foreign Policy won the National Magazine Award for Outstanding Achievement, FP Top 100 Global Thinkers Foreign Policy of the United States Official website Foreign Policy Passport at Foreign Policy
11.
Asia
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Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometres, about 30% of Earths total land area and 8. 7% of the Earths total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Asia is notable for not only its large size and population. In general terms, Asia is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean, the western boundary with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. The most commonly accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal, the Ural River, and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains, China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 A. D. The accidental discovery of America by Columbus in search for India demonstrates this deep fascination, the Silk Road became the main East-West trading route in the Asian hitherland while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may actually have more to do with human geography than physical geography. Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties, the boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Suez Canal. This makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Asia, the border between Asia and Europe was historically defined by European academics. In Sweden, five years after Peters death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Urals as the border of Asia, the Russians were enthusiastic about the concept, which allowed them to keep their European identity in geography. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg, the latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century, the border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, the border between Asia and the loosely defined region of Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Malay Archipelago. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Malay Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the possessions of the various empires there. Lewis and Wigen assert, The narrowing of Southeast Asia to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process, Asia is larger and more culturally diverse than Europe. It does not exactly correspond to the borders of its various types of constituents. From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system on the grounds there is no or is no substantial physical separation between them
12.
Chinese Academy of Sciences
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The Chinese Academy of Sciences, with historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republic of China era, is the national academy for the natural sciences of the Peoples Republic of China. It is headquartered in Beijing, with branch institutes all over mainland China and it has also created hundreds of commercial enterprises, with Lenovo being one of the most famous. The Academy has around 68,000 employees and includes 104 institutions, the Chinese Academy has its roots from Academia Sinica, founded in 1928 by the Guomindang Nationalist Government. After the Communist Party took control of mainland China, Academia Sinica was renamed Chinese Academy of Sciences and it has over one hundred institutes and two universities. These CAS branches and offices are located in 20 provinces and municipalities throughout China, CAS has invested in or created over 430 science- and technology-based enterprises in eleven industries including eight companies listed on stock exchanges. Being granted a Fellowship of the Academy represents the highest level of honor for Chinese scientists. The CAS membership system includes Academicians, Emeritus Academician and Foreign Academicians, the Ministry of Science and Technology had at the same time also initiated measures to address misconduct in state-funded programs. Together with the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the academy publishes the academic journal
13.
Philosophy
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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation, classic philosophical questions include, Is it possible to know anything and to prove it. However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as, is it better to be just or unjust. Historically, philosophy encompassed any body of knowledge, from the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, natural philosophy encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newtons 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics, in the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology. Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy, for example, is beauty objective or subjective. Are there many scientific methods or just one, is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy. Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, since the 20th century, professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. Traditionally, the term referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education. This division is not obsolete but has changed, Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory, metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today, colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, in one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as how are we to live, a broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations. Socrates was an influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom
14.
Literature
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Literature, in its broadest sense, is any single body of written works. Its Latin root literatura/litteratura was used to refer to all written accounts, developments in print technology have allowed an evergrowing distribution and proliferation of written works, culminating in electronic literature. There have been attempts to define literature. Simon and Delyse Ryan begin their attempt to answer the question What is Literature, with the observation, The quest to discover a definition for literature is a road that is much travelled, though the point of arrival, if ever reached, is seldom satisfactory. Most attempted definitions are broad and vague, and they change over time. In fact, the thing that is certain about defining literature is that the definition will change. Concepts of what is literature change over time as well, definitions of literature have varied over time, it is a culturally relative definition. In Western Europe prior to the century, literature as a term indicated all books. A more restricted sense of the term emerged during the Romantic period, contemporary debates over what constitutes literature can be seen as returning to the older, more inclusive notion of what constitutes literature. Cultural studies, for instance, takes as its subject of both popular and minority genres, in addition to canonical works. The value judgment definition of literature considers it to cover exclusively those writings that possess high quality or distinction and this sort of definition is that used in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition when it classifies literature as the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing. The formalist definition is that literature foregrounds poetic effects, it is the literariness or poetic of literature that distinguishes it from ordinary speech or other kinds of writing. Etymologically, the term derives from Latin literatura/litteratura learning, a writing, grammar, originally writing formed with letters, in spite of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts. Poetry is a form of art which uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of. Possibly as a result of Aristotles influence, poetry before the century was usually less a technical designation for verse than a normative category of fictive or rhetorical art. As a form it may pre-date literacy, with the earliest works being composed within and sustained by an oral tradition, novel, a long fictional prose narrative. It was the close relation to real life that differentiated it from the chivalric romance, in most European languages the equivalent term is roman. In English, the term emerged from the Romance languages in the fifteenth century, with the meaning of news, it came to indicate something new
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History
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History is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered prehistory and it is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians and their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In Asia, a chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-century BC texts survived. Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries, the modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, the word history comes ultimately from Ancient Greek ἱστορία, meaning inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge. It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his Περὶ Τὰ Ζῷα Ἱστορίαι, the ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes oath, and in Boiotic inscriptions. History was borrowed from Latin into Old English as stær, and it was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into Middle English, and this time the loan stuck. In Middle English, the meaning of history was story in general, the restriction to the meaning the branch of knowledge that deals with past events, the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs arose in the mid-fifteenth century. With the Renaissance, older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the sixteenth century. For him, historia was the knowledge of objects determined by space and time, in an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are synthetic and highly inflected. The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669, Historian in the sense of a researcher of history is attested from 1531. Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, in the words of Benedetto Croce, All history is contemporary history. History is facilitated by the formation of a discourse of past through the production of narrative. The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the production of this discourse. All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record, the task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents
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Economics
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Economics is a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work, consistent with this focus, textbooks often distinguish between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics examines the behaviour of elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, macroeconomics analyzes the entire economy and issues affecting it, including unemployment of resources, inflation, economic growth, and the public policies that address these issues. Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, as in business, finance, health care, Economic analyses may also be applied to such diverse subjects as crime, education, the family, law, politics, religion, social institutions, war, science, and the environment. At the turn of the 21st century, the domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism. The ultimate goal of economics is to improve the conditions of people in their everyday life. There are a variety of definitions of economics. Some of the differences may reflect evolving views of the subject or different views among economists, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services. Say, distinguishing the subject from its uses, defines it as the science of production, distribution. On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle coined the dismal science as an epithet for classical economics, in this context and it enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man. He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on the analysis of wealth, how wealth is created, distributed, and consumed, but he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus. This is because war has as the goal winning it, generates both cost and benefits, and, resources are used to attain the goal. If the war is not winnable or if the costs outweigh the benefits. Some subsequent comments criticized the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets, there are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for the macroeconomics of high unemployment. The same source reviews a range of included in principles of economics textbooks. Among economists more generally, it argues that a particular definition presented may reflect the direction toward which the author believes economics is evolving, microeconomics examines how entities, forming a market structure, interact within a market to create a market system
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Law
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Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior. Law as a system helps regulate and ensure that a community show respect, private individuals can create legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that may elect to accept alternative arbitration to the normal court process. The formation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, the law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and serves as a mediator of relations between people. Islamic Sharia law is the worlds most widely used religious law, the adjudication of the law is generally divided into two main areas referred to as Criminal law and Civil law. Criminal law deals with conduct that is considered harmful to social order, Civil law deals with the resolution of lawsuits between individuals or organizations. Law provides a source of scholarly inquiry into legal history, philosophy, economic analysis. Law also raises important and complex issues concerning equality, fairness, there is an old saying that all are equal before the law, although Jonathan Swift argued that Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through. In 1894, the author Anatole France said sarcastically, In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread. Writing in 350 BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle declared, The rule of law is better than the rule of any individual, mikhail Bakunin said, All law has for its object to confirm and exalt into a system the exploitation of the workers by a ruling class. Cicero said more law, less justice, marxist doctrine asserts that law will not be required once the state has withered away. Regardless of ones view of the law, it today a completely central institution. Numerous definitions of law have been put forward over the centuries, at the same time, it plays only one part in the congeries of rules which influence behavior, for social and moral rules of a less institutionalized kind are also of great importance. There have been attempts to produce a universally acceptable definition of law. In 1972, one indicated that no such definition could be produced. McCoubrey and White said that the question what is law, glanville Williams said that the meaning of the word law depends on the context in which that word is used. He said that, for example, early customary law and municipal law were contexts where the law had two different and irreconcilable meanings. Thurman Arnold said that it is obvious that it is impossible to define the word law and it is possible to take the view that there is no need to define the word law. The history of law links closely to the development of civilization, Ancient Egyptian law, dating as far back as 3000 BC, contained a civil code that was probably broken into twelve books
18.
Marxism
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It originates from the mid-to-late 19th century works of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As the contradiction becomes apparent to the proletariat through the alienation of labor, Marxism has since developed into different branches and schools of thought, and there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Marxism has been adopted by a number of academics and theorists working in various disciplines. Critics have taken issue with particular Marxist claims or accused Marxism as a whole of being inconsistent, refuted based on new information. The Marxian analysis begins with an analysis of the material conditions, the economic system and these social relations form a base and superstructure. As forces of production, most notably technology, improve, existing forms of social organization become inefficient, from forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution and these inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society in the form of class struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production, and the vast majority of the population who produce goods, the socialist system would succeed capitalism as humanitys mode of production through workers revolution. According to Marxism, especially arising from crisis theory, socialism is a historical necessity, in a socialist society private property, in the form of the means of production, would be replaced by co-operative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits, Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. The historical materialist theory of history analyses the causes of societal development. All constituent features of a society are assumed to stem from economic activity, the base and superstructure metaphor portrays the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx, The sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society and this relationship is reflexive, at first the base gives rise to the superstructure and remains the foundation of a form of social organization. As Friedrich Engels clarified, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production. Primitive Communism, as in tribal societies. Slave Society, a development of tribal to city-state, aristocracy is born, feudalism, aristocrats are the ruling class, merchants evolve into capitalists. Capitalism, capitalists are the class, who create and employ the proletariat. According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, the content of Marxism was Marxs economic doctrine
19.
Hanlin Academy
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The Hanlin Academy was an academic and administrative institution founded in the eighth-century Tang China by Emperor Xuanzong. Membership in the academy was confined to a group of scholars. One of its duties was to decide on an interpretation of the Chinese classics. This formed the basis of the Imperial examinations, which aspiring bureaucrats had to pass to attain higher level posts, painters working for the court were also attached to the academy. Holders of the title were considered part of Hanlin, a Ming dynasty Emperor granted a hereditary title within the Hanlin academy to a descendant of Mencius. A Ming Emperor awarded the office of Wujing boshi 五經博士 to the branch of the Duke Yansheng at Quzhou. Biographies of those who were awarded the title of Wujing Boshi in the Ming dynasty are found in Volume 284, confucian sages offspring were granted the office of Wujing Boshi. Present Day Political Organization of China by V. V, 端木子貢 Tuan1 Mu4 Tzu3 Kung4,8. 顓孫子張 Chuan1 Sun1 Tzu3 Chang1,13 and it was also granted to the cadet branch of the Confucius family at Quzhou. Zhang Zais offspring received the appointment as wujing boshi along with Zhu Xis, Cheng Haos, Cheng Yis, subordinated to the Hanlin Academy was the Bureau of Translators. In 1511 and 1579 departments for the languages of Ba bai and Thai were added, a Malay language vocabulary 滿剌加館譯語 for the Malay spoken in the Malacca Sultanate was compiled. A Cham language vocabulary 占城館 was created for the language spoken in the Champa Kingdom, the later Tongwen Guan set up by the Qing dynasty for translating western languages was subordinated to the Zongli Yamen and not the Hanlin. The Academy and its library were damaged in a fire during the siege of the Foreign Legations in Beijing in 1900 by the Kansu Braves while fighting against the Eight-Nation Alliance. Some of the incendiaries were shot down, but the buildings were an inferno, an attempt was made to save the famous Yung Lo Ta Tien, but heaps of volumes had been destroyed, so the attempt was given up. Many ancient texts were destroyed by the flames, the Academy operated continuously until its closure during the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. Education in China Academies Chen Cheng Academia Sinica, ROC Chinese Academy of Sciences, PRC Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, PRC Martin, Hanlin Papers, Or, Essays on the Intellectual Life of the Chinese. Sparks, Jared, Everett, Edward, Lowell, James Russell, the North American Review, Volume 119
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The Commercial Press
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The Commercial Press is the first modern publishing organisation in China. In 1897, 26-year-old Xia Ruifang and three of his friends founded The Commercial Press in Shanghai, the group soon received financial backing and began publishing books. In 1914, Xia attempted to buy out a Japanese company that had invested in the Commercial Press, four days later he was assassinated. There was much speculation as to who was behind the assassination, Commercial Press was bombed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the January 28 Incident. The bombing destroyed its headquarters in Zhabei, Shanghai, as well as the attached East Library, at the turn of the century Commercial Press became a major publisher of textbooks. In 1902 it was set up with an attitude toward both Chinese and Western studies. In 1903 it became Chinas first primary education textbook publisher and it later produced 2,550 secondary school textbooks that became popular in the country. In 1904 it launched the Eastern Miscellany with editor-in-chief, in 1907 the press moved to an 80-acre new plant. In 1909 it launched the Education Magazine, in 1910 it launched The Short Story Magazine. In 1911 it launched the Youth Magazine, in January 1914, the founder of Commercial Press, Xia Ruifang, was stabbed to death. In 1914 it set up a branch in Hong Kong Museum of the same year and it also launched the Students Magazine. In 1915 it printed the first dictionary, in 1916 it set up a branch in Singapore. In 1921 with Hu Shihs recommendation, Wang Yunwu became the general manager modernising it into a business, the first edition of Zhongguo renming dacidian was published. In 1924 it opened the Commercial Press Oriental Library, on 28 January 1932, the January 28 Incident occurred. The Japanese aircraft bombed the Commercial Press in conjunction with the Oriental Library, Imperial Japanese army would occupy Shanghai the next day. In 1949, TCPs operation was relocated away from China after Liberation Army had entered Shanghai, in 1954, the TCPs headquarter was moved from Shanghai to Beijing shifting the focus to academic works published in the West. In 1993, the separate Commercial Press companies in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, in 2011, the Beijing office was changed into limited liability company. When China publishing and Media Holdings Co. Ltd. was founded in 2011-12-19, the Commercial Press International Co. Ltd
21.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
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Virtual International Authority File
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The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library, the National Library of France joined the project on October 5,2007. The project transitions to a service of the OCLC on April 4,2012, the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together, a VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary see and see also records from the original records, and refers to the original authority records. The data are available online and are available for research and data exchange. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol, the file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAFs clustering algorithm is run every month, as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records
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Education in China
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Education in China is a state-run system of public education run by the Ministry of Education. All citizens must attend school for at least nine years, known as the compulsory education. It includes six years of education, starting at age six or seven. Some provinces may have five years of school but four years for middle school. After middle school, there are three years of school, which then completes the secondary education. The Ministry of Education reported a 99 percent attendance rate for primary school, in 1985, the government abolished tax-funded higher education, requiring university applicants to compete for scholarships based on academic ability. In the early 1980s the government allowed the establishment of the first private school, increasing the number of undergraduates, in 2003 China supported 1,552 institutions of higher learning and their 725,000 professors and 11 million students. There are over 100 National Key Universities, including Peking University, Chinese spending has grown by 20% per year since 1999, now reaching over $100bn, and as many as 1.5 million science and engineering students graduated from Chinese universities in 2006. China published 184,080 papers as of 2008, China has also become a top destination for international students. As of 2013, China is the most popular country in Asia for international students, see also, Law of the Peoples Republic of China. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, the system in China has been geared toward economic modernization. In unveiling the education reform plan in May 1985, the called for nine years of compulsory education. In 1986 some 16.8 percent of the budget was earmarked for education. Since 1949, education has been a focus of controversy in China, as a result of continual intraparty realignments, official policy alternated between ideological imperatives and practical efforts to further national development. But ideology and pragmatism often have been incompatible, during the Cultural Revolution, universal fostering of social equality was an overriding priority. The post-Mao Zedong Chinese Communist Party leadership viewed education as the foundation of the Four Modernizations, in the early 1980s, science and technology education became an important focus of education policy. By 1986 training skilled personnel and expanding scientific and technical knowledge had been assigned the highest priority, although the humanities were considered important, vocational and technical skills were considered paramount for meeting Chinas modernization goals. The reorientation of educational priorities paralleled Deng Xiaopings strategy for economic development, emphasis also was placed on the further training of the already-educated elite, who would carry on the modernization program in the coming decades
24.
History of education in China
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The history of education in China began with the birth of Chinese civilization. Nobles often set up the establishments for their offspring. Establishment of the civil service examinations was instrumental in transition from the aristocratic to meritocratic government, Education was also seen a symbol of power, the educated often earned significantly greater income. The schools to teach the youth nobles were divided into lower and upper, the government founded five national schools to educate Six Arts of junior nobles. It depended on the education of the person, not the government, at that time, numerous different schools enrolled the students. The most famous one was the Confucianism and its leader Confucius was seen as the founder of education for the masses, one of his sayings was Provide education for all people without discrimination. Another was Teach according to the students ability, the different schools were often organized into political entities to gain social influence. The most strict system of education belonged to Mohists, rival scholars were invited to courts, governmental sponsorship led to the development of the first Chinese academies. Importance of education and respect to the teachers was stressed in the Annals of Lü Buwei, emperor Wu of Han favored Confucianism and made it as the national educational doctrine. In 124 BC, The Origins of Statecraft in China was set up to turn out civil servant for the state, the traditional Chinese attitude towards education followed Menciuss advice that Those who labor with their minds govern others, those who labor with their strength are governed by others. Students selected to gain a government post upon mastering a classic, by 25 CE, the Taixue had an enrollment of 30,000 students,7,000 faculty,240 buildings, and 1,850 rooms. Confucian scholars set up their private schools as well, meanwhile, art school Pear Garden appeared in early 8th century, and in 1178 national military school was set up. Imperial examination began at 605, which required the competitors to pass their local cutting score before the examination in the capital. White Deer Grotto Academy and Donglin Academy were their models, the invention of Paper and Movable type greatly boosted the educational industry. Education during the Qing dynasty was dominated by provincial academies, which did not charge tuition fees and they were dedicated to the pursuit of independent study of the classics and literature, rather than to the preparation for governance, as was the case with imperial academies. Professors rarely lectured students, instead offering advice and criticizing research, in response, the Qing embarked on a self-strengthening movement, founding the Tongwen Guan in 1861, which hired foreign teachers to teach European languages, mathematics, astronomy and chemistry. In 1898, Peking University was founded, with a based on the Japanese system. In 1905, the examinations were abolished
25.
Imperial examination
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The Chinese imperial examinations were a civil service examination system in Imperial China to select candidates for the state bureaucracy. The examination helped to shape Chinas intellectual, cultural, political, shopping, arts and crafts, the increased reliance on the exam system was in part responsible for Tang dynasty shifting from a military aristocracy to a gentry class of scholar-bureaucrats. Starting with the Song dynasty, the system was regularized and developed into a roughly three-tiered ladder from local to provincial to court exams, the content was narrowed and fixed on texts of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. Critics charged that the system stifled creativity and created officials who dared not defy authority, wealthy families, especially merchants, could opt into the system by educating their sons or purchasing degrees. In the 19th century, critics blamed the system, and in the process its examinations, for Chinas lack of technical knowledge. The influence of the Chinese examination system spread to neighboring Asian countries, such as Vietnam, Korea, Japan, following the initial success in that company, the British government adopted a similar testing system for screening civil servants in 1855. Other European nations, such as France and Germany, followed suit, modeled after these previous adaptations, the U. S established its own testing program for certain government jobs after 1883. However, the structure of the system was extensively expanded during the reign of Wu Zetian. Thus the system played a key role in the selection of the scholar-officials, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the system contributed to the narrowness of intellectual life and the autocratic power of the emperor. The system continued with some modifications until its 1905 abolition under the Qing dynasty, other brief interruptions to the system occurred, such as at the beginning of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century. The modern examination system for selecting civil servants also indirectly evolved from the imperial one and this changed during the Sui, when recruitment into the imperial civil service bureaucracy became to be considered an imperial prerogative, rather than a duty to be performed by the lower levels. By the Tang dynasty, most of the recruitment into central government bureaucrat offices was being performed by the bureaucracy itself, the regular higher level degree examination cycle was nominally decreed in 1067 to be 3 years. The jinshi tests were not an event and should not be considered so. Oral examination on policy issues were sometimes conducted personally by the emperor himself, beginning in the Three Kingdoms period, imperial officials were responsible for assessing the quality of the talents recommended by the local elites. This system continued until Emperor Yang of Sui established a new category of recommended candidates for the mandarinate in AD605, for the first time, an examination system was explicitly instituted for a category of local talents. However, the Sui dynasty was short-lived, and the system did not reach its mature development until afterwards, a pivotal point in the development of imperial examinations arose with the rise of Wu Zetian. Up until that point, the rulers of the Tang dynasty were all members of the Li family. Reform of the examinations to include a new class of elite bureaucrats derived from humbler origins became a keystone of Wus gamble to retain power
26.
Mandarin (bureaucrat)
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A mandarin was a bureaucrat scholar in the government of imperial China. The English term comes from the Portuguese mandarim and its usage among the Portuguese is also attested by Matteo Ricci, who entered mainland China from Portuguese Macau in the late 16th century. The Portuguese word was thought by many to be related to mandador and mandar, modern dictionaries, however, agree that it was in fact borrowed by Portuguese from the Malay, which ultimately came from the Sanskrit mantri. In the 16th century, before the term became widespread in the European languages. It is frequently used, for example, in Galeote Pereiras account of his experiences in China in 1548–1553, boxer explains, the word comes from the Chinese 老爷, which was commonly used by people in China to address officials. For around 1,300 years, from 605 to 1905, China has had civil servants since at least the Zhou Dynasty. However, most high ranking positions were filled by relatives of the sovereign and it was not until the Tang Dynasty when the final form of the mandarin was completed with the replacement of the nine-rank system. The mandarins were the founders and core of the Chinese gentry, a governmental office headed by a mandarin is called a yamen. The mandarins were replaced with a civil service after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Vietnam, after becoming free of Chinese rule and setting up its own independent monarchy, the Qing dynasty divided the bureaucracy into civil and military positions, both having nine grades or ranks, each subdivided into a and b categories. Military appointments ranged from being a marshal or chamberlain of the imperial bodyguard to a third class sergeant. In the table below, na is shorthand for the nth rank, primary, during the Qing dynasty, the governor of a Chinese province, was signified by wearing a mandarin hat-pin made of ruby. The lower ranks of mandarins were signified by hat-pins made of coral, sapphire, lapis lazuli, white jade, gold, and silver. In modern English, mandarin is also used to refer to any civil servant, often in a satirical context, yangban Government of the Peoples Republic of China at DMOZ Government of the Republic of China at DMOZ
27.
Scholar-official
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After the Sui dynasty these officials mostly came from the scholar-gentry who had earned academic degrees by passing the imperial examinations. The scholar-officials were schooled in calligraphy and Confucian texts and they dominated the government and local life of China until the middle of the 20th century. Historian Charles Moore concludes that, Generally speaking, the record of these scholar-gentlemen has been a worthy one and it was good enough to be praised and imitated in 18th century Europe. Nevertheless, it has given China a tremendous handicap in their transition from government by men to government by law, since only a few could become court or local officials, the majority of the scholar-gentry stayed in villages or cities as social leaders. As a class, these claimed to represent morality and virtue. Four arts Junzi Yangban Kuge Bildungsbürgertum Elman, Benjamin A, civil Service Examinations, Berkshire Encyclopedia of China, Great Barrington, MA, Berkshire, pp. 405–410 Esherick, Joseph and Mary Backus Rankin. Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance, max Weber, The Religion of China, Confucianism and Taoism Jerry Bentley and Herb Ziegler. Traditions and Encounters - A Global Perspective on the Past, the Chinese Gentry, Studies on Their Role in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Society
28.
Academies (Shuyuan)
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The Shūyuàn, usually known in English as Academies or Academies of Classical Learning, were a type of school in ancient China. The shuyuan originated in 725 during the Tang dynasty and they were places where scholars could teach and study the classics, and where books collected from around the country could be preserved. By the late Tang dynasty, private academies had appeared all over China, during the Northern Song, many academies were established with government encouragement. Each academy had its own teaching and administrative structure and was economically independent, the bestowal of a calligraphic signboard by the emperor was an extremely important symbol of an academys status during the Northern Song period. In 977, the Taizong Emperor bestowed on the White Deer Grotto Academy a copy of the Nine Chinese classics printed by the Guozijian, the Yuelu Academy, the Songyang Academy and other academies also received books from the Emperor on a number of occasions. However, academies had begun to decline by the twelfth century, the White Deer Grotto Academy, which had fallen into ruin, was rebuilt by the prominent neo-Confucianist Zhu Xi in 1179-80 during the Southern Song and reopened in 1180. It became an important centre of Confucian thought during eight centuries, Zhu Xi himself taught here during the Southern Song as did Wang Yangming during the Ming. As a result of Zhu Xis efforts, the became a permanent feature of Chinese education. The system of academies was dismantled under the Yuan dynasty and all academies were placed under government control to become preparatory schools for the imperial examinations, however, the system was revived under the Ming and the Qing. In the Ming dynasty, academies devoted to discussing political issues appeared, such as the Donglin Academy, according to one study, 40% of the 1239 known Ming academies were built during the Jiajing era. The academies were finally abolished under the Hundred Days Reform in 1898 at the end of the Qing dynasty, there were more than 7,000 academies recorded. In the late Qing dynasty, some universities, middle schools, public libraries. In Korea, which also adopted Confucianism, the shuyuan were known as Seowon, in the late Qing dynasty, schools teaching Western science and technology were established. Many such schools were called Shuyuan in Chinese, despite the common name, these shuyuan are quite modern in concept and are quite different from traditional academies of classical learning. In discussing the shuyuan, it is common to speak of the Four Great Academies of ancient China, usually the Four Great Academies refers to the Four Great Academies of the Northern Song. However, sources give a number of different lists, sometimes expanded to Six or Eight Great Academies, only one, the Yuelu Academy, appears in all lists. Each school went up or down the list in different periods, White Deer Grotto Academy had long been important. As for the impact on the politics of China, Donglin Academy in the Ming Dynasty is especially notable, also known as the Four Great Academies of the Northern Song or the Four Northern Song Academies
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Burning of books and burying of scholars
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The event caused the loss of many philosophical treatises of the Hundred Schools of Thought. The official philosophy of government survived and it is also now believed that many scholars were killed, but that they were not Confucians and were not buried alive. In any case, the incidents and the burning of books. Chancellor Li Si Said, I, your servant, propose that all historians records other than those of Qins be burned, anyone who dares to discuss the Shi Jing or the Classic of History shall be publicly executed. Anyone who uses history to criticize the present shall have his family executed, any official who sees the violations but fails to report them is equally guilty. Anyone who has failed to burn the books after thirty days of this announcement shall be subjected to tattooing, the books that have exemption are those on medicine, divination, agriculture, and forestry. Those who have interest in laws shall instead study from officials, the Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin thirty-fourth year Three categories of books were viewed by Li Si to be most dangerous politically. These were poetry, history, and philosophy, the ancient collection of poetry and historical records contained many stories concerning the ancient virtuous rulers. Li Si believed that if the people were to read these works they were likely to invoke the past, the reason for opposing various schools of philosophy was that they advocated political ideas often incompatible with the totalitarian regime. The extent of the damage to Chinese intellectual heritage is difficult to assess, there are several facts, however, that indicate the consequences of this event, although enduring, had not been extensive. First, it is recorded in Li Sis memorial that all books were to be spared. Secondly, even the books, poetry and philosophy in particular, were preserved in imperial archives. Of the various categories of books mentioned, history suffered the greatest loss, extremely few state history books before Qin have survived. Li Si stated that all history books not in the Qin interpretation were to be burned and it is not clear whether copies of these books were allowed to stay in the imperial archives. Even if some histories were preserved, they would have destroyed in 206 B. C. when enemies captured and burned the Qin imperial palaces in which the archives were most likely located. At the end of the Qin, the Epang Palaces national records were destroyed by fire, the belief was based on this passage in the Shiji, The first emperor therefore directed the imperial censor to investigate the scholars one by one. The scholars accused each other, and so the emperor personally determined their fate, more than 460 of them were buried alive at Xianyang, and the event is announced to all under heaven for warning followers. More people were exiled to border regions
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Guozijian
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It was the highest institution of learning in Chinas traditional educational system, with the function of administration of education. In Vietnam, the Imperial Academy existed after the Lý dynasty, several notable chairmans of Guozijian in Vietnam history are Chu Văn An, Nguyễn Phi Khanh, Vũ Miên, and Lê Quý Đôn. Formerly it was called the Taixue, while Taixue for Gongsheng from the populace was still part of Guozijian, along with Guozixue for noble students. The central schools of taixue were established as far back as 3 CE, since Sui dynasty it was called Guozijian. At the Guozijian, law, math, calligraphy, equestrianism, Guozijian was shut down in 1905. From then on the European university system, based on the medieval university, was adopted. Guozijian were located in the capital of each dynasty, such as Changan. In early years of Ming, Guozijian was in Nanjing, in Qing, Guozijian was in Beijing. It is the last Guozijian in China, academies Ancient higher-learning institutions Peking University Nanjing University Yuan, Zheng. Local Government Schools in Sung China, A Reassessment, History of Education Quarterly, 193–213
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Guozijian (Beijing)
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The Beijing Guozijian, located on Guozijian Street in Beijing, China, was the imperial college during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and the last Guozijian of China. Most of the Beijing Guozijians buildings were built during the Ming Dynasty, the Guozijian was shut down in 1905. The Guozijian, often translated into English as the Imperial Academy or Imperial College, was the central institute of learning in ancient Chinese dynasties. It was the highest institute of learning in Chinas traditional educational system, emperors in imperial China would also frequently visit the Guozijian to read Confucian classics to thousands of students. The administrative officials of Guozijian were called Chief, Dean of Studies, the students who studied at the Guozijian were called Jiansheng, and they mainly studied the Confucian classics. To the east of the Guozijian, lies the Confucius Temple, the second largest Confucius temple in all of China, and the Yonghegong Temple, the largest Lama Temple in Beijing. The whole complex of Guozijian faces south, and it has a building area of more than 10,000 square meters or 107,639 square feet. Along the central axis of Guozijian are the Jixian Gate, Taixue Gate, the Glazed Archway, Biyong, Yiluntang, on its east and west sides are the six halls and palaces in the traditional symmetrical layout. Guozijian Kongmiao, Beijing Peking University History of Beijing Sungkyunkwan, Seoul Media related to Beijing Guozijian at Wikimedia Commons
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