chinese long essay

How to Write a Chinese Essay

Dec 16, 2020 | Guest Blogs & Media

The more essays you write, the better you get at communicating with Chinese. To write a good essay, you first have to reach a high language mastery level.

Do you admire the students who write seamless Chinese essay? If you do, then you should know that you too can achieve this level of proficiency. In the meantime, don’t be afraid to pay for your essay if you cannot write it on your own. Online academic writers are a resource each student should take advantage of.

Here are tips to help you get better at writing essays in Chinese.

How to Write a Chinese Essay | That's Mandarin Blog

Learn New Chinese Words

The key to communicating in a new language is learning as many words as you can. Take it upon yourself to learn at least one Chinese word a day. Chinese words are to essay writing what bricks are to a building. The more words you have, the better you get at constructing meaningful sentences.

Case in point, if you’re going to write a Chinese sentence that constitutes ten words, but you don’t know the right way to spell three of those words, your sentence might end up not making sense.

During your Chinese learning experience, words are your arsenal and don’t forget to master the meaning of each word you learn.

Read Chinese Literature

Reading is the most effective way of learning a new language. Remember not to read for the sake of it; find out the meaning of each new word you encounter. When you are an avid reader of Chinese literature, nothing can stop you from writing fluent Chinese.

In the beginning, it might seem like you’re not making any progress, but after a while, you will notice how drastically your writing will change. Receiving information in Chinese helps your brain get accustomed to the language’s sentence patterns, and you can translate this to your essays.

Be extensive in your reading to ensure you get as much as possible out of each article. Remember that it’s not about how fast you finish an article, but rather, how much you gain from the exercise.

Translate Articles from your Native Language to Chinese

Have you ever thought about translating your favorite read to Chinese? This exercise might be tedious, but you will learn a lot from it. The art of translation allows you to seamlessly shift from one language’s sentence pattern into the other. The more you do this, the easier it will be for your brain to convert English sentences into Chinese phrases that people can comprehend.

You can always show your Chinese professor your translations for positive criticism. The more you get corrected, the better you will get at translation. Who knows, you might actually like being a translator once you graduate.

Final Thoughts

Adrian Lomezzo | Guest Author at That's Mandarin Blog

by Adrian Lomezzo

Adrian Lomezzo is a freelance writer. Firstly, he has been developing as a content manager and working with different websites, and the main goal of his was to develop the content making it in the first place. Secondly, Adrian had a big desire to help students and adults in self-development in this field and teach them to improve their skills. As a lover of traveling, he did not want to be in one place, and became a writer who could be closer to everyone, and share precious information from the corners of the world.

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Useful Chinese Essay Phrases

July 8, 2020

By Ellen

Nowadays, many international students have decided to study abroad, and China has become a highly popular destination. In universities, essay writing is a basic skill and the “Academic Writing” lectures are always attracting many students to attend.

Here we have summarized some “all-purpose” phrases and sentences which hopefully you would find useful.

Chinese Essay Phrases Used in Abstracts

The abstract should explain the purpose, method, results, and conclusion of your research, also highlighting the new ideas that you proposed; and do remember to keep your language concise while writing. The purpose of the abstract is to conclude and summarize the main contents of your essay so that the reader could have a brief understanding without having to read the entire paper. Chinese abstracts are usually around 200 characters.

Research Background, Significance, and Current Situation

Extremely useful/badly needed/affecting people’s lives (1-2 sentences)

Proposing the Object of Study

Played a very important role (1-2 sentences)

Purpose of the Study or Study Aim

The role of A in B, perhaps remains to be seen (1 sentence)

Research Methods and Results

Through what means/technique/experiment we achieved what result (several sentences)

Research Results

The phenomenon of A in B, shows what the function of B is, theoretical and applied value (1-2 sentences)

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Chinese Essay Phrases: Main Body

The main body includes the introduction and the main text. The introduction section could use similar phrases that we have just listed, focusing on research objects and purposes. The main text should include research methods, research results, and discussion. Writers should keep their sentences to the point and avoid rambling, also avoid using too much subjective perspective discourses, which shouldn’t be used as arguments as well.

Theoretical Basis, Approaches, and Methods

To express opinions, to emphasis, transitional expressions, chinese essay phrases: conclusion.

At the ending section of the paper, the writer should provide an objective summary, list out the future research objectives and directions, and perhaps look into the future. Keep optimistic even if your experiment results were negative.

Research Impact and Value

There you go. We hope this article helps you write amazing essays. Best of luck!

Ellen is a language specialist from China. She grew up in the US and received a master’s degree from the St Andrews University of UK. The multicultural experiences attributes to her understanding of the differences and similarities between the English and Chinese language. She currently works as an editor specialized in Language learning books.

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The Guide to Writing Your First Mandarin Essay

When you want to be able to make writing your first Mandarin essay nice and easy, it pays to put plenty of thought and effort into the preparation. As the old saying goes ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail.’ To give you plenty of food for thought we’ve put together everything you need to know to get things moving. All you need to do is work through the following steps, and you’ll be submitting your essay in no time at all.

Check you understand the basics

There are so many things you have to think about when writing an essay, particularly when it’s not in your native language. But as with any cognitively demanding task, the process for getting started is always the same. Check you understand the following basics and you’ll be heading in the right direction:

Do you know what the question means?
Have you made a note of the final submission date?
Make sure you read some past examples to get a feel for what’s expected of you
Do you understand the question that has been set?
Do you know who you can talk to if you need advice along the way?
Are there any restrictions on the dialect you should be aware of?

Once you can write the answers to the above down on a single side of the paper, you are ready to tackle the main part of the problem: putting pen to paper.

Set aside time to write

The chances are that you’re not going to be able to pen the entire essay in a single sitting, and that’s okay. It’s nothing to be ashamed of or to worry about, and it’s natural that you need to work across multiple days when writing your first essay.

If you want to be able to make great progress, the most important thing is sticking to a routine. You need to have consistency in your application, and you need to be able to know when you are at your most productive. It’s no good staying up late one night and then carrying on early the next morning. You’d be far better off writing for the same amount of time but on two successive afternoons. Think about how your studies fit in with the rest of your daily life, and then choose the time that seems most appropriate. If you box it off and decide it’s only for writing, you’ll be in a great routine before you even know it.

Clear space so you can focus

As well as having time to write each day, you need a place to write too. The world is full of distractions (most of them are digital and social) so that means you’re going to want to keep yourself to yourself, and your phone in a different room. It might seem a little boring or uncomfortable at first, but you need to practice the habit of deep work. It’s what will allow you to create the most in the shortest time — ideal if you want to have plenty of time leftover to spend doing the other things that matter to you.

Have a daily word count in mind

Telling yourself that you want to write an essay today is one thing, but if you’re really going to push yourself to stick to your goal then you need to get quantitative. If you have a word count in mind that you need to hit, then it will prevent you from giving up and throwing in the towel the minute you start having to think and concentrate more than feels normal. Just like working out in the gym, it’s the temporary moments of extra effort that really drive the big differences. It’s when you’ll see the biggest improvement in your writing ability, and the lessons you teach yourself will stay with you for years to come. Ideal if you want to become a fluent Mandarin writer, as well as an engaging face-to-face speaker.

Read widely to provide context

When you’re immersed in an essay it can be all too easy to become blinkered and fail to pay attention to everything else that’s going on around you. Of course, you want to be focused on the task at hand, but you don’t want to be single-minded to the point of ignoring other great learning resources that are just a click away.

Reading widely is one of the best ways to improve your essay writing because it exposes you to techniques and approaches used by the best of the best. You’re not expected to be able to instantly write like a native speaker after an hour of reading. But what you will be able to do with consistent application is build up confidence and familiarity with written Mandarin. Over time this will reflect on the quality and depth of your writing as you gradually improve and take onboard lessons you’ve learned.

Take a break before you proofread

Last but not least, you need to remember that essay writing is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s all about taking the time to get things written before you hand them in, not racing through to try and finish on time. If you want to get the most out of your writing you need to take a day off between finishing your draft and proofing it. That way your brain will have had plenty of time to reflect on the work you’ve produced, and you’ll be able to spot many more little mistakes and places for improvement than you would if you proofed right away.

Final Thoughts

Writing Mandarin is a challenging task that will test your language skills and make you think hard about how to apply what you’ve learned so far. It might be slow going to begin with, but that’s great as it means you’re pushing your limits and building on your existing skills. If you want to be able to master Mandarin, you need to persevere and stay the course. Once you do, you’ll start to improve a lot faster than you expect.

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Improve Chinese Essay Writing- A Complete How to Guide

Last updated: June 6, 2019
Learn Chinese

Writing can reflect a writer’s power of thought and language organization skills. It is critical to master Chinese writing if you want to take your Chinese to the next level. How to write good Chinese essays? The following six steps will improve Chinese essay writing:

Before You Learn to Improve Chinese Essay Writing

Before you can write a good essay in Chinese, you must first be accustomed with Chinese characters. Unlike English letters, Chinese characters are hieroglyphs, and the individual strokes are different from each other. It is important to be comfortable with writing Chinese characters in order to write essays well in Chinese. Make sure to use Chinese essay writing format properly. After that, you will be ready to improve Chinese essay writing.

Increase Your Chinese Words Vocabulary

With approximately 100,000 words in the Chinese language, you will need to learn several thousand words just to know the most common words used. It is essential to learn as many Chinese words as possible if you wish to be a good writer. How can you enlarge your vocabulary? Try to accumulate words by reading daily and monthly. Memory is also very necessary for expanding vocabulary. We should form a good habit of exercising and reciting as more as we can so that to enlarge vocabulary. Remember to use what you have learned when you write in Chinese so that you will continually be progressing in your language-learning efforts.

Acquire Grammar,Sentence Patterns and Function Words

In order to hone your Chinese writing skills , you must learn the grammar and sentence patterns. Grammar involves words, phrases, and the structure of the sentences you form. There are two different categories of Chinese words: functional and lexical. Chinese phrases can be categorized as subject-predicate phrases (SP), verb-object phrases (VO), and co-ordinate phrases (CO). Regarding sentence structure, each Chinese sentence includes predicate, object, subject, and adverbial attributes. In addition, function words play an important role in Chinese semantic understanding, so try to master the Chinese conjunction, such as conjunction、Adverbs、Preposition as much as you can. If you wish to become proficient at writing in Chinese, you must study all of the aspects of grammar mentioned in this section.

Keep a Diary Regularly to Note Down Chinese Words,Chinese Letters

Another thing that will aid you in becoming a better writer is keeping a journal in Chinese. Even if you are not interested in expanding your writing skills, you will find that it is beneficial for many day-to-day tasks, such as completing work reports or composing an email. Journaling on a regular basis will help you form the habit of writing, which will make it feel less like a chore. You may enjoy expressing yourself in various ways by writing; for instance, you might write poetry in your journal. On a more practical side of things, you might prefer to simply use your journal as a way to purposely build your vocabulary .

Persistence in Reading Everyday

In addition to expanding your view of the world and yourself, reading can help you improve your writing. Reading allows you to learn by example; if you read Chinese daily, you will find that it is easier to write in Chinese because you have a greater scope of what you can do with the vocabulary that you’ve learned. Choose one favorite Chinese reading , Read it for an hour or 2,000 words or so in length each day.

Whenever you come across words or phrases in your reading that you don’t understand, take the time to check them in your dictionary and solidify your understanding of them. In your notebook, write the new word or phrase and create an example sentence using that new addition to your vocabulary. If you are unsure how to use it in a sentence, you can simply copy the sample sentence in your dictionary.

Reviewing the new vocabulary word is a good way to improve your memory of it; do this often to become familiar with these new words. The content of reading can be very broad. It can be from novels, or newspapers, and it can be about subjects like economics or psychology. Remember you should read about things you are interested in. After a certain period of accumulation by reading, you will greatly improve your Chinese writing.

Do Essay Writing Exercise on a Variety of Subjects

As the saying goes, “practice makes perfect.” In order to improve your China Essay Writing , you should engage in a variety of writing exercises. For beginners, you should start with basic topics such as your favorite hobby, future plans, favorite vacation spot, or any other topic that you can write about without difficulty.

For example :《我的一天》( Wǒ de yì tiān, my whole day’s life ),《我喜欢的食物》( Wǒ xǐhuan de shíwù, my favorite food ),《一次难忘的旅行》( yí cì nánwàng de lǚxíng, an unforgettable trip ) etc.

Generally the writing topics can be classified into these categories: a recount of an incident,a description of something/someone, a letter, formulate your own opinion on an issue based on some quote or picture etc.

Takeaway to Improve Chinese Essay Writing

Keep an excel spreadsheet of 口语(Kǒuyǔ, spoken Chinese) –书面语(Shūmiànyǔ, written Chinese) pairs and quotes of sentences that you like. You should also be marking up books and articles that you read looking for new ways of expressing ideas. Using Chinese-Chinese dictionaries is really good for learning how to describe things in Chinese.

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Chinese Fables, Parables, and Children's Stories

The Boatman's Sword (2.9) - A brief parable about a foolish boatman's loss of his sword, illustrating the saying " ke zhou qiu jian ," meaning "to take measures without regard to changes in circumstances. ( Chinese | English )

Cao Chong Weighing the Elephant (1.6) - A well-known Chinese children's story about a young boy's ingenious use of an essential principle of physics. ( Chinese | English )

The Donkey and the Tiger (1.7) - A tiger mistakes a donkey for a fearsome monster, until he discovers that the donkey can do no more than bellow and kick. This story illustrates the idiom "qian lu ji qiong," to be at wit's end. ( View Text | Download Text )

The Foolish Farmer (3.9) - This short parable about a farmer who is determined to make his rice grow faster illustrates the saying ya miao zhu zhang , which means "to spoil things by excessive enthusiasm." ( Chinese | English )

The Foolish Old Man of North Mountain (3.7) - When a mountain blocks the view from your front door, just pull out a shovel and move it aside. Such was the resolution of the hero of this oft-told tale, which explains the meaning of the idiom "yugong yishan," which has roughly the connotation of "where there's a will, there's a way." ( View Text | Download Text )

Fox and Tiger (2.4) - A traditional Chinese children's fable about a hungry tiger and a wily fox offering an illustration of the commonly used idiom hu jia hu wei , which means "to bully people by flaunting one's powerful connections." ( View Text | Download Text | Read Using Chinese Text Reader )

Frog in the Well (5.4) - A short fable about a self-satisfied frog whose delusions of grandeur about himself and his little well are shattered by a visiting tortoise's description of the sea. The fable explains the origin of a popular Chinese proverb, or chengyu , meaning "a person with a very limited outlook." ( View Text | Download Text )

The Lost Horse (3.4) - A well known parable about a wise old horse breeder who can see the silver lining in a dark cloud, and recognizes the hazards that can lurk behind a stroke of seeming good fortune. The story explains the meaning of the saying, "saiweng shima," a blessing in disguise. ( View Text | Download Text )

Ma Liang and the Magic Brush (2.2) - A traditional Chinese children's story about a young boy who paints pictures that literally come to life and an emperor who attempts to claim the power of the boy's art for his own. ( Chinese | English )

The Peasant and the Hare (2.3) - This brief parable about a farmer who stumbles on a free dinner illustrates the saying shou zhu dai tu , meaning "to wait foolishly for an unlikely windfall." ( Chinese | English | Read Using Chinese Text Reader )

Sima Guang to the Rescue (2.0) - Sima Guang was a renowned historian and statesman of the Song Dynasty. This brief account introduces Sima Guang as a young boy and tells the famous story of how he rescued a child who fell into a water urn. ( Chinese | English )

The Swan's Feather (2.1) - In English, when speaking of humble gifts, we say "It's the thought that counts." This well-known Chinese fable about gift-giving, the source of a familiar proverb, conveys a similar sentiment. ( View Text | Download Text )

White Haired Girl (2.5) - A well-known folk story about a peasant girl who suffers and finally manages to escape the depradations of a tyrannical landlord. Adapted after liberation as an early experiment in revolutionary folk theatre, the legend has been recast more recently as a widely acclaimed modern dance drama that has been performed more than 1500 times by the Shanghai Ballet. The full text of the modern theatrical version of the story is provided here. ( View Text | Download Text )

White Snake Story (2.6) - A romance tale originally dating from the Tang Dynasty about the undying love between a snake lady and a young man from Hangzhou. Featuring magical medicines and epic battles, the story has been rewritten many times and adapted for regional operas, novels, films, cartoons, and computer games. This version here is adopted from Peking opera. ( View Text | Download Text )

Zhuangzi and the Butterfly (2.8) - Master Zhuang, a philosopher of the Warring States Period who has been called the world's first anarchist, dreamt that he was a butterfly, and awoke to a new awareness of the artifice of distinction and the fluidity of modes of being in the world. ( Chinese | English )

Zodiac Stories (2.1) - Traditional children's stories associated with the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. The first three stories of the series, featuring the Rat, the Ox, and the Tiger, are included here. ( Chinese | English )

Address to Fellow Countrywomen (1.8) - A stirring speech by the poet, revolutionary, and early feminist activist Qiu Jin (1875-1907), calling on the women of China to emancipate themselves from the traditional practices of footbinding and arranged marriages and to reclaim the values of education and self-reliance for women. ( View Text | Download Text )

Analects of Confucius (2.4) - This record of the sage's pronouncements in discussions with his disciples has provided the cornerstone for many of China's social and ethical values and traditions. Included here are the first two sections, which offer guidance on the virtues of friendship, obedience, loyalty, integrity, and learning. ( View Text | Download Text )

Biography of Boyi (3.3) - A short selection from Sima Qian's masterpiece Shi Ji (Records of the Grand Historian, c. 85 BC) concerned primarily with heavenly justice and the role of the historian. The Shi Ji , the first systematic history written in China, covers the major personalities and events of the previous 2,000 years, from the time of the Yellow Emperor through the first part of the Han dynasty. ( View Text | Download Text )

Classes and Class Struggle (1.6) - Selected quotations from Mao's Red Book on the historical role of class conflict and its implications for Chinese society. ( View Text | Download Text )

Dao De Jing (2.5) - One of the best-known texts of ancient China, the Tao Te Ching (as it is frequently transliterated) is attributed to Lao-tzu, a sixth-century philosopher who lived at roughly the same time as Confucius. In poetic and concise passages, Lao-tzu preached of a dynamic and dialectical principle of binary opposition. He argues that the Great Way of nature and naturalness underlies the worldly matters, which is to be followed, not opposed, in the life. Even the effort to describe the Way renders an obstruction to the true meaning of this dynamic and abstract concept. Lao-tzu's teaching forms the central canon of Taoist philosophy. ( View Text | Download Text )

Declaration for Peace (1.9) - Yang Kui (1905-1985), a Taiwanese author and political activist, followed the footsteps of Lai Ho in carrying out non-violent resistance against the Japanese and, later, the authoritarian KMT rule through his writings. Attracted to socialism and Marxism in his early years, Yang devoted his youth to organizing farmers' movements in the 1930s. Following the KMT government's brutal suppression of the anti-government resistance movement in 1947, Yang published his famous essay "Declaration for Peace," calling for reconciliation through the release of all prisoners of conscience and the renounciation of state-sponsored violence. His act of defiance earned the author a twelve-year sentence as a political prisoner himself. ( View Text | Download Text )

The Hong Kong Question (2.3) - Deng Xiaoping's ennumeration of the three principles governing China's policy towards Hong Kong as presented during a meeting with Margaret Thatcher in September of 1982. The Chinese leader expresses openness to dialogue, but insists on the irreducible fact of Chinese sovereignty over the territory. ( View Text | Download Text )

How to Be a Good Communist (3.2) - A famous treatise published in 1939 by Liu Shaoqi urging the disciplined cultivation of revolutionary thought and behavior. Long considered the likely successor to Mao Zedong, the author was a labor organizer in the 1920s, a participant in the Long March, and a member of the Central Committee until his denunciation in 1968. ( View Text | Download Text )

New Life Movement (2.3) - In 1934, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek inaugurated the New Life Movement in China in an attempt to combat the ideological sway of Communism. The movement combined strands of Confucianism, nationalism, and authoritarianism, and displayed certain proto-fascist tendencies. In this speech, Chiang Kai-shek lays out how some of the key principles of the movement, including modernization, law & justice, and moral responsibility, are essential to the survival of the nation. ( View Text | Download Text )

Poster Campaigns (2.1) - A representative selection of nearly 60 propaganda slogans from various political poster campaigns of the revolutionary period. The slogans are divided into nine broad categories: political programs, personality cults, social culture, economics, war, education, public security, family planning, and environment, health, and hygiene. ( View Text | Download Text )

Qian Long's Letter to King George (2.1) - In the late eighteenth century, British merchants were becoming increasingly anxious to tap into the wealth of China's trade networks. King George III sent an envoy to China bearing gifts for the emperor and instructions to negotiate more favorable trade conditions for Britain. While the the embassy was received with all due pomp and ceremony, it failed in its central mission. The Qian Long emperor (r. 1735-1795) sent back an oft-quoted letter to King George thanking him for his tribute but rebuffing his requests for expanded trading privileges. . ( View Text | Download Text )

Recollections of the May Fourth Movement (2.7) - Deng Yingchao (1904-1992) was one of the leading women figures in China's recent political history. As a student activist, Deng was involved in the May 4th movement, a student-led protest against Japan's encroachment on China's sovereignty after World War I. Throughout her later life, Deng remained active in the women's movement and as the spouse and companion of Zhou Enlai, the first prime minister of the People's Republic. ( View Text | Download Text )

Sayings of Mencius (2.2) - A selection of fifteen of the most most familiar sayings of the philosopher Mengzi (372-289 BCE), an itinerant philosopher from the State of Zhou who became the most famous interpreter of Confucius. ( View Text | Download Text )

Talks at the Yen'an Forum on Literature and Art (1.7) - An important series of speeches given by Mao Zedong in 1942 on the role of art and literature in the communist revolution. ( View Text | Download Text )

The Way of Confucius and Modern Life (2.7) - A famous essay by Chen Duxiu (1879-1942), an educator, philosopher, and politician who in 1916 became the founder and first chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. Here he argues that Confucian social norms are feudal, backward, and incompatible with Western-style modernization. ( View Text | Download Text )

Young China (2.4) - Historian, philosopher, journalist, and political reformer Liang Qichao (1873-1929) was one of the foremost men of letters of the late Qing and early republican period. He was active in the reform movement of the 1890s, and after a period of exile in Japan, helped to found the Progressive Party on his return in 1912. "The Young China," a well-known essay from his most radical period, was published in his newspaper Qingyi Bao on Feb. 2, 1900. The essay compares the Qing Empire to an old man of failing health, and introduces the concept of the nation-state to argue that the future of the new China rests in the hands of young revolutionaries. The essay exerted considerable influence on Chinese political culture during the May Fourth movement in the 1920's and well beyond. ( View Text | Download Text )

Behavior Guide for Tourists (1.9) - As increasing prosperity has put overseas travel within the reach of ever more Chinese citizens, the authorities have issued reminders that Chinese travellers abroad are expected to uphold the dignity of the nation they represent. This list of precepts for tourists, prepared by the National Tourism Administration, was seen at the entrance gate of a museum in Xi'an. ( View Text | Download Text )

Citizens' Pledge to Uphold National Civilization (2.1) - The ubiquitous public propaganda displays of the past have been increasingly displaced by commercial advertising in recent years. In some Beijing neighborhoods, though, one can still find gems like this list of nine principles of good citizenship, sponsored by the Capital Committee for the Promotion of Spiritual Civilization. ( View Text | Download Text )

Commonly Used Idioms (3.3) - A large selection of the pithy, four-character idioms ( chengyu) that are a traditional hallmark of vernacular Chinese. A familiarity with these idioms is, far more than in other languages, an essential component of cultural literacy. ( View Text | Download Text | Read Using Chinese Text Reader )

Commonly Used Proverbs (2.2) - Proverbs provide a glimpse into the spirit and values of any society. This representative selection of 100 of the most commonly used proverbs in modern Chinese is divided into nine categories: family, education, friendship, famous places, the ways of the world, failure and disappointment, optimism, self-discipline, and temperaments. ( View Text | Download Text )

The Eight Glories and Eight Shames (2.3) - The Chinese have long been fond of pithy statements of moral precepts, many of which have been fixed in the language in the form of chengyu . This list of rules exorting virtue and deploring vice was transcribed from a large sign posted outside the construction site of a new subway station in Beijing in 2007. ( View Text | Download Text )

Family Names (4.0) - Because proper nouns are not capitalized in Chinese as they are in English, it can be difficult for beginners to distinguish people's names from other words when reading Chinese newspapers, stories, and other documents. Fortunately, the number of common family names in China is quite limited, with the 45 surnames presented here used by over 70% of the population. ( View Text | Download Text )

Jokes (3.7) - There are few better ways to get to know a culture than by learning what people like to laugh at. This representative sampling of twenty often-told jokes includes barbs directed at most of the usual suspects in Chinese humor, including love, marriage hen-pecked husbands, school, scholars, officials, merchants, and the wealthy. ( View Text | Download Text )

Most Frequently Used Characters I (1.0) - A simple list of the 300 most frequently used characters in modern Chinese, in order of increasing complexity. These 300 characters, because they are so widely used in various combinations, account for approximately 65% of the characters encountered in a typical Chinese newspaper. Master them and you're well on your way to literacy! ( View Text | Download Text )

Most Frequently Used Characters II (2.0) - A list of the 500 next most frequently used characters in modern Chinese, in order of increasing complexity. ( View Text | Download Text )

Place Names (2.7) - When travelling in China, using a Chinese map, or reading about Chinese history or current events, it is useful to know the characters for the major place names you will encounter. This comprehensive gazetteer includes the names of all of China's provinces, autonomous regions, and special administrative zones, along with the name of the capital city and a list of major cities, geographical features, and historical sites for each one. ( View Text | Download Text )

Restaurant Menu Sampler (4.8) - One of the most common texts you'll encounter on any visit to China is a restaurant menu. Unless you'd rather not know what you're eating, it's helpful to recognize the names of at least some of the more common dishes. This selection of 58 typical Chinese menu offerings is divided into six categories: cold appetizers, meat dishes, seafood, vegetable dishes, noodles and buns, and soups. ( View Text | Download Text )

Street Signs (2.5) - The signs on buildings, billboards, and street corners are probably the most commonly encountered texts in any major city, and are essential for safety, convenience, navigation, and shopping, not to mention getting a feel for the public culture of a new place. This sampling of 125 common signs seen on recent trips to China is divided into the following nine categories for ease of use: public spaces, communications, transportation, health & medicine, public security, tourism, public services, residential districts, and political slogans. ( View Text | Download Text )

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General Chinese learning tips

How to Write a Good Chinese Essay

Posted by Lilian Li 17816

For any kind of language, the essay is the most difficult thing to do in the exam. Generally speaking, writing articles is just to tell a story, after you make the story clear, the article also is finished. But it also different with speaking. A good article is like a art, is worth for people to appreciate, to taste. But how to accomplish such a good art? I think the most important thing is the three points: attitude, subject matter, emotional.

A good beginning is half done. For writing, material selection and design are not the start. The most important thing still is to adjust their mentality as well. When you decided to write, then dedicated yourself to write, not half-hearted, and your thinking nature won't be upset. Once the train of thought was interrupted, your speed will be slow and the point will be word count. So how can you write down a interesting article with a good quality? All in all, attitude is can decide the success or failure of the articles.

Subject is the biggest problem in our writing. It is from life, but not all people can observe life, experience life. The only point is to write the true things, maybe not so tortuous plots, but can write a really life. Moreover, when you get the subject, there are some tips for students to pay attention:

1. Make the topic request clear: The article should around the topic, pay attention to the demand of genre and number of words, some restrictive conditions and avoid distracting, digression.

2. Determine the center, choose the right material. To conform to the fact that a typical, novel, so it’s easy to attract the attention of people.

3. Make a good outline, determine the general, write enough words.

4. Sentence writing smooth, there is no wrong character, no wrong grammar in article.

Emotion, it is very important. If we compared an article to be a human. So emotion is his soul. Man is not vegetation, when they meet something, there must be personal thoughts and feelings. Sometimes it also tend to have their own original ideas. If you can put your own thoughts, feelings and insights into the article, then this article will be very individual.

Chinese essay is not just meaning some simple Chinese characters and make a simple sentences, it needs the Chinese grammar and sentence structure, if you don't familiar with Chinese grammar, you can learn our Chinese grammar course .

At last, adhere to write diary at ordinary times, it can practicing writing. Try to read some good articles, good words and good paragraphs with a good beginning and end. Learn to accumulate and draw lessons from them.

If you are interested in our Chinese grammar course, you can try our one online free trial , you will enjoy it.

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How to Write a Chinese Essay?

However, this is not an option.

Chinese essay writing is an important part in GCE O level Higher Chinese Language or Chinese Language exam.

Then, what are the students suppose to write in an essay? For GCE O level Chinese exam in May 2017, many parents complained about the essay questions set were too difficult ( link ). However, this is the direction we are heading in O level Chinese and the students need to level up necessarily.

Before we even talk about what to write, we must first know what will be tested.

For GCE O level Chinese exam , essay writing is in section 2 of Paper 1.

In this section, students are expected to choose to write 1 out of 3 questions, and the 3 questions will be in one of the following categories:

情景文 (Scenario essay writing)
说明文 (Expository)
议论文 (Argumentative)
材料作文 (Material essay writing)

Each category would need students to write the essay using different skill set. Students need to master the required skill set in order to write essays that meet the criteria.

For 情景文 , students need to use the skills of writing 记叙文 and characters descriptions ; for 说明文 , they need to use the skills of expository essay writing ; 议论文 needs the 3 key elements; as for 材料作文 , depending on the question, students will either need to use the skills for 记叙文 or 议论文 .

When students are clear with all these skills, they will find Chinese essay writing a lot more easier. When equipped with these necessary writing skills , they will be able to focus more on acquiring their language skills.

With our help, we are confident that our students are able to master all these essential Chinese essay writing skills.

Call 97690373 today to register for our class.

The long game

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from “ The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order ” by former Brookings Fellow Rush Doshi.

This introductory chapter summarizes the book’s argument. It explains that U.S.-China competition is over regional and global order, outlines what Chinese-led order might look like, explores why grand strategy matters and how to study it, and discusses competing views of whether China has a grand strategy. It argues that China has sought to displace America from regional and global order through three sequential “strategies of displacement” pursued at the military, political, and economic levels. The first of these strategies sought to blunt American order regionally, the second sought to build Chinese order regionally, and the third — a strategy of expansion — now seeks to do both globally. The introduction explains that shifts in China’s strategy are profoundly shaped by key events that change its perception of American power.

Introduction

It was 1872, and Li Hongzhang was writing at a time of historic upheaval. A Qing Dynasty general and official who dedicated much of his life to reforming a dying empire, Li was often compared to his contemporary Otto von Bismarck, the architect of German unification and national power whose portrait Li was said to keep for inspiration. 1

Like Bismarck, Li had military experience that he parlayed into considerable influence, including over foreign and military policy. He had been instrumental in putting down the fourteen-year Taiping rebellion—the bloodiest conflict of the entire nineteenth century—which had seen a millenarian Christian state rise from the growing vacuum of Qing authority to launch a civil war that claimed tens of millions of lives. This campaign against the rebels provided Li with an appreciation for Western weapons and technology, a fear of European and Japanese predations, a commitment to Chinese self-strengthening and modernization—and critically—the influence and prestige to do something about it.

In a memorandum advocating for more investment in Chinese shipbuilding, [Li Hongzhang] penned a line since repeated for generations: China was experiencing “great changes not seen in three thousand years.”

Left: Li Hongzhang, also romanised as Li Hung-chang, in 1896. Source: Alice E. Neve Little, Li Hung-Chang: His Life and Times (London: Cassell & Company, 1903).

And so it was in 1872 that in one of his many correspondences, Li reflected on the groundbreaking geopolitical and technological transformations he had seen in his own life that posed an existential threat to the Qing. In a memorandum advocating for more investment in Chinese shipbuilding, he penned a line since repeated for generations: China was experiencing “great changes not seen in three thousand years.” 2

That famous, sweeping statement is to many Chinese nationalists a reminder of the country’s own humiliation. Li ultimately failed to modernize China, lost a war to Japan, and signed the embarrassing Treaty of Shimonoseki with Tokyo. But to many, Li’s line was both prescient and accurate—China’s decline was the product of the Qing Dynasty’s inability to reckon with transformative geopolitical and technological forces that had not been seen for three thousand years, forces which changed the international balance of power and ushered in China’s “Century of Humiliation.” These were trends that all of Li’s striving could not reverse.

If Li’s line marks the highpoint of China’s humiliation, then Xi’s marks an occasion for its rejuvenation. If Li’s evokes tragedy, then Xi’s evokes opportunity.

Right: Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China since 2013. Source: Reuters

Now, Li’s line has been repurposed by China’s leader Xi Jinping to inaugurate a new phase in China’s post–Cold War grand strategy. Since 2017, Xi has in many of the country’s critical foreign policy addresses declared that the world is in the midst of “great changes unseen in a century” [百年未有之大变局]. If Li’s line marks the highpoint of China’s humiliation, then Xi’s marks an occasion for its rejuvenation. If Li’s evokes tragedy, then Xi’s evokes opportunity. But both capture something essential: the idea that world order is once again at stake because of unprecedented geopolitical and technological shifts, and that this requires strategic adjustment.

For Xi, the origin of these shifts is China’s growing power and what it saw as the West’s apparent self-destruction. On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Then, a little more than three months later, a populist surge catapulted Donald Trump into office as president of the United States. From China’s perspective—which is highly sensitive to changes in its perceptions of American power and threat—these two events were shocking. Beijing believed that the world’s most powerful democracies were withdrawing from the international order they had helped erect abroad and were struggling to govern themselves at home. The West’s subsequent response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and then the storming of the US Capitol by extremists in 2021, reinforced a sense that “time and momentum are on our side,” as Xi Jinping put it shortly after those events. 3 China’s leadership and foreign policy elite declared that a “period of historical opportunity” [历史机遇期] had emerged to expand the country’s strategic focus from Asia to the wider globe and its governance systems.

We are now in the early years of what comes next—a China that not only seeks regional influence as so many great powers do, but as Evan Osnos has argued, “that is preparing to shape the twenty-first century, much as the U.S. shaped the twentieth.” 4 That competition for influence will be a global one, and Beijing believes with good reason that the next decade will likely determine the outcome.

What are China’s ambitions, and does it have a grand strategy to achieve them? If it does, what is that strategy, what shapes it, and what should the United States do about it?

As we enter this new stretch of acute competition, we lack answers to critical foundational questions. What are China’s ambitions, and does it have a grand strategy to achieve them? If it does, what is that strategy, what shapes it, and what should the United States do about it? These are basic questions for American policymakers grappling with this century’s greatest geopolitical challenge, not least because knowing an opponent’s strategy is the first step to countering it. And yet, as great power tensions flare, there is no consensus on the answers.

This book attempts to provide an answer. In its argument and structure, the book takes its inspiration in part from Cold War studies of US grand strategy. 5 Where those works analyzed the theory and practice of US “strategies of containment” toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War, this book seeks to analyze the theory and practice of China’s “strategies of displacement” toward the United States after the Cold War.

To do so, the book makes use of an original database of Chinese Communist Party documents—memoirs, biographies, and daily records of senior officials—painstakingly gathered and then digitized over the last several years from libraries, bookstores in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and Chinese e-commerce sites (see Appendix). Many of the documents take readers behind the closed doors of the Chinese Communist Party, bring them into its high-level foreign policy institutions and meetings, and introduce readers to a wide cast of Chinese political leaders, generals, and diplomats charged with devising and implementing China’s grand strategy. While no one master document contains all of Chinese grand strategy, its outline can be found across a wide corpus of texts. Within them, the Party uses hierarchical statements that represent internal consensus on key issues to guide the ship of state, and these statements can be traced across time. The most important of these is the Party line (路线), then the guideline (方针), and finally the policy (政策), among other terms. Understanding them sometimes requires proficiency not only in Chinese, but also in seemingly impenetrable and archaic ideological concepts like “dialectical unities” and “historical materialism.”

Argument in Brief

The book argues that the core of US-China competition since the Cold War has been over regional and now global order. It focuses on the strategies that rising powers like China use to displace an established hegemon like the United States short of war. A hegemon’s position in regional and global order emerges from three broad “forms of control” that are used to regulate the behavior of other states: coercive capability (to force compliance), consensual inducements (to incentivize it), and legitimacy (to rightfully command it). For rising states, the act of peacefully displacing the hegemon consists of two broad strategies generally pursued in sequence. The first strategy is to blunt the hegemon’s exercise of those forms of control, particularly those extended over the rising state; after all, no rising state can displace the hegemon if it remains at the hegemon’s mercy. The second is to build forms of control over others; indeed, no rising state can become a hegemon if it cannot secure the deference of other states through coercive threats, consensual inducements, or rightful legitimacy. Unless a rising power has first blunted the hegemon, efforts to build order are likely to be futile and easily opposed. And until a rising power has successfully conducted a good degree of blunting and building in its home region, it remains too vulnerable to the hegemon’s influence to confidently turn to a third strategy, global expansion, which pursues both blunting and building at the global level to displace the hegemon from international leadership. Together, these strategies at the regional and then global levels provide a rough means of ascent for the Chinese Communist Party’s nationalist elites, who seek to restore China to its due place and roll back the historical aberration of the West’s overwhelming global influence.

This is a template China has followed, and in its review of China’s strategies of displacement, the book argues that shifts from one strategy to the next have been triggered by sharp discontinuities in the most important variable shaping Chinese grand strategy: its perception of US power and threat. China’s first strategy of displacement (1989–2008) was to quietly blunt American power over China, particularly in Asia, and it emerged after the traumatic trifecta of Tiananmen Square, the Gulf War, and the Soviet collapse led Beijing to sharply increase its perception of US threat. China’s second strategy of displacement (2008–2016) sought to build the foundation for regional hegemony in Asia, and it was launched after the Global Financial Crisis led Beijing to see US power as diminished and emboldened it to take a more confident approach. Now, with the invocation of “great changes unseen in a century” following Brexit, President Trump’s election, and the coronavirus pandemic, China is launching a third strategy of displacement, one that expands its blunting and building efforts worldwide to displace the United States as the global leader. In its final chapters, this book uses insights about China’s strategy to formulate an asymmetric US grand strategy in response—one that takes a page from China’s own book—and would seek to contest China’s regional and global ambitions without competing dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

Order abroad is often a reflection of order at home, and China’s order-building would be distinctly illiberal relative to US order-building.

The book also illustrates what Chinese order might look like if China is able to achieve its goal of “national rejuvenation” by the centennial of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 2049. At the regional level, China already accounts for more than half of Asian GDP and half of all Asian military spending, which is pushing the region out of balance and toward a Chinese sphere of influence. A fully realized Chinese order might eventually involve the withdrawal of US forces from Japan and Korea, the end of American regional alliances, the effective removal of the US Navy from the Western Pacific, deference from China’s regional neighbors, unification with Taiwan, and the resolution of territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas. Chinese order would likely be more coercive than the present order, consensual in ways that primarily benefit connected elites even at the expense of voting publics, and considered legitimate mostly to those few who it directly rewards. China would deploy this order in ways that damage liberal values, with authoritarian winds blowing stronger across the region. Order abroad is often a reflection of order at home, and China’s order-building would be distinctly illiberal relative to US order-building.

At the global level, Chinese order would involve seizing the opportunities of the “great changes unseen in a century” and displacing the United States as the world’s leading state. This would require successfully managing the principal risk flowing from the “great changes”—Washington’s unwillingness to gracefully accept decline—by weakening the forms of control supporting American global order while strengthening those forms of control supporting a Chinese alternative. That order would span a “zone of super-ordinate influence” in Asia as well as “partial hegemony” in swaths of the developing world that might gradually expand to encompass the world’s industrialized centers—a vision some Chinese popular writers describe using Mao’s revolutionary guidance to “surround the cities from the countryside” [农村包围城市]. 6 More authoritative sources put this approach in less sweeping terms, suggesting Chinese order would be anchored in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Community of Common Destiny, with the former in particular creating networks of coercive capability, consensual inducement, and legitimacy. 7

The “struggle for mastery,” once confined to Asia, is now over the global order and its future. If there are two paths to hegemony—a regional one and a global one—China is now pursuing both.

Some of the strategy to achieve this global order is already discernable in Xi’s speeches. Politically, Beijing would project leadership over global governance and international institutions, split Western alliances, and advance autocratic norms at the expense of liberal ones. Economically, it would weaken the financial advantages that underwrite US hegemony and seize the commanding heights of the “fourth industrial revolution” from artificial intelligence to quantum computing, with the United States declining into a “deindustrialized, English-speaking version of a Latin American republic, specializing in commodities, real estate, tourism, and perhaps transnational tax evasion.” 8 Militarily, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would field a world-class force with bases around the world that could defend China’s interests in most regions and even in new domains like space, the poles, and the deep sea. The fact that aspects of this vision are visible in high-level speeches is strong evidence that China’s ambitions are not limited to Taiwan or to dominating the Indo-Pacific. The “struggle for mastery,” once confined to Asia, is now over the global order and its future. If there are two paths to hegemony—a regional one and a global one—China is now pursuing both.

This glimpse at possible Chinese order maybe striking, but it should not be surprising. Over a decade ago, Lee Kuan Yew—the visionary politician who built modern Singapore and personally knew China’s top leaders—was asked by an interviewer, “Are Chinese leaders serious about displacing the United States as the number one power in Asia and in the world?” He answered with an emphatic yes. “Of course. Why not?” he began, “They have transformed a poor society by an economic miracle to become now the second-largest economy in the world—on track . . . to become the world’s largest economy.” China, he continued, boasts “a culture 4,000 years old with 1.3 billion people, with a huge and very talented pool to draw from. How could they not aspire to be number one in Asia, and in time the world?” China was “growing at rates unimaginable 50 years ago, a dramatic transformation no one predicted,” he observed, and “every Chinese wants a strong and rich China, a nation as prosperous, advanced, and technologically competent as America, Europe, and Japan.” He closed his answer with a key insight: “This reawakened sense of destiny is an overpowering force. . . . China wants to be China and accepted as such, not as an honorary member of the West.” China might want to “share this century” with the United States, perhaps as “co-equals,” he noted, but certainly not as subordinates. 9

Why Grand Strategy Matters

The need for a grounded understanding of China’s intentions and strategy has never been more urgent. China now poses a challenge unlike any the United States has ever faced. For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries has reached 60 percent of US GDP. Neither Wilhelmine Germany during the First World War, the combined might of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany during the Second World War, nor the Soviet Union at the height of its economic power ever crossed this threshold. 10 And yet, this is a milestone that China itself quietly reached as early as 2014. When one adjusts for the relative price of goods, China’s economy is already 25 percent larger than the US economy. 11 It is clear, then, that China is the most significant competitor that the United States has faced and that the way Washington handles its emergence to superpower status will shape the course of the next century.

What makes grand strategy “grand” is not simply the size of the strategic objectives but also the fact that disparate “means” are coordinated together to achieve it.

What is less clear, at least in Washington, is whether China has a grand strategy and what it might be. This book defines grand strategy as a state’s theory of how it can achieve its strategic objectives that is intentional, coordinated, and implemented across multiple means of statecraft—military, economic, and political. What makes grand strategy “grand” is not simply the size of the strategic objectives but also the fact that disparate “means” are coordinated together to achieve it. That kind of coordination is rare, and most great powers consequently do not have a grand strategy.

When states do have grand strategies, however, they can reshape world history. Nazi Germany wielded a grand strategy that used economic tools to constrain its neighbors, military buildups to intimidate its rivals, and political alignments to encircle its adversaries—allowing it to outperform its great power competitors for a considerable time even though its GDP was less than one-third theirs. During the Cold War, Washington pursued a grand strategy that at times used military power to deter Soviet aggression, economic aid to curtail communist influence, and political institutions to bind liberal states together—limiting Soviet influence without a US-Soviet war. How China similarly integrates its instruments of statecraft in pursuit of overarching regional and global objectives remains an area that has received abundant speculation but little rigorous study despite its enormous consequences. The coordination and long-term planning involved in grand strategy allow a state to punch above its weight; since China is already a heavyweight, if it has a coherent scheme that coordinates its $14 trillion economy with its blue-water navy and rising political influence around the world—and the United States either misses it or misunderstands it—the course of the twenty-first century may unfold in ways detrimental to the United States and the liberal values it has long championed.

Washington is belatedly coming to terms with this reality, and the result is the most consequential reassessment of its China policy in over a generation. And yet, amid this reassessment, there is wide-ranging disagreement over what China wants and where it is going. Some believe Beijing has global ambitions; others argue that its focus is largely regional. Some claim it has a coordinated 100-year plan; others that it is opportunistic and error-prone. Some label Beijing a boldly revisionist power; others see it as a sober-minded stakeholder of the current order. Some say Beijing wants the United States out of Asia; and others that it tolerates a modest US role. Where analysts increasingly agree is on the idea that China’s recent assertiveness is a product of Chinese President Xi’s personality—a mistaken notion that ignores the long-standing Party consensus in which China’s behavior is actually rooted. The fact that the contemporary debate remains divided on so many fundamental questions related to China’s grand strategy—and inaccurate even in its major areas of agreement—is troubling, especially since each question holds wildly different policy implications.

The Unsettled Debate

This book enters a largely unresolved debate over Chinese strategy divided between “skeptics” and “believers.” The skeptics have not yet been persuaded that China has a grand strategy to displace the United States regionally or globally; by contrast, the believers have not truly attempted persuasion.

The skeptics are a wide-ranging and deeply knowledgeable group. “China has yet to formulate a true ‘grand strategy,’” notes one member, “and the question is whether it wants to do so at all.” 12 Others have argued that China’s goals are “inchoate” and that Beijing lacks a “well-defined” strategy. 13 Chinese authors like Professor Wang Jisi, former dean of Peking University’s School of International Relations, are also in the skeptical camp. “There is no strategy that we could come up with by racking our brains that would be able to cover all the aspects of our national interests,” he notes. 14

Other skeptics believe that China’s aims are limited, arguing that China does not wish to displace the United States regionally or globally and remains focused primarily on development and domestic stability. One deeply experienced White House official was not yet convinced of “Xi’s desire to throw the United States out of Asia and destroy U.S. regional alliances.” 15 Other prominent scholars put the point more forcefully: “[One] hugely distorted notion is the now all-too-common assumption that China seeks to eject the United States from Asia and subjugate the region. In fact, no conclusive evidence exists of such Chinese goals.” 16

In contrast to these skeptics are the believers. This group is persuaded that China has a grand strategy to displace the United States regionally and globally, but it has not put forward a work to persuade the skeptics. Within government, some top intelligence officials—including former director of national intelligence Dan Coates—have stated publicly that “the Chinese fundamentally seek to replace the United States as the leading power in the world” but have not (or perhaps could not) elaborate further, nor did they suggest that this goal was accompanied by a specific strategy. 17

Outside of government, only a few recent works attempt to make the case at length. The most famous is Pentagon official Michael Pillsbury’s bestselling One Hundred Year Marathon , though it argues somewhat overstatedly that China has had a secret grand plan for global hegemony since 1949 and, in key places, relies heavily on personal authority and anecdote. 18 Many other books come to similar conclusions and get much right, but they are more intuitive than rigorously empirical and could have been more persuasive with a social scientific approach and a richer evidentiary base. 19 A handful of works on Chinese grand strategy take a broader perspective emphasizing the distant past or future, but they therefore dedicate less time to the critical stretch from the post–Cold War era to the present that is the locus of US-China competition. 20 Finally, some works mix a more empirical approach with careful and precise arguments about China’s contemporary grand strategy. These works form the foundation for this book’s approach. 21

This book, which draws on the research of so many others, also hopes to stand apart in key ways. These include a unique social-scientific approach to defining and studying grand strategy; a large trove of rarely cited or previously inaccessible Chinese texts; a systematic study of key puzzles in Chinese military, political, and economic behavior; and a close look at the variables shaping strategic adjustment. Taken together, it is hoped that the book makes a contribution to the emerging China debate with a unique method for systematically and rigorously uncovering China’s grand strategy.

Uncovering Grand Strategy

The challenge of deciphering a rival’s grand strategy from its disparate behavior is not a new one. In the years before the First World War, the British diplomat Eyre Crowe wrote an important 20,000-word “Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany” that attempted to explain the wide-ranging behavior of a rising Germany. 22 Crowe was a keen observer of Anglo-German relations with a passion and perspective for the subject informed by his own heritage. Born in Leipzig and educated in Berlin and Düsseldorf, Crowe was half German, spoke German-accented English, and joined the British Foreign Office at the age of twenty-one. During World War I, his British and German families were literally at war with one another—his British nephew perished at sea while his German cousin rose to become chief of the German Naval Staff.

Crowe argued in his framing of the enterprise, “the choice must lie between . . . two hypotheses”—each of which resemble the positions of today’s skeptics and believers with respect to China’s grand strategy.

Left: British diplomat Eyre Crowe (1864-1925). Date unknown. Author unknown. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Crowe, who wrote his memorandum in 1907, sought to systematically analyze the disparate, complex, and seemingly uncoordinated range of German foreign behavior, to determine whether Berlin had a “grand design” that ran through it, and to report to his superiors what it might be. In order to “formulate and accept a theory that will fit all the ascertained facts of German foreign policy,” Crowe argued in his framing of the enterprise, “the choice must lie between . . . two hypotheses”—each of which resemble the positions of today’s skeptics and believers with respect to China’s grand strategy. 23

Crowe’s first hypothesis was that Germany had no grand strategy, only what he called a “vague, confused, and unpractical statesmanship.” In this view, Crowe wrote, it is possible that “Germany does not really know what she is driving at, and that all her excursions and alarums, all her underhand intrigues do not contribute to the steady working out of a well conceived and relentlessly followed system of policy.” 24 Today, this argument mirrors those of skeptics who claim China’s bureaucratic politics, factional infighting, economic priorities, and nationalist knee-jerk reactions all conspire to thwart Beijing from formulating or executing an overarching strategy. 24

Crowe’s second hypothesis was that important elements of German behavior were coordinated together through a grand strategy “consciously aiming at the establishment of a German hegemony, at first in Europe, and eventually in the world.” 26 Crowe ultimately endorsed a more cautious version of this hypothesis, and he concluded that German strategy was “deeply rooted in the relative position of the two countries,” with Berlin dissatisfied by the prospect of remaining subordinate to London in perpetuity. 26 This argument mirrors the position of believers in Chinese grand strategy. It also resembles the argument of this book: China has pursued a variety of strategies to displace the United States at the regional and global level which are fundamentally driven by its relative position with Washington.

The fact that the questions the Crowe memorandum explored have a striking similarity to those we are grappling with today has not been lost on US officials. Henry Kissinger quotes from it in On China . Max Baucus, former US ambassador to China, frequently mentioned the memo to his Chinese interlocutors as a roundabout way of inquiring about Chinese strategy. 28

Crowe’s memorandum has a mixed legacy, with contemporary assessments split over whether he was right about Germany. Nevertheless, the task Crowe set remains critical and no less difficult today, particularly because China is a “hard target” for information collection. One might hope to improve on Crowe’s method with a more rigorous and falsifiable approach anchored in social science. As the next chapter discusses in detail, this book argues that to identify the existence, content, and adjustment of China’s grand strategy, researchers must find evidence of (1) grand strategic concepts in authoritative texts; (2) grand strategic capabilities in national security institutions; and (3) grand strategic conduct in state behavior. Without such an approach, any analysis is more likely to fall victim to the kinds of natural biases in “perception and misperception” that often recur in assessments of other powers. 29

Chapter Summaries

This book argues that, since the end of the Cold War, China has pursued a grand strategy to displace American order first at the regional and now at the global level.

Chapter 1 defines grand strategy and international order, and then explores how rising powers displace hegemonic order through strategies of blunting, building, and expansion. It explains how perceptions of the established hegemon’s power and threat shape the selection of rising power grand strategies.

Chapter 2 focuses on the Chinese Communist Party as the connective institutional tissue for China’s grand strategy. As a nationalist institution that emerged from the patriotic ferment of the late Qing period, the Party now seeks to restore China to its rightful place in the global hierarchy by 2049. As a Leninist institution with a centralized structure, ruthless amorality, and a Leninist vanguard seeing itself as stewarding a nationalist project, the Party possesses the “grand strategic capability” to coordinate multiple instruments of statecraft while pursuing national interests over parochial ones. Together, the Party’s nationalist orientation helps set the ends of Chinese grand strategy while Leninism provides an instrument for realizing them. Now, as China rises, the same Party that sat uneasily within Soviet order during the Cold War is unlikely to permanently tolerate a subordinate role in American order. Finally, the chapter focuses on the Party as a subject of research, noting how a careful review of the Party’s voluminous publications can provide insight into its grand strategic concepts.

Part I begins with Chapter 3 , which explores the blunting phase of China’s post–Cold War grand strategy using Chinese Communist Party texts. It demonstrates that China went from seeing the United States as a quasi-ally against the Soviets to seeing it as China’s greatest threat and “main adversary” in the wake of three events: the traumatic trifecta of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Gulf War, and the Soviet Collapse. In response, Beijing launched its blunting strategy under the Party guideline of “hiding capabilities and biding time.” This strategy was instrumental and tactical. Party leaders explicitly tied the guideline to perceptions of US power captured in phrases like the “international balance of forces” and “multipolarity,” and they sought to quietly and asymmetrically weaken American power in Asia across military, economic, and political instruments, each of which is considered in the subsequent three book chapters.

Chapter 4 considers blunting at the military level. It shows that the trifecta prompted China to depart from a “sea control” strategy increasingly focused on holding distant maritime territory to a “sea denial” strategy focused on preventing the US military from traversing, controlling, or intervening in the waters near China. That shift was challenging, so Beijing declared it would “catch up in some areas and not others” and vowed to build “whatever the enemy fears” to accomplish it—ultimately delaying the acquisition of costly and vulnerable vessels like aircraft carriers and instead investing in cheaper asymmetric denial weapons. Beijing then built the world’s largest mine arsenal, the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile, and the world’s largest submarine fleet—all to undermine US military power.

Chapter 5 considers blunting at the political level. It demonstrates that the trifecta led China to reverse its previous opposition to joining regional institutions. Beijing feared that multilateral organizations like Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (ARF) might be used by Washington to build a liberal regional order or even an Asian NATO, so China joined them to blunt American power. It stalled institutional progress, wielded institutional rules to constrain US freedom of maneuver, and hoped participation would reassure wary neighbors otherwise tempted to join a US-led balancing coalition.

Chapter 6 considers blunting at the economic level. It argues that the trifecta laid bare China’s dependence on the US market, capital, and technology—notably through Washington’s post-Tiananmen sanctions and its threats to revoke most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status, which could have seriously damaged China’s economy. Beijing sought not to decouple from the United States but instead to bind the discretionary use of American economic power, and it worked hard to remove MFN from congressional review through “permanent normal trading relations,” leveraging negotiations in APEC and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to obtain it.

Because Party leaders explicitly tied blunting to assessments of American power, that meant that when those perceptions changed, so too did China’s grand strategy. Part II of the book explores this second phase in Chinese grand strategy, which was focused on building regional order. The strategy took place under a modification to Deng’s guidance to “hide capabilities and bide time,” one that instead emphasized “actively accomplishing something.”

Chapter 7 explores this building strategy in Party texts, demonstrating that the shock of the Global Financial Crisis led China to see the United States as weakening and emboldened it to shift to a building strategy. It begins with a thorough review of China’s discourse on “multipolarity” and the “international balance of forces.” It then shows that the Party sought to lay the foundations for order—coercive capacity, consensual bargains, and legitimacy—under the auspices of the revised guidance “actively accomplish something” [积极有所作为] issued by Chinese leader Hu Jintao. This strategy, like blunting before it, was implemented across multiple instruments of statecraft—military, political, and economic—each of which receives a chapter.

Chapter 8 focuses on building at the military level, recounting how the Global Financial Crisis accelerated a shift in Chinese military strategy away from a singular focus on blunting American power through sea denial to a new focus on building order through sea control. China now sought the capability to hold distant islands, safeguard sea lines, intervene in neighboring countries, and provide public security goods. For these objectives, China needed a different force structure, one that it had previously postponed for fear that it would be vulnerable to the United States and unsettle China’s neighbors. These were risks a more confident Beijing was now willing to accept. China promptly stepped up investments in aircraft carriers, capable surface vessels, amphibious warfare, marines, and overseas bases.

Chapter 9 focuses on building at the political level. It shows how the Global Financial Crisis caused China to depart from a blunting strategy focused on joining and stalling regional organizations to a building strategy that involved launching its own institutions. China spearheaded the launch of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the elevation and institutionalization of the previously obscure Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). It then used these institutions, with mixed success, as instruments to shape regional order in the economic and security domains in directions it preferred.

Chapter 10 focuses on building at the economic level. It argues that the Global Financial Crisis helped Beijing depart from a defensive blunting strategy that targeted American economic leverage to an offensive building strategy designed to build China’s own coercive and consensual economic capacities. At the core of this effort were China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its robust use of economic statecraft against its neighbors, and its attempts to gain greater financial influence.

Beijing used these blunting and building strategies to constrain US influence within Asia and to build the foundations for regional hegemony. The relative success of that strategy was remarkable, but Beijing’s ambitions were not limited only to the Indo-Pacific. When Washington was again seen as stumbling, China’s grand strategy evolved—this time in a more global direction. Accordingly, Part III of this book focuses on China’s third grand strategy of displacement, global expansion, which sought to blunt but especially build global order and to displace the United States from its leadership position.

Chapter 11 discusses the dawn of China’s expansion strategy. It argues that the strategy emerged following another trifecta, this time consisting of Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the West’s poor initial response to the coronavirus pandemic. In this period, the Chinese Communist Party reached a paradoxical consensus: it concluded that the United States was in retreat globally but at the same time was waking up to the China challenge bilaterally. In Beijing’s mind, “great changes unseen in a century” were underway, and they provided an opportunity to displace the United States as the leading global state by 2049, with the next decade deemed the most critical to this objective.

Chapter 12 discusses the “ways and means” of China’s strategy of expansion. It shows that politically, Beijing would seek to project leadership over global governance and international institutions and to advance autocratic norms. Economically, it would weaken the financial advantages that underwrite US hegemony and seize the commanding heights of the “fourth industrial revolution.” And militarily, the PLA would field a truly global Chinese military with overseas bases around the world.

Chapter 13 , the book’s final chapter, outlines a US response to China’s ambitions for displacing the United States from regional and global order. It critiques those who advocate a counterproductive strategy of confrontation or an accommodationist one of grand bargains, each of which respectively discounts US domestic headwinds and China’s strategic ambitions. The chapter instead argues for an asymmetric competitive strategy, one that does not require matching China dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

This cost-effective approach emphasizes denying China hegemony in its home region and—taking a page from elements of China’s own blunting strategy—focuses on undermining Chinese efforts in Asia and worldwide in ways that are of lower cost than Beijing’s efforts to build hegemony. At the same time, this chapter argues that the United States should pursue order-building as well, reinvesting in the very same foundations of American global order that Beijing presently seeks to weaken. This discussion seeks to convince policymakers that even as the United States faces challenges at home and abroad, it can still secure its interests and resist the spread of an illiberal sphere of influence—but only if it recognizes that the key to defeating an opponent’s strategy is first to understand it.

1. Harold James, Krupp: A History of the Legendary British Firm (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 51.
2. For this memo, see Li Hongzhang [李鸿章], “Memo on Not Abandoning the Manufacture of Ships” [筹议制造轮船未可裁撤折], in The Complete Works of Li Wenzhong [李文忠公全集], vol. 19, 1872, 45. Li Hongzhang was also called Li Wenzhong.
3. Xi Jinping [习近平], “Xi Jinping Delivered an Important Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the Seminar on Learning and Implementing the Spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Party” [习近平在省部级主要领导干部学习贯彻党的十九届五中全会精神专题研讨班开班式上发表重要讲话], Xinhua [新华], January 11, 2021.
4. Evan Osnos, “The Future of America’s Contest with China,” The New Yorker , January 13, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/the-future-of-americas-contest-with-china .
5. For example, John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2005).
6. Robert E. Kelly, “What Would Chinese Hegemony Look Like?,” The Diplomat , February 10, 2014, https://thediplomat.com/2014/02/what-would-chinese-hegemony-look-like/ ; Nadège Rolland, “China’s Vision for a New World Order” (Washington, DC: The National Bureau of Asian Research, 2020), https://www.nbr.org/publication/chinas-vision-for-a-new-world-order/ .
7. See Yuan Peng [袁鹏], “The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Great Changes Unseen in a Century,” [新冠疫情与百年变局], Contemporary International Relations [现代国际关系], no. 5 (June 2020): 1–6, by the head of the leading Ministry of State Security think tank.
8. Michael Lind, “The China Question,” Tablet, May 19, 2020, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-strategy-trade-lind .
9. Graham Allison and Robert Blackwill, “Interview: Lee Kuan Yew on the Future of U.S.-China Relations,” The Atlantic , March 5, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/03/interview-lee-kuan-yew-on-the-future-of-us-china-relations/273657/ .
10. Andrew F. Krepinevich, “Preserving the Balance: A U.S. Eurasia Defense Strategy” (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, January 19, 2017), https://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/Preserving_the_Balance_%2819Jan17%29HANDOUTS.pdf .
11. “GDP, (US$),” World Bank, 2019, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.cd .
12. Angela Stanzel, Jabin Jacob, Melanie Hart, and Nadège Rolland, “Grand Designs: Does China Have a ‘Grand Strategy’” (European Council on Foreign Relations, October 18, 2017), https://ecfr.eu/publication/grands_designs_does_china_have_a_grand_strategy/# .
13. Susan Shirk, “Course Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy” (remarks, National Press Club, Washington, DC, February 12, 2019), https://asiasociety.org/center-us-china-relations/events/course-correction-toward-effective-and-sustainable-china-policy .
14. Quoted in Robert Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy since the Cold War , 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 9–10. See also Wang Jisi, “China’s Search for a Grand Strategy: A Rising Great Power Finds Its Way,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 2 (2011): 68–79, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2011-02-20/chinas-search-grand-strategy .
15. Jeffrey A. Bader, “How Xi Jinping Sees the World, and Why” (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2016), http://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/xi_jinping_worldview_bader-1.pdf .
16. Michael Swaine, “The U.S. Can’t Afford to Demonize China,” Foreign Policy, June 29, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/29/the-u-s-cant-afford-to-demonize-china/ .
17. Jamie Tarabay, “CIA Official: China Wants to Replace US as World Superpower,” CNN, July 21, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/politics/china-cold-war-us-superpower-influence/index.html . Daniel Coats, “Annual Threat Assessment,” (testimony, January 29, 2019), https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Testimonies/2019-01-29-ATA-Opening-Statement_Final.pdf .
18. Alastair Iain Johnston, “Shaky Foundations: The ‘Intellectual Architecture’ of Trump’s China Policy,” Survival 61, no. 2 (2019): 189–202, https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2019.1589096 ; Jude Blanchette, “The Devil Is in the Footnotes: On Reading Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred-Year Marathon” (La Jolla, CA: UC San Diego 21st Century China Program, 2018), https://china.ucsd.edu/_files/The-Hundred-Year-Marathon.pdf .
19. Jonathan Ward, China’s Vision of Victory (Washington, DC: Atlas Publishing and Media Company, 2019); Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World (New York: Penguin, 2012).
20. Sulmaan Wasif Khan, Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018); Andrew Scobell, Edmund J. Burke, Cortez A. Cooper III, Sale Lilly, Chad J. R. Ohlandt, Eric Warner, J.D. Williams, China’s Grand Strategy Trends, Trajectories, and Long-Term Competition (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2798.html .
21. See Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge China’s Grand Strategy and International Security (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005); Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012); David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2013); Ashley J. Tellis, “Pursuing Global Reach: China’s Not So Long March toward Preeminence,” in Strategic Asia 2019: China’s Expanding Strategic Ambitions , eds. Ashley J. Tellis, Alison Szalwinski, and Michael Wills (Washington, DC: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2019), 3–46, https://www.nbr.org/publication/strategic-asia-2019-chinas-expanding-strategic-ambitions/ .
22. For the full text, as well as the responses to it within the British Foreign Office, see Eyre Crowe, “Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany,” in British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914 , eds. G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1926), 397–420.
23. Ibid., 417.
24. Ibid., 415.
25. Ibid., 415.
26. Ibid., 414.
27. Ibid., 414.
28. Interview.
29. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).

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Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore pp 121–134 Cite as

Scaffolding Instruction of Chinese Essay Writing with Assessment as Learning

Cheng Gong 2 ,
Chee Lay Tan 2 &
Chee Kuen Chin 2
First Online: 18 May 2018

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This article shares ideas of how to teach writing through activities based on constructivism and scaffolding. The findings suggested that there is little relation between teacher’s feedback and students’ writing improvement. Instead, the relation is found between the numbers of communication seeking feedback the students send out.

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Gong, C., Tan, C.L., Chin, C.K. (2018). Scaffolding Instruction of Chinese Essay Writing with Assessment as Learning. In: Soh, K. (eds) Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8860-5_9

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Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning mandarin, 36 samples of chinese handwriting from students and native speakers.

Unlike most other languages, handwriting in Chinese can be regarded as a separate skill. Learning to write by hand is not easy; learning to write well is even harder. In an earlier article, I discussed handwriting in details, including how to improve it as a student.

How to improve your handwriting in Chinese

I have collected more than thirty examples of handwriting in Chinese, most of them from students of different ages from various countries across the world. I also gather some examples from native speakers to show as a reference.

The examples below are presented roughly in the order of time spent learning the language, with beginners at the start and native speakers at the very end. Counting study time in years can be very misleading , but since there is no better way of sorting the samples, I chose to do that anyway.

The purpose of this article is not to make a systematic study of student handwriting, although that would be interesting. Apart from time spent learning, another important factor is what the student’s writing looks like in her native language. I have seen enough student handwriting to feel confident when I say that there’s a lot of positive transfer going on, so someone who writes neatly in their native language are likely to write neatly in Chinese too. Beginners of this kind might write neatly but with incorrect strokes and so on, but penmanship still carries over to learning Chinese.

Speaking of penmanship, it should be mentioned that there is probably a strong selection bias at work here. While not all who submitted their handwriting write well, I think it’s safe to assume that people who like handwriting are more likely to have submitted photos of their handwriting when I asked for it. In other words, the average student probably writes worse than the below photos show.

Chinese handwriting from 36 people, using exactly the same tex

Samples of Chinese handwriting were based on a text from this text adventure game from WordSwing.

Escape: A text adventure game for Chinese learners

Simplified Chinese:

你被关在一个小房间里。你并不记得发生了什么，也不知道为什么被关在这里。你以前从房门的窗口那儿得到食物，但是你用力敲门或者大叫都没有用。你决定一定要逃跑，要不然情况可能会变更不好。

Traditional Chinese:

你被關在一個小房間裡。你並不記得發生了什麼，也不知道為什麼被關在這裡。你以前從房門的窗口那兒得到食物，但是你用力敲門或者大叫都沒有用。你決定一定要逃跑，要不然情況可能會變更不好。

A big thank you to everyone who contributed!

Chinese handwriting after a year of studying (or less)

The first submission comes from the US, and also include some information about the student. I collected some submissions years ago, so “since the beginning of 2016” actually means less than a year of studying!

Chinese handwriting from a US learner having studied less than one year.

August from Suriname submitted the below sample. He’s 71 and has studied Chinese for one year.

Chinese handwriting from a 71-year-old student from Suriname (1 year of studying).

Thomas Walker on Twitter writes: “Here is my effort. Been studying Chinese for about 8 months. Your site has been a massive help, keep up the good work!”

Chinese handwriting from a student after 8 months.

Chinese handwriting after studying between one and five years

A student from the US sent in the below photo of his handwriting, saying that he’s 51 years old and has been learning Chinese for a little more than one year.

Chinese handwriting from a 51-year-old student after a year of studying.

This is from a 22-year-old Belgian student. She has been studying Chinese for little more than a year:

Chinese handwriting from a 22-year-old student after a year of studying.

The next submission is from a 27-year-old Bulgarian student who has studied Chinese for three semesters in Wuhan:

Chinese handwriting after three semesters of studying the language in China.

From @fenma on Twtitter : “two years, self, no class, no visit, HSK3”:

Chinese handwriting after two years of self-study.

A student from France submitted the following sample, saying “I’m around HSK3, with two years living in China where I self practiced writing despite everybody telling me it’s useless (it’s not; it was super useful every single day, whether teaching my Chinese pupils or writing some unknown OCR resistant character in the street in Pleco). I would practice every day with a cheap calligraphy marker (to force myself to write slowly and purposefully; the difference with using a pen/pencil is like night and day, for learning purposes) in a 10RMB kids hanzi practice book bought in Carrefour and I could totally feel the difference very quickly. I used a pen and wrote as fast as I could to give you something a bit more realistic.”

Chinese handwriting on grid paper by a student after living in China for two years.

Next is a sample from a Peruvian student. She’s 24 and has studied Chinese for roughly three years:

Chinese handwriting from a Peruvian student after three years of studying.

The last sample in this category comes from 35-year-old Norwegian, who has studied four years of Chinese, mostly self-studying:

Chinese handwriting from a Norwegian student after four years of studying.

Chinese handwriting after having studied for five to ten years

Dr. Chuck on Twitter writes: “I haven’t tried learning how to speak it yet, but I’ve studied the traditional writing for fun in my spare time over the past 5 years. My closet is a graveyard of graph paper!”

Chinese handwriting from a student who only learnt how to write, not speak!

Joey on Twitter writes: “I’ve been studying for a little over 5 years now. Hope this helps!”

Chinese handwriting after five years of studying the language.

MissFitti on Twitter writes: “I have been learning Mandarin for my BA and MA in Italy and I am now teaching it at Secondary in England. 5 years at uni in total, and lived in china for 1 year and 6 months :)”

Chinese handwriting from an Italian student after five years or learning.

A student from Scotland sent me the below sample of his handwriting. He says he’s been working in China for over five years, and have studied Chinese, but had very little teaching on how to write characters. Just like the rest of us, he mainly uses phones and computer for writing Chinese:

Chinese handwriting after living and working five years in China, mostly using phones and computers to write.

A student from the US submitted the below photo with this comment: “I have been studying, and I use the word studying loosely, Chinese for about 5-6 years. […] My reading skills far outweigh my listing, speaking, and as you can see from my attached text, writing skills. […] Thanks for all you do. I truly appreciate you.”

Chinese handwriting from a US student after 5-6 years of studying.

Brandon Rivington on Twitter writes: “I tried to make it as natural as possible. I’ve been studying Chinese for about 7 years. I look forward to reading the article!”

Chinese handwriting from Brandon Rivington on Twitter, after studying for 7 years.

The next sample comes from a 36-year-old student from Spain, who has learnt Chinese for about nine years:

Chinese handwriting from a 34-year-old student from Spain after studying for nine years.

And another submission from Spain, from someone who is two years younger, but has also studied for about nine years:

Chinese handwriting from a 32-year-old student from Spain after studying for nine years.

A Polish student submitted the below photo of his handwriting and said: “I’m 24 years old and I’ve been learning Chinese for about 9 years. 3 years ago I passed HSK5 and I’m planning to pass HSK6 the next year.”

Chinese handwriting by a Polish student after studying for nine years.

Chinese handwriting after studying for ten years or more

Anna K. on Twitter writes: “Studied Chinese 10+ years, taught it one year. Thanks for your excellent blog and work!”

Chinese handwriting after learning Chinese for ten years, mostly self-studying.

Here’s a submission from Melbourne, Australia (information included). She has been learning for 12 years.

Chinese handwriting from a 63-year-old student of Chinese from Melbourne after studying for 13 years as a hobby.

TranslationRaven writes on Twitter: “Studied Chinese for 12 years in school, didn’t read or write for 8 years after that. Returned to Asia and got my teaching diploma in Chinese after those 8 years. Not sure how I’d categorize myself, haha”

Chinese handwriting from a student who has studied the language for 12 years, although 8 without reading and writing.

Miriam from Germany submitted the below sample:

Chinese handwriting from a 43-year-old, left-handed student from Germany after studying for 20 years.

David Hull 胡大衛 on Twitter writes: “Always been very self-conscious about my sloppy handwriting. Picked up Chinese late- in my mid 20s. Studied in PRC and US. I haven’t been writing by hand for years (except on the blackboard). I’m an asst Prof of Chinese now. Started in the army program at the Defense Language Institute in ’96 (we didn’t do much writing at all). I didn’t have a chance to formally study again until ’01, and by then it was almost all typed.”

Chinese handwriting from a student who started learning in the 90s and is now an assistant professor of Chinese.

The last sample in this category comes from the US. She has 26 years of formal and informal studying behind her:

Chinese handwriting from a US student after 26 years of studying, both formally and informally.

Chinese handwriting from native speakers

Now, let’s move on to native speakers. For people who find some of these difficult to read, please check this article for some advice on how to proceed: Learning to read handwritten Chinese

Learning to read handwritten Chinese

A student, who grew up speaking Chinese with her mother and took a few years of Chinese in school, but then forgot most about it, sent in the following sample. She also writes that “this may be the most I’ve ever written by hand, I do everything digitally now, I practice my writing skills by writing to my mother on my cellphone.”

Chinese handwriting from a native speaker who mostly writes digitally these days.

Vicky Lee on Twitter writes: “I am a little bit shamed to write the Chinese like this? It is only recognizable but far from being beautiful.”

Chinese handwriting from native speaker Vicky Lee on Twitter.

Female native speaker, 30 years old:

Chinese handwriting from a 30-year-old native speaker (female).

This is from a 22-year-old native speaker (male):

Chinese handwriting from a male native speaker, 22 years old.

A native speaker from China, submitted this through Facebook Age ~50. “You are very appreciated to promote Chinese culture.”

Chinese handwriting from a native speaker from China, 50 years old.

A native speaker who grew up in Malaysia, now in her fifties:

Chinese handwriting from a native speaker who grew up in Malayisa.

And another native speaker from Beijing (male, around 50):

Chinese handwriting from a male native speaker from Beijing, around 50 years old.

Here’s another native speaker who teaches English near Shanghai (age unknown):

Chinese handwriting from a native speaker from Shanghai.

Native speaker, female, age around 50:

Chinese handwriting by a 50-year-old native speaker.

Native speaker, age unknown:

Sample of Chinese handwriting from a native speaker.

And an extra submission, provided after the article was published, so actually number 37: “Age 28, live in China mainland, written by Lamy Safari”, originally posted here .

Chinese handwriting by Lamy Safari, a 28-year-old native speaker from China.

Conclusion: Chinese handwriting in the 21st century

I’m not sure if any conclusion can be drawn from the samples shown above; that wasn’t really the intention. If you have some thoughts you want to share after checking them out, please leave a comment!

How good your handwriting is depends on many things, including how good your penmanship is in your native language. Time spent practising and how much you care are two other important factors. If you don’t think your handwriting is very good because you haven’t practised enough, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. In this electronic era, writing neatly by hand is not an essential skill for most students.

For those of you who want to improve your handwriting, I conclude here by linking to the previous article :

https://www.hackingchinese.com/how-to-improve-your-chinese-handwriting/

16 comments

The actor 黄轩 posts poems handwritten by his fans on 微博 the blog is called 瞬间MomentX, I find handwritten notes or artistic shop signs very difficult to read

This is fascinating! Thank you so much for this compilation. There’s something very touching about seeing hand-written notes, it’s hard to explain.

Most of the learners’ notes are easy to read, but on the other hand some of the natives’ notes are hard to decipher for the non-native eye. It can’t only be a question of speed, surely…

Thomas Walker is by far the best, in my opinion.

I totally agree. I would be interested to learn his methods. Pen thickness seems to be a major factor. Depending on the day, I can write well with a 0.4mm pen, other days, I need a 0.7mm one.

Thomas Walker’s is awesome – but the Australian teacher lady is really impressive, too (and she’s not working on handwriting grid paper.) Her English handwriting looks exactly like a teacher – she’s obviously used to being very tidy in her writing.

Maybe their chinese handwriting is correlated to their english handwriting. They seem to have similar style.

Yes, that’s a good point. I realised too late that I should have asked people to write the same passage in English as well.

Native here. Yes, our Chinese handwriting and English handwriting (that is, for those of us who can write English) pretty much correlates to each other in style

Age 28, live in China mainland, written by Lamy Safari:

https://igonejack.blogspot.com/2020/01/sample-of-chinese-handwriting.html

Thank you for your submission! I added your writing to the article and I will also mention it on social media, including a link to your page.

Hi, I’m studying in the UK and I have a few people I know from China. I’ve seen what they write a couple of times … it’s some kind of horror. I mean that it is very difficult, I do not envy them. Recently, I read an essay about stereotypes, and still, I will say that they are so true. People who have studied Chinese, tell me how long you have been learning this beautiful language, how long you have been learning to write in Chinese because as far as I understand, one wrong dash and you are writing about something completely different. This is tin, the most difficult language.

Learning to read and write Chinese characters certainly takes a long time, probably longer than learning any other written language. However, we don’t have to exaggerate the difficulty. A misplaced stroke will almost never influence the comprehensibility of what you write. There are specific cases where certain characters differ only in one stroke (position, length, relationship to other strokes), but these aren’t very common, and in context, it’s practically never an issue. That doesn’t make the writing system easy to learn, but it’s not impossible!

As a native Chinese/Cantonese speaker, I can conclude that people who learn Chinese writes better than natives haha

The range of handwriting among the two groups certainly overlaps! I think this is because penmanship is a completely different skill from other aspects of writing (such as composition). I have had beginner student of Chinese who write very good-looking characters from day one, although of course they still struggle with things that require knowledge of characters, such as how long certain strokes should be, which strokes should touch or cross certain other strokes and so on.

These all say the exact same thing, and it doesn’t make sense, or seems like a crazy person wrote it. If you’re going to scam people, put more effort into it.

I’m afraid I don’t understand your comment. They’re all the same because I asked people to write a specific passage; the first subheading even says “Chinese handwriting from 36 people, using exactly the same tex”, so what did you expect? The whole point is to use the same text so people can compare how different people write the same thing. Also, what scam?

Privacy Overview

“Jiǎntǐ” duì “Fántǐ” — “Yǔ” hé “Wén” Bù Yíyàng

This essay is available in four versions:

Mandarin in Hanyu Pinyin
Mandarin in simplified Chinese characters
Mandarin in traditional Chinese characters

本篇文章以英文、漢語拼音、简体字、繁體字四種版本呈現。

Jiǎntǐzì hé fántǐzì shì shǔyú wénzì fànchóu de wèntí. Dànshi xiànzài wǎng shàng guānyú zhè gè wèntí de yǒuxiē shuōfa chángcháng bǎ yǔyán hé wénzì hùn zài yīqǐ, yě yǒu rén bǎ wénhuà, chuántǒng děngděng dà màozi kòu zài zhè gè wèntí shàng, jiéguǒ líkāi tímù hěn yuǎn, yě déchū yīxiē bù zhèngquè de jiélùn.

Yǔyán jīběnshàng shì shuó de huà, yònglái gēn biéren jiāoliú huòzhě gōutōng, yě shì gèrén sīkǎo de gōngjù. Bùguò gēn biéren jiāoliú huòzhě gōutōng yībān bìxū fāchū shēngyīn (lóng-yǎ rénshì yībān yào yòng shǒuyǔ). Wǒmen sīkǎo de shíhou, biéren tīngbujiàn, zìjǐ tīngdào de shì bù zìjué de ànyǎ shēngyīn. Yǐqián kǒutóu jiāoliú bìxū dāngmiàn jìnxíng. Xiànzài yǒu diànhuà děngděng jīqì, gézhe tàikōng yě kěyǐ jiǎnghuà. Bùguǎn zěnmeyàng, yǔyán shì yǐ fāyīn wéi jīchǔ de; lián yǐqián yòulóngyòuyǎ de Helen Keller dōu néng xuéhuì yòng yǒu shēngyīn de Yīngyǔ yǎnjiǎng hé gēn rén jiāotán (bùguò děi yòng shǒu mōzhe duìfāng de liǎn, cái zhīdao duìfāng shuōle xiē shénme).

“Language” shì “yǔyán” de Yīngwén fānyì, yībān zhǐ kǒuyǔ, gēn jiǎntǐzì hé fántǐzì shì liǎng mǎ shìqing. Jíbiàn shì shūmiànyǔ (written language) yě gēn jiǎntǐzì hé fántǐzì méi yǒu bìrán de guānxi. Yīnwei kěyǐ yòng biéde fúhào xiě, bǐfangshuō “Hànyǔ pīnyīn”.

Wénzì shì bǎ yǔyán xiě xiàlái de fúhào. Guǎn nǐ shì Aījí shèngshū, Liǎng Hé Liúyù de dīngtóuzì, Nánměi Mǎyàwén, Ālābówén (yòng Ālābó zìmǔ), Éwén (yòng Cyrillic zìmù), Yīngwén (yòng Luómǎ zìmù), Fǎwén (yòng Luómǎ zìmù), Déwén (yòng Luómǎ zìmù), Yìdàlìwén (yòng Luómǎ zìmù), Xībānyáwén (yòng Luómǎ zìmù), yǐjí Zhōngguó de jiǎgǔwén, jīnwén, shígǔwén, zhuànshū, lìshū, kǎishū, xíngshū, cǎoshū, fántǐzì (jīběnshàng shì kǎishū), jiǎntǐzì, děngděng dōu shì shūxiě yǔyán de fúhào. Zhèxiē bùtóng fúhào de “mǔqin” shì gèzhǒng yǔyán. Méi yǒu yǔyán, zhèxiē fúhào zhǐ shì túxíng. Bìngqiě fúhào yuè fùzá kùnnán, zhǎngwò de rén jiù yuè shǎo, yě yuè róngyì gēn zìrán de yǔyán fēnjiā. Guòqù Zhōngguó zhǎngwò Hànzì de rén jíduān shǎo, shūmiànyǔ yě chéngle gēn zìrán yǔyán fēnjiā de wényánwén.

Wénzì shì yī gè guójiā mínzú de wénhuà hé chuántǒng bùfen, yǔyán gèng shì yī gè guójiā mínzú de wénhuà hé chuántǒng bùfen. Dànshì yǔyán xiān fāshēng, yǒu zìjǐ de shēngmìng, fāzhǎn hěn kuài. Zài jiāotōng fādá de xiàndài, gèzhǒng bùtóng de yǔyán hùxiāng yǐngxiǎng, chǎnshēng biànhuà. Wèile gēn dàduōshù de rén gōutōng jiāoliú, rénmen yě kāishǐ yāoqiú zìjǐ néng zhǎngwò yī ge bǐjiào tōngyòng de yǔyán, jíshǐ nàge yǔyán bù shì zìjǐ de mǔyǔ.

Dàgài yīnwei Zhōngguó de yǔyán tài duō, tài fēnqí, Zhōngguó zhīshi fènzǐ yīlái zhǐ kànzhòng wénzì (Hànzì), hūlüè yǔyán, chángcháng fēnbuqīng Zhōngguó yǔyán hé wénzì de qūbié, shènzhì yǐwéi Hànzì jiùshì Hànyǔ. Yóuyú duì Hànyǔ méi yǒu zúgòu de rènshi, zhídào xiànzài, xǔduō shǐyòng Hànzì de Zhōng-Wài zhīshi fènzǐ lián Hànyǔ “cí” de gàiniàn yě méi yǒu, rènwéi yī ge Hànzì jiùshì yī gè cí. Zuìjìn Niǔyuē Shíbào yǒu piān guānyú Zhōngguó wénzì gǎigé de wénzhāng . Yǒu wèi jiào Nelson dúzhě de pínglùn jiù jiējìn zhè yīlèi de kànfa. Tā shuō, “As a native Chinese speaker from Hong Kong, I can attest that perusing modern Chinese novels and articles in traditional characters takes little effort, for every character has meaning.” Rúguǒ ànzhào gèbié Hànzì de yìyì lái kàn xiàndài Guóyǔ (mùqián fántǐzì shūxiě de wéiyī de zài Táiwān hé hǎiwài yīxiē Táiwān qiáobāo zhōngjiān tōngxíng de xiàndài Hànyǔ) shūmiànyǔ, huì chǎnsheng hěn dà de wèntí. Wǒ céngjīng qǐng yī wèi xiě dé yīshǒu juānxiù Hànzì de Rìběn xiǎojie fānyì yī piān wénzhāng de tímù. Zhè gè tímù zhǐ yǒu liù gè fántǐzì: 粉碎血腥鎮壓 (“Fěnsuì Xuèxīng Zhènyā”). Tā bù zhīdao zhè liù gè Hànzì shíjìshang shì sān gè shuāngyīnjié cí, jiù yī ge zì yī ge zì de fānyì chūlái. Tā de fānyì shì: “powder — broken — blood — (?) — little town — pressure.”

Tán Zhōngguó “yǔ” hé “wén” de wèntí, wǒ juéde zuìhǎo néng xiān liǎojiě yīxià zài Zhōngguó tōngyòng de yǔyán. Zhōngguó de zhǔyào yǔyán yǒu nǎxiē? Wèishénme wǒ shuō zhège, ér bù shuō nàge? Yīnwei huánjìng? Yīnwei bèi qiǎngpò? Yīnwei wǒ ài zhège yǔyán? Yīnwei yǒu bìyào? Yīnwei zhè ge yǔyán hěn zhòngyào? Yě xiǎngxiang shénme shì Zhōngguórén de gòngtóng yǔyán? Yòng yīge gòngtóng yǔyán yǒu bìyào ma? Weishenme? Biéde Hànyǔ de qùxiàng huì zěnmeyàng? Rúguǒ nǐ shǐyòng Zhōngguó de gòng tóng yǔyán Pǔtónghuà, nǐ liǎojiě zhège yǔyán de yǔfǎ (bǐrú “de” hé “le” de bùtóng yǒngfǎ) ma? Zhīdao zhège yǔyán de jīběn yīnjié (bù bàokuò shēngdiào) zhǐ yǒu 408 ge ma?

Tán wénhuà, tán chuántǒng, yě gāi xiǎngxiang zìjǐ dúle duōshao gǔdài hé xiàndài de Zhōngwén shū hé diǎnjí, duì Zhōngguó de lìshǐ, wénxué, zhéxué, sīxiǎng, měishù, yīxué, zōngjiào, pēngrèn, zhèngzhi, jīngjì, jiàoyu, mínsú, kējì, chuántǒng (bǐrú xiàojìng fùmǔ) děngděng liǎojiě duōshao. Yī zhǒng wénhuà, yī zhǒng chuántǒng, bùyīdìng yǒngyuǎn shì hǎo de. Línlǐ hùxiāng bāngzhù de wénhuà hé chuántǒng shì kěqǔ de, bùqī’ànshì de wénhuà yě shì kěqǔ de. Dànshì rènwéi núlì zhìdù hélǐ de wénhuà hé chuántǒng shì yàobude de, bīpò xiǎo nǚhái bāo xiǎojiǎo de wénhuà hé chuántǒng yě shì yàobude de. Ér bàozhe yī ge wénzì fúhào lái zhèngmíng zìjǐ yǒu wénhuà xiūyǎng suīrán bìng méi yǒu cuò, dànshì wèimiǎn yǒudiǎn tōulǎn ba.

Bùguǎn nǐ xǐhuan nǎ yī “tǐ”, xiànzài yǒu zúgòu de fántǐ hé jiǎntǐ de gǔdài hé xiàndài de shūjí rèn “jūn” jìnqíng de xiǎngshòu hé shǐyòng. Jiǎntǐzì shì gè shídài lǎobǎixìng hé shūfǎjiā shǐyòng de, cóng liǎngqiān duō nián yǐqián jiù kāishǐ le. Tā jì bù shì Gòngchǎndǎng de fāmíng, yě gēn Máo lǎo xiānsheng chěbushàng shénme guānxi. “Jiǎnhuàzì Zǒngbiǎo” yǒu 2,235 ge jiǎnhuàzì. Bùguo nà shì cóng 521 ge jiǎnhuàzì lèituī chūlai de.

Xiàmiàn bǎ jīběn jiǎntǐzì zuìzǎo chūxiàn (shǐjiàn) de shídài liè chūlái:

xiān-Qín (gōngyuán qián 221 nián yǐqián): 67 zì, zhàn 13%. Rú: bù (佈 → 布); cái (纔 → 才). Qín, Hàn (qián 221 - hòu 220 nián): 92 zì, zhàn 18%. Rú: ài (礙 → 碍); bàn (辦 → 办). Sān Guó, Jìn, Nán-Běi cháo (220 nián - 581 nián) 32 zì, zhàn 6%. Rú: ài (愛 → 爱); bǐ (筆 → 笔). Suí, Táng, Wǔdài (581 nián - 960 nián): 29 zì, zhàn 6%. Rú: cān (參 → 参); cán (蠶 → 蚕). Sòng, Liáo, Jīn, Yuán (960 nián - 1368 nián): 80 zì, zhàn 15%. Rú: biān (邊 → 边); biāo (標 → 标). Míng, Qīng, Tàipíng Tiānguó (1368 nián - 1911 nián): 53 zì, zhàn 10%. Rú: bà (罷 → 罢); biǎo (錶 → 表). Zhōnghuá Mínguó (1912 nián -): 57 zì, zhàn 11%. Rú: ǎo (襖→ 袄); bà (壩→ 坝). Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó (1949 nián -): zhì 1956 nián «Hànzì Jiǎnhuà Fāng’àn» gōngbù wéi zhǐ, bāokuò 1949 nián qián de suǒwèi “jiěfàngzì”: 111 zì, zhàn 21%. Rú: āngzāng (骯髒 → 肮脏); yōnghù (擁護 → 拥护). “Shǐjiàn” yǐ chūbǎnwù wéi zhǔn, shǒutóu shūxiě gèng zǎo liúxíng. (“Shǐjiàn” gēnjù Lǐ Lèyì)

Shàngmian de biǎo liè zài Zhōu Yǒuguāng jiàoshòu xiě de yī běn shū lǐ (66-67 yè). Zhè běn shū yǒu Zhōng-Yīng duìzhàoběn, tímù shì: The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts , « Zhōngguó Yǔ-Wén de Shídài Yǎnjìn ».

Tóngshū dì-71 yè zhǐ chūlái, Jìncháo dà shūfǎjiā Wáng Xīzhī yòng xíngshū xiě de “Lántíng Xù” yīgòng yǒu 324 ge zì, qízhōng yǒu 102 gè shì jiǎntǐzì.

Zhāng Jìnghé 2009/ 5/ 6 hào

Many figures in traditional dress are gathered beneath a structure from which hang paper lists. In the foreground are horses. The colours are muted with age

Excerpt from the scroll Viewing the Pass Lists , traditionally attributed to Qiu Ying (1494-1552). National Palace Museum, Taipei/Wikipedia

The exam that broke society

Keju, china’s incredibly difficult civil service test, strengthened the state at the cost of freedom and creativity.

by Yasheng Huang + BIO

On 7 and 8 June 2023, close to 13 million high-school students in China sat for the world’s most gruelling college entrance exam. ‘Imagine,’ wrote a Singapore journalist, ‘the SAT, ACT, and all of your AP tests rolled into two days. That’s Gao Kao , or “higher education exam”.’ In 2023, almost 2.6 million applied to sit China’s civil service exam to compete for only 37,100 slots.

Gao Kao and China’s civil service exam trace their origin to, and are modelled on, an ancient Chinese institution, Keju , the imperial civil service exam established by the Sui Dynasty (581-618). It can be translated as ‘subject recommendation’. Toward the end of its reign, the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) abolished it in 1905 as part of its effort to reform and modernise the Chinese system. Until then, Keju had been the principal recruitment route for imperial bureaucracy. Keju reached its apex during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). All the prime ministers but one came through the Keju route and many of them were ranked at the very top in their exam cohort.

Keju was sheer memorisation. Testing was based primarily on the Confucian classics. And there was a lot to memorise. There were some 400,000 characters and phrases in the Confucian classics, according to Benjamin Elman’s book A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (2000). Preparation for the Keju began early. Boys aged as young as three to five began to practise their memorisation drills. After the immediate environs of their families, Keju was their first exposure to the world. Keju , which was open only to the male gender, was fiercely competitive. Using figures provided by Elman, during the Ming dynasty, 1 million regularly took the qualifying tests and, of these, eventually about 400 would make it to the final Jinshi round. Passing the first tier of Keju , known as the provincial exam, was a lot easier – working out to be 4 per cent on average during the Ming. Still, this was more cut-throat than getting into Harvard in most years.

T he prestige of Keju was such that even an emperor coveted its bona fides. According to a legend, an emperor in the late Tang dynasty (618-907) hung on the wall of an imperial palace a wooden tablet proudly displaying his Keju degree – only it was fake. The emperor had it made for himself. This credentialism pervades officialdom today. Many Chinese government officials claim PhD degrees – earned or otherwise – on their résumés.

Much of the academic literature focuses on the meritocracy of Keju . The path-breaking book in this genre is Ping-ti Ho’s The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (1962). One of his observations is eye catching: more than half of those who obtained the Juren degree were first generation: ie, none of their ancestors had ever attained a Juren status. ( Juren was, at the time, the first degree granted in the three-tiered hierarchy of Keju .) More recent literature demonstrates the political effects of Keju . In 1905, the Qing dynasty abolished Keju , dashing the aspirations of millions and sparking regional rebellions that eventually toppled China’s last imperial regime in 1911.

Keju cultivated and imposed the values of deference to authority and collectivism

The political dimension of Keju goes far beyond its meritocracy and its connection to the 1911 republican revolution. For an institution that had such deep penetration, both cross-sectionally in society and across time in history, Keju was all encompassing, laying claims to the time, effort and cognitive investment of a significant swathe of the male Chinese population. It was a state institution designed to augment the state’s own power and capabilities. Directly, the state monopolised the very best human capital; indirectly, the state deprived society of access to talent and pre-empted organised religion, commerce and the intelligentsia. Keju anchored Chinese autocracy.

Many young Chinese people are pictured in a long line outside an examination centre in a commercial district

Candidates queue for the national civil service examination on 27 March 2021 in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China. Photo by Wu Junjie/China News Service via Getty

The impact of Keju is still felt today, not only in the form and practice of Gao Kao and the civil service exam but also because Keju incubated values and work ethics. Today, Chinese minds still bear its imprint. For one, Keju elevated the value of education and we see this effect today. A 2020 study shows that, for every doubling of successful Keju candidates per 10,000 of the population in the Ming-Qing period, there was a 6.9 per cent increase in years of schooling in 2010. The Keju exams loom as part of China’s human capital formation today, but they also cultivated and imposed the values of deference to authority and collectivism that the Chinese Communist Party has reaped richly for its rule and legitimacy.

But isn’t it the case that the West – Prussia, then the United Kingdom and the United States – all had their own civil service exams? How is it possible that a strong bureaucracy complemented rather than supplanted political and religious pluralisms in the West?

C hina and the West bureaucratised under an entirely different sequential order and under different contextual conditions, and these differences entail substantial implications for the subsequent political development. The civil service in the West was not a single-platform institution in the way that Keju was. There was a military civil service, a civil service for foreign affairs, for forestry, etc, etc. Multiple platforms of bureaucratic recruitment competed with one another and, collectively, they competed with other channels of mobility, such as the political parties and commerce. In the US, the Pendleton Act of 1883 removed the power of Congress and the political parties to control civil service appointments. Before the 1883 Act, federal appointees returned a portion of their salaries to the party that had appointed them. Civil service never replaced Congress or political parties in toto , as witnessed by the fact that Congress today wields enormous power over the bureaucracy, including the power of the purse that funds its operation.

Another difference – and this is a big one – is timing. In the 19th century, the US introduced bureaucracy when ‘[t]he two institutions of constraint, the rule of law and accountability, were the most highly developed,’ as Francis Fukuyama writes in Political Order and Political Decay (2014). The state in the US and the UK was already ‘a Shackled Leviathan’, to use the words of Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson in their influential book , The Narrow Corridor (2020). The sequential order ran from politics to bureaucracy, not as in China from bureaucracy to politics. In the West, society was vibrant long before the state ramped up its administrative capacity. The rule of law, the principle of accountability, and the powers of the legislature and the political parties were already firmly entrenched. Yes, the Leviathan was shackled by society, but different parts of the Leviathan shackled each other. Bureaucracy in the US formed and gained power only under a myriad of constraints and contending forces, rather than the socioeconomic tabula rasa that greeted the arrival of Chinese bureaucracy.

Vladimir Putin’s autocracy pales in comparison with that of China’s president Xi Jinping

The civil service in the UK and the US was ensconced in pluralistic societies that enjoyed a degree of religious freedom and a modicum of emergent electoral democracy. A world of competing forces and constraints attended the arrival of bureaucracy, even helped to create it. Government bureaucracy competed in some situations or complemented in others with church, universities, commerce and other social groups for human capital, legitimacy and resources. For political development, birth order really matters.

In his book Strong Societies and Weak States (1988), Joel S Migdal identifies a common problem in the developing world – the struggle of the state to acquire autonomy and capabilities. China, through history and today, is exactly the opposite. The state dominates society. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is autocratic but his autocracy pales in comparison with that of China’s president Xi Jinping. Harassed and targeted by the state, opposition parties are still legal and tenuously legitimate in Russia and some of Putin’s critics command a sizeable following. Even the power to commit violence – war fighting – was outsourced to a private force, the mercenaries led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an arrangement not even remotely conceivable in China.

An anxious looking young woman and a young man are reading notebooks or textbooks outside an examination hall

Last-minute revision before the 2010 civil service examination in Hefei, Anhui province, China. Photo AFP/Getty

Since 2013, against the increasingly dictatorial Xi, there have been two prominent critics of the president and both were dispensed with summarily. Unlike Putin who has to rely on extra-legal means to silence his critics, suggesting some formal constraints on him, Xi directed the full apparatus of the Chinese state after his critics. The Chinese court sentenced the businessman Ren Zhiqiang to 18 years in prison, and Tsinghua University promptly fired Xu Zhangrun, a law professor who wrote an open letter criticising Xi. Standing forlornly by themselves, neither Ren nor Xu commanded any formal political organisations behind them. In 2022, the Chinese regime put almost 400 million people under some sort of COVID-19 lockdown, a feat that is unimaginable in any other country.

A n ultimate autocracy is one that reigns without society. Society shackles the state in many ways. One is ex ante: it checks and balances the actions of the state. The other is ex post . A strong society provides an outside option to those inside the state. Sometimes, this is derisively described as ‘a revolving door’, but it may also have the positive function of checking the power of the state. State functionaries can object to state actions by voting with their feet, as many US civil servants did during the Donald Trump administration, and thereby drain the state of the valuable human capital it needs to function and operate. A strong society raises the opportunity costs for the state to recruit human capital but such a receptor function of society has never existed at scale in imperial China nor today, thanks – in large part, I would argue – to Keju .

Keju was so precocious that it pre-empted and displaced an emergent society. Meritocracy empowered the Chinese state at a time when society was still at an embryonic stage. Massive resources and administrative manpower were poured into Keju such that it completely eclipsed all other channels of upward mobility that could have emerged. In that sense, the celebration by many of Keju ’s meritocracy misses the bigger picture of Chinese history. It is a view of a tree rather than of a forest. The crowding-out effect of Keju is captured succinctly in a book from the late 19th century:

Since the introduction of the examination system … scholars have forsaken their studies, peasants their ploughs, artisans their crafts, and merchants their trades; all have turned their attention to but one thing – government office. This is because the official has all the combined advantages of the four without requiring their necessary toil …

This is the larger impact of Keju . Its impressive bureaucratic mobility demolished all other mobility channels and possibilities. Keju was an anti-mobility mobility channel. It packed all the upward mobility within one channel – that of the state. Society was crowded out, and over time, due to its deficient access to quality human capital, it atrophied. This is the root of the power of Chinese autocracy and, I would argue, it is a historical development that is unique to China and explains the awesome power of Chinese autocracy.

China has legions of intellectuals, but it is bereft of an intelligentsia

Take intellectuals as an example. Keju inculcated literacy and helped create a vibrant book readership. Book ownership was widespread as early as the Ming dynasty. ‘More books were available,’ writes Timothy Brook in The Troubled Empire (2010), ‘and more people read and owned more books, in the late Ming than at any earlier time in history, anywhere in the world.’ Brook sums up the impressions of Jesuits visiting China: ‘More surprising, perhaps, is that complete illiterates may well have been a minority in the late Ming.’

But a striking fact is that no organised intelligentsia of any significant size and visibility ever emerged in imperial China. There were no Chinese equivalents of the Royal Society in Britain or the many learned societies in France. One that left a mark is the Donglin Academy, a private discussion forum founded in 1111 by intellectuals of the Song dynasty (960-1279). The academy lasted as long as its founders’ lifespan and vanished into obscurity after their expiry. It was revived in 1604 during the reign of the Wanli emperor (1573-1620), but it operated as a political rather than an intellectual force. The scholar-officials formed a Donglin Faction, later brutally put down by the powerful eunuchs of the Ming court. The grand total of the second life of the Donglin Academy is 21 years, from 1604 to 1625.

The term ‘scholar official’ is of Chinese coinage and it is evocative of China’s lacuna of intellectuals as an institutionalised establishment . Compare that situation with Tsarist Russia, another autocracy. Russians coined the term ‘intelligentsia’ – intellectuals as a class – and Russian intellectuals have a long tradition of standing apart from and defining their identity as separate to the state. China has legions of intellectuals, but it is bereft of an intelligentsia.

Prior to Keju and even during the early centuries of Keju , China had a plurality of upward mobility. Within bureaucracy, officials were appointed through nepotism, family ties, heredity and recommendations. Commerce, while always curtailed, was a nascent force, promising to burst forward. The Song dynasty experienced a vibrant development of commerce and a market economy. Although Confucianism was always the first among equals, other ideologies, such as Legalism, Daoism and Buddhism, cohabitated with Confucianism and vied with one another for the Chinese population’s attention and adherence.

But these societal forces were too nascent and too embryonic by the time Keju arrived and matured. They had yet to acquire their own unique identity, significant organisation and autonomous agency. In imperial China, there never was a level playing field between state and society, and over nearly 1,500 years, Keju further deprived the congenitally deficient society of its oxygen – human capital. Fukuyama is right to assert that the Chinese state was precocious, but it was precocious in a particular fashion: its precocity contrasted sharply with the immaturity of Chinese society.

T he most direct way Keju decimated Chinese society is through talent monopoly but there were others. Keju also monopolised the time and mental energy of its candidates. Keju was not a one-shot deal. A candidate could take the test multiple times. In a dataset that has information on the 11,706 Keju candidates during the Ming dynasty, the average age passing the final stage of Keju was 32, approaching middle age at a time when average life expectancy was much lower than today. The oldest in the dataset was was probably Gui Youguang (1506-1571). Before passing the provincial examination in 1540 at the youngish age of 34, Gui had already failed it on six occasions. He then proceeded to toil for more than 24 years of his life and finally attained his Jinshi degree in 1565, although ranking near the bottom of his class and at the ripe age of 59. Unfortunately, he did not bask in his exalted status for long, as he died aged 65. For him, and many others, Keju was a life-long endeavour.

The Keju curriculum was formidable and required memorising close to 400,000 characters. Is there spare residual energy, capacity and curiosity left to pursue other mentally taxing activities, such as ideation of new thoughts, new politics, and discoveries of natural phenomena? In my book The Rise and Fall of the EAST (2023), I show that Chinese technology began to stagnate as Keju gained dominance. The brain power that ended up in the state did not flow to Chinese society, the economy or human creativity.

Mental energy aside, the values drilled deeply into Keju candidates were pro-autocracy and authoritarian. Keju legitimates statism. Boys as young as three or four began to practise writing characters that were meant to instil admiration of, and devotion to, the ideas and teachings of the master – Confucius – which would eventually be tested on Keju . By the Ming dynasty, the initial plurality of the Keju subjects gave way to one subject only, Confucianism – ‘knowledge of classics, stereotyped theories of administration, and literary attainments’.

Autocracy and Keju became ever more intimately intertwined

Imagine repeated exposures to the statist values at that tender age, producing what psychologists call ‘an imprinting effect’. The autocratic values were incubated in substance but also by the format of Keju ; this was standardised testing par excellence. When Keju was first established, candidates were tested on a wide range of subject matters but, after the Song dynasty, the Keju curriculum became progressively stratified and exceedingly narrow. Candidates were required to fill in the blanks with missing words or phrases in excerpted texts from the Confucian classics. The Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) narrowed the Keju curriculum further. Only a streamlined version of annotations of Confucian classics was allowed, the so-called Neo-Confucianism, which was the brainchild of the great Confucian scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200) of the Song dynasty.

Neo-Confucianism is a pared-down version of classical Confucianism, and it strips away some of the moral veneer of its classical predecessor. Summarising a common view among historians, Peter K Bol observes in Neo-Confucianism in History (2010) that this version of Confucianism ‘provided a justification for seeking external authority in the ruler’ and stipulated the responsibility for transforming the world as that of the emperor alone. The Neo-Confucianist Keju curriculum was rigid, narrow and absolutist, and was single-minded in its advocacy of a hierarchical order – subordination to the ruler, to the elderly, and to the male gender. No scope for scepticism and ambiguity was allowed. Autocracy and Keju thus became ever more intimately intertwined.

There was, however, a massive operational advantage to the Neo-Confucianist curriculum: it standardised everything. Standardisation abhors nuance and the evaluations became more straightforward as the baseline comparison was more clearly delineated. There was objectivity, even if the objectivity was a manufactured artefact. The Chinese invented the modern state and meritocracy, but above all the Chinese invented specialised standardised testing – the memorisation, cognitive inclination and frame of references of an exceedingly narrow ideology.

M ing standardised Keju further: it enforced a highly scripted essay format, known as the ‘eight-legged essay’, or baguwen in Chinese (八股文), to which every Keju candidate had to adhere. A ‘leg’ here refers to each section of an essay, with a Keju essay requiring eight sections: 1) breaking open the topic; 2) receiving the topic; 3) beginning the discussion; 4) the initial leg; 5) the transition leg; 6) the middle leg; 7) the later leg; and 8) conclusion. The eight-legged essay fixed more than the aggregate structure of exposition. The specifications were granular and detailed. For example, the number of phrases was specified in each of the sections and the entire essay required expressions in paired sentences – a minimum of six paired sentences, up to a maximum of 12. The key contribution of the eight-legged essay is that it packed information into a pre-set presentational format.

Standardisation was designed to scale the Keju system and it succeeded brilliantly in that regard, but it had a devastating effect on expositional freedom and human creativity. All elements of subjectivity and judgment were taken out. In his book Traditional Government in Imperial China (1982), the historian Ch’ien Mu describes the ‘eight-legged essay’ as ‘the greatest destroyer of human talent’.

A bane to human creativity was a boon to autocracy. Standardised testing was conducive to authoritarianism. In his book Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? (2014), Yong Zhao, professor at the School of Education of the University of Kansas, notes a natural compatibility between authoritarianism and standardised testing. Authoritarianism, he writes, ‘sees education as a way to instil in all students the same knowledge and skills deemed valuable by the authority.’ The standardised tests appeal to an authoritative body for correct answers; as Zhao said in an interview for the US National Education Policy Center, the tests ‘force students to comply with the answers or the way of thinking that the authority wants.’ The direction of deference is automatically established: ‘Then you hold the students, the teachers and, to a lesser extent, the parents accountable for being able to get the answers that the authority wants and to show that they have mastered the skills and the knowledge and possibly even the beliefs that the authority wants.’

Confucianism, thus, functioned as an equivalent of the abstruse and arcane vocabulary of the SAT

In his book The WEIRDest People in the World (2020), Joseph Henrich posited that the West prospered because of its early lead in literacy. Yet the substantial Keju literacy produced none of the liberalising effects on Chinese ideas, economy or society. The literacy that Henrich had in mind was a particular kind of literacy – Protestant literacy – and the contrast with Keju literacy could not have been sharper. Keju literacy was drilled and practised in classical and highly stratified Chinese, the language of the imperial court rather than the language of the masses, in sharp contrast to Protestant literacy. Protestant literacy empowered personal agency by embracing and spreading vernaculars of the masses. Henrich’s liberalising ‘WEIRD’ effect – Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic – was a byproduct of Protestant literacy. It is no accident that Keju literacy produced an opposite effect.

Why was there such a close affinity between Keju and Confucianism? The answer is not obvious. Ancient China boasted other great ideologies and traditions, such as Daoism, Mohism and Legalism, but they were completely absent in the Keju curriculum. This ideological single-mindedness of Keju is puzzling and it is puzzling still considering the following: in my book, I document that several emperors who played an instrumental role in inventing and developing Keju were not Confucianists themselves.

The answer may lie in an operational imperative of Keju . Standardised testing is necessary when you want to scale the evaluation. Subjective evaluations, such as relying on reputation, recommendations and interviews, are feasible when the number of candidates under evaluation is small. For example, the Big Three colleges in the US – Harvard, Yale and Princeton – began to embrace the SAT (the standardised test for college admissions) when they started recruiting beyond their traditional, narrow socioeconomic group – the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) in the elite private schools of the east coast. The Chinese emperors made the same decision when they expanded bureaucratic recruitment beyond the nobility and wealthy elites. Standardising and constricting the Keju curriculum were not an optional luxury; it was a necessity to scale Keju .

Confucianism offered an operational advantage. It is textually rich; the verbiage is massive, and the pontifications are incredibly involved, not unlike the verbal portion of the SAT. As noted before, there are approximately 400,000 characters and phrases in the Confucian classics. Using a website , Chinese Text Project, ‘an online open-access digital library that makes pre-modern Chinese texts available to readers and researchers all around the world’, I found that among the classical texts created before the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) Confucianism is paragraphically the richest, with 11,184 paragraphs. No other ideologies come remotely close. Legalism has 1,783 paragraphs; Daoism has 1,161 paragraphs, and Mohism has 915 paragraphs. Confucianism, thus, functioned as an equivalent of the abstruse and arcane vocabulary of the SAT, and it was most suited for screening and selecting the desired human capital from a large pool of candidates.

Is it at all possible that Keju successfully anchored and shaped the nature of the Chinese autocracy because of this accidental feature of Confucianism and on account of an operational technicality? Let’s pause, savour and ponder for a moment the momentous implications of this proposition.

This essay is adapted from the book The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exam, Autocracy, Stability and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to its Decline (2023) by Yasheng Huang.

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Chinese Culture

China is one of the Four Ancient Civilizations (alongside Babylon, India and Egypt), according to Chinese scholar Liang Qichao (1900). It boasts a vast and varied geographic expanse, 3,600 years of written history, as well as a rich and profound culture. Chinese culture is diverse and unique, yet harmoniously blended — an invaluable asset to the world.

Our China culture guide contains information divided into Traditions, Heritage, Arts, Festivals, Language, and Symbols. Topics include Chinese food, World Heritage sites, China's Spring Festival, Kungfu, and Beijing opera.

China's Traditions

China's heritage.

China's national heritage is both tangible and intangible, with natural wonders and historic sites, as well as ethnic songs and festivals included.

As of 2018, 53 noteworthy Chinese sites were inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List: 36 Cultural Heritage, 13 Natural Heritage, and 4 Cultural and Natural Heritage .

China's Performing Arts

Chinese Kungfu
Chinese Folk Dance
Chinese Traditional Music
Chinese Acrobatics
Beijing Opera
Chinese Shadow Plays
Chinese Puppet Plays
Chinese Musical Instruments

Arts and Crafts

Chinese Silk
Chinese Jade Articles
Ancient Chinese Furniture
Chinese Knots
Chinese Embroidery
Chinese Lanterns
Chinese Kites
Chinese Paper Cutting
Chinese Paper Umbrellas
Ancient Porcelain
Chinese Calligraphy
Chinese Painting
Chinese Cloisonné
Four Treasures of the Study
Chinese Seals

China's Festivals

China has several traditional festivals that are celebrated all over the country (in different ways). The most important is Chinese New Year, then Mid-Autumn Festival. China, with its "55 Ethnic Minorities", also has many ethnic festivals. From Tibet to Manchuria to China's tropical south, different tribes celebrate their new year, harvest, and other things, in various ways.

Learning Chinese

Chinese is reckoned to be the most difficult language in the world to learn, but that also must make it the most interesting. It's the world's only remaining pictographic language in common use, with thousands of characters making up the written language. Its pronunciation is generally one syllable per character, in one of five tones. China's rich literary culture includes many pithy sayings and beautiful poems.

Symbols of China

Every nation has its symbols, but what should you think of when it comes to China? You might conjure up images of long coiling dragons, the red flag, pandas, the Great Wall… table tennis, the list goes on…

Top Recommended Chinese Culture Tours

China's classic sights
A silent night on the Great Wall
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China's past, present, and future
The Terracotta Amy coming alive
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China's stressed and overworked youth skip the tea and reach for coffee

A barista prepares drinks at Metal Hands coffee shop in Beijing.

BEIJING — For more and more people in China, coffee has become their cup of tea.

Last year, China overtook the United States as the country with the most branded coffee shops in the world, according to a report by World Coffee Portal . The number of outlets in China grew 58% in 2023 to almost 50,000, compared with about 40,000 in the U.S.

The Chinese coffee market used to be dominated by foreign brands such as Starbucks, Tim Hortons of Canada and Costa Coffee from Britain. But they face intensifying competition from Chinese coffee chains such as Luckin, Cotti and Manner, as well as local independent cafés in big cities like Beijing.

For coffee drinkers, that means more choice than ever, whether it’s a plain Americano or a latte infused with pork flavors or Chinese liquor.

Though tea remains foundational to Chinese culture, some young, middle-class consumers are finding coffee’s caffeine kick to be more suited to the pressures of a competitive job market and workplace.

Li Yizhe turned to the energy boost of coffee to keep up with China's competitive work culture.

Li Yizhe, 26, said in the past two years she had started drinking coffee every day as a way to boost her energy.

“I used to drink milk tea, but now I’ve shifted to coffee,” Li, a government worker, said while sitting at an artisanal coffee shop in a Beijing hutong, or alley.

Zhang Jian, a 33-year-old freelancer, said he has about a cup of coffee a day, often at Luckin.

“It’s convenient to buy because the stores are everywhere, and the prices are also budget-friendly,” he said.

He cited the high job stress and long hours workers face as reasons for coffee’s growing popularity, as well as the addictive nature of caffeine.

“As colleagues start to pick up the habit, it gradually forms a coffee culture,” he said.

A patron works on a laptop at Metal Hands coffee shop in Beijing.

China’s demand for coffee will reach an estimated 5 million bags in the 2023-24 season, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported , making it the seventh-biggest consumer in the world. That compares with more than 20 million bags for the two biggest coffee-consuming countries, the U.S. and Brazil.

The rise in Western-style coffee consumption in China can be attributed to a shift in lifestyle preferences as more people have more disposable income, said Nirmit Limbachia, project lead for food and beverage at Mordor Intelligence , a market research firm based in India. Urbanization, globalization and the rapid expansion of both domestic and foreign coffee shops have also made international coffee culture “more accessible and familiar,” he said.

Last year, Luckin overtook Starbucks as the largest coffee chain in China , Starbucks’ biggest market after the U.S. Luckin opened more than 5,000 stores in China in 2023 for a total of more than 13,000, World Coffee Portal said, compared with more than 6,800 for Starbucks, which opened 785 stores in China last year.

The U.S. company says it surpassed 7,000 stores in January and aims to have 9,000 stores across China by next year.

Zhang said it was “surprising” to see how many stores Luckin has now, seven years after it was founded in Beijing.

When Luckin first emerged, he said, “they claimed to be the coffee for Chinese people. At that time, many consumers were skeptical about Luckin’s ability to last and maintain stability.”

That skepticism was only reinforced in 2020, when Luckin was found to have inflated the previous year’s sales figures by more than $300 million. The company has since emerged from bankruptcy and replaced the executives involved in the scandal.

Luckin and other domestic chains have caught up by “expanding to new cities, offering competitive pricing, and leveraging technology for convenient ordering and delivery services,” Limbachia said.

“Domestic coffee chains often emphasize localization in their offerings, incorporating traditional Chinese ingredients and flavors into their menu items,” he continued. “They also tend to cater to the preferences of Chinese consumers in terms of ambience and service.”

This month, Luckin opened a store in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen that is co-branded with Kweichow Moutai, a luxury brand of the popular Chinese spirit baijiu. The store aims to capitalize on the success of a baijiu-infused latte the two companies collaborated on last year, which according to Limbachia sold 5.42 million cups on its first day and generated more than 900 million yuan ($124 million) in total sales.

“Adding baijiu in coffee is a commercial stunt, but at the same time it caters to Chinese people’s drinking habits,” said Wang Zichen, 29, a former café owner in Beijing.

Wang Zichen, a former cafe owner, at SIP coffee in Beijing.

Starbucks, which has been in China since 1999, says the Chinese coffee market is still evolving and “has not yet fully tiered.”

“You see an influx of mass-market competitors focused on fast store expansion and low-price tactics to drive trial,” Belinda Wong, chairwoman and co-chief executive of Starbucks China, said on an earnings call in January. “This will shake out over time.”

The competition has pushed foreign chains such as Starbucks to pay more attention to Chinese tastes, Limbachia said, including “adjusting menu options, adapting store designs and forming partnerships with local businesses.”

For the Lunar New Year in February, Starbucks offered a limited-edition pork-flavored latte at its 25 Reserve stores for 68 yuan ($9.45). Garnished with a piece of pork and topped with a drizzle of pork sauce, the drink was inspired by Dongpo braised pork, a classic dish from eastern China that is served at traditional family gatherings.

Wang Binqi at Mer coffee shop in Beijing.

While the company plans to “dial up” such product innovations, Wong said, it is “not interested in entering the price war.”

“We’re focusing on capturing high-quality but profitable sustainable growth,” she said. “It is our aim to be the best and lead in the premium market.”

Limbachia said both domestic and foreign chains could expect continued growth as coffee consumption becomes more ingrained in Chinese culture, for example through expansion into smaller cities and rural areas.

Wang, the former café owner, said older people were also starting to drink coffee.

“As coffee becomes a national drink, it will be more inclusive and diverse, and then it will become more popular,” he said. “For cafés, the increase in customers means that the entire industry is developing for the better.”

Jennifer Jett is the Asia Digital Editor for NBC News, based in Hong Kong.

Dawn Liu is a researcher for NBC News based in Beijing.

Rae Wang is a contributor to NBC News.

Watch CBS News

Uri Berliner, NPR editor who criticized the network of liberal bias, says he's resigning

By Aimee Picchi

Edited By Anne Marie Lee

April 17, 2024 / 12:21 PM EDT / CBS News

Uri Berliner, a senior editor at National Public Radio who had been suspended from his job after claiming the network had "lost America's trust" by pushing progressive views while suppressing dissenting opinions, said he is resigning from the broadcaster.

"I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years," Berliner wrote in his resignation letter to NPR CEO Katherine Maher, and which he posted in part on X, the former Twitter. "I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay."

My resignation letter to NPR CEO @krmaher pic.twitter.com/0hafVbcZAK — Uri Berliner (@uberliner) April 17, 2024

Berliner's resignation comes eight days after he published an essay in the Free Press that caused a firestorm of debate with his allegations that NPR was suppressing dissenting voices. In response to his critique, some conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, called on the government to "defund" the organization.

Maher, who became NPR's CEO in March, wrote a staff memo a few days after publication of Berliner's essay addressing his criticisms of the organization's editorial process. Among Berliner's claims are that NPR is failing to consider other viewpoints and that it is fixated on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

"Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful and demeaning," Maher wrote.

Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues also took issue with the essay, with "Morning Edition" host Steve Inskeep writing on his Substack that the article was "filled with errors and omissions."

"The errors do make NPR look bad, because it's embarrassing that an NPR journalist would make so many," Inskeep wrote.

Berliner's suspension, which occurred Friday, was reported by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. NPR declined to comment to CBS News about Berliner's resignation. "NPR does not comment on individual personnel matters," a spokesperson said.

Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.

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Guest Essay

What Sentencing Could Look Like if Trump Is Found Guilty

A black-and-white photo of Donald Trump, standing behind a metal barricade.

By Norman L. Eisen

Mr. Eisen is the author of “Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial.”

For all the attention to and debate over the unfolding trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan, there has been surprisingly little of it paid to a key element: its possible outcome and, specifically, the prospect that a former and potentially future president could be sentenced to prison time.

The case — brought by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, against Mr. Trump — represents the first time in our nation’s history that a former president is a defendant in a criminal trial. As such, it has generated lots of debate about the case’s legal strength and integrity, as well as its potential impact on Mr. Trump’s efforts to win back the White House.

A review of thousands of cases in New York that charged the same felony suggests something striking: If Mr. Trump is found guilty, incarceration is an actual possibility. It’s not certain, of course, but it is plausible.

Jury selection has begun, and it’s not too soon to talk about what the possibility of a sentence, including a prison sentence, would look like for Mr. Trump, for the election and for the country — including what would happen if he is re-elected.

The case focuses on alleged interference in the 2016 election, which consisted of a hush-money payment Michael Cohen, the former president’s fixer at the time, made in 2016 to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Bragg is arguing that the cover-up cheated voters of the chance to fully assess Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

This may be the first criminal trial of a former president in American history, but if convicted, Mr. Trump’s fate is likely to be determined by the same core factors that guide the sentencing of every criminal defendant in New York State Court.

Comparable cases. The first factor is the base line against which judges measure all sentences: how other defendants have been treated for similar offenses. My research encompassed almost 10,000 cases of felony falsifying business records that have been prosecuted across the state of New York since 2015. Over a similar period, the Manhattan D.A. has charged over 400 of these cases . In roughly the first year of Mr. Bragg’s tenure, his team alone filed 166 felony counts for falsifying business records against 34 people or companies.

Contrary to claims that there will be no sentence of incarceration for falsifying business records, when a felony conviction involves serious misconduct, defendants can be sentenced to some prison time. My analysis of the most recent data indicates that approximately one in 10 cases in which the most serious charge at arraignment is falsifying business records in the first degree and in which the court ultimately imposes a sentence, results in a term of imprisonment.

To be clear, these cases generally differ from Mr. Trump’s case in one important respect: They typically involve additional charges besides just falsifying records. That clearly complicates what we might expect if Mr. Trump is convicted.

Nevertheless, there are many previous cases involving falsifying business records along with other charges where the conduct was less serious than is alleged against Mr. Trump and prison time was imposed. For instance, Richard Luthmann was accused of attempting to deceive voters — in his case, impersonating New York political figures on social media in an attempt to influence campaigns. He pleaded guilty to three counts of falsifying business records in the first degree (as well as to other charges). He received a sentence of incarceration on the felony falsification counts (although the sentence was not solely attributable to the plea).

A defendant in another case was accused of stealing in excess of $50,000 from her employer and, like in this case, falsifying one or more invoices as part of the scheme. She was indicted on a single grand larceny charge and ultimately pleaded guilty to one felony count of business record falsification for a false invoice of just under $10,000. She received 364 days in prison.

To be sure, for a typical first-time offender charged only with run-of-the-mill business record falsification, a prison sentence would be unlikely. On the other hand, Mr. Trump is being prosecuted for 34 counts of conduct that might have changed the course of American history.

Seriousness of the crime. Mr. Bragg alleges that Mr. Trump concealed critical information from voters (paying hush money to suppress an extramarital relationship) that could have harmed his campaign, particularly if it came to light after the revelation of another scandal — the “Access Hollywood” tape . If proved, that could be seen not just as unfortunate personal judgment but also, as Justice Juan Merchan has described it, an attempt “to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election.”

History and character. To date, Mr. Trump has been unrepentant about the events alleged in this case. There is every reason to believe that will not change even if he is convicted, and lack of remorse is a negative at sentencing. Justice Merchan’s evaluation of Mr. Trump’s history and character may also be informed by the other judgments against him, including Justice Arthur Engoron’s ruling that Mr. Trump engaged in repeated and persistent business fraud, a jury finding that he sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll and a related defamation verdict by a second jury.

Justice Merchan may also weigh the fact that Mr. Trump has been repeatedly held in contempt , warned , fined and gagged by state and federal judges. That includes for statements he made that exposed witnesses, individuals in the judicial system and their families to danger. More recently, Mr. Trump made personal attacks on Justice Merchan’s daughter, resulting in an extension of the gag order in the case. He now stands accused of violating it again by commenting on witnesses.

What this all suggests is that a term of imprisonment for Mr. Trump, while far from certain for a former president, is not off the table. If he receives a sentence of incarceration, perhaps the likeliest term is six months, although he could face up to four years, particularly if Mr. Trump chooses to testify, as he said he intends to do , and the judge believes he lied on the stand . Probation is also available, as are more flexible approaches like a sentence of spending every weekend in jail for a year.

We will probably know what the judge will do within 30 to 60 days of the end of the trial, which could run into mid-June. If there is a conviction, that would mean a late summer or early fall sentencing.

Justice Merchan would have to wrestle in the middle of an election year with the potential impact of sentencing a former president and current candidate.

If Mr. Trump is sentenced to a period of incarceration, the reaction of the American public will probably be as polarized as our divided electorate itself. Yet as some polls suggest — with the caveat that we should always be cautious of polls early in the race posing hypothetical questions — many key swing state voters said they would not vote for a felon.

If Mr. Trump is convicted and then loses the presidential election, he will probably be granted bail, pending an appeal, which will take about a year. That means if any appeals are unsuccessful, he will most likely have to serve any sentence starting sometime next year. He will be sequestered with his Secret Service protection; if it is less than a year, probably in Rikers Island. His protective detail will probably be his main company, since Mr. Trump will surely be isolated from other inmates for his safety.

If Mr. Trump wins the presidential election, he can’t pardon himself because it is a state case. He will be likely to order the Justice Department to challenge his sentence, and department opinions have concluded that a sitting president could not be imprisoned, since that would prevent the president from fulfilling the constitutional duties of the office. The courts have never had to address the question, but they could well agree with the Justice Department.

So if Mr. Trump is convicted and sentenced to a period of incarceration, its ultimate significance is probably this: When the American people go to the polls in November, they will be voting on whether Mr. Trump should be held accountable for his original election interference.

What questions do you have about Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial so far?

Please submit them below. Our trial experts will respond to a selection of readers in a future piece.

Norman L. Eisen investigated the 2016 voter deception allegations as counsel for the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump and is the author of “Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

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It boasts a vast and varied geographic expanse, 3,600 years of written history, as well as a rich and profound culture. Chinese culture is diverse and unique, yet harmoniously blended — an invaluable asset to the world. Our China culture guide contains information divided into Traditions, Heritage, Arts, Festivals, Language, and Symbols.
Chinese Half-Marathon Champion He Jie Is Disqualified—Along With
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China's stressed and overworked youth skip the tea and reach for coffee
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Biden Signed a Bill That Could Ban TikTok. Here's What Happens Next
The Chinese government cited national security reasons in making the demand. Sapna Maheshwari reports on TikTok, technology and emerging media companies. She has been a business reporter for more ...
Uri Berliner, NPR editor who criticized the network of liberal bias
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What Sentencing Could Look Like if Trump Is Found Guilty
The case focuses on alleged interference in the 2016 election, which consisted of a hush-money payment Michael Cohen, the former president's fixer at the time, made in 2016 to a porn star ...
Brokerage Haitong removes long-term Hong Kong unit chief Lin, appoints
Chinese brokerage Haitong Securities removed Lin Yong from chief executive of its Hong Kong-based offshore unit, according to an internal memo and a company source with knowledge of the matter.

How to Write a Chinese Essay

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Chinese Reading Practice

Essay: 《不死鸟》The Immortal Bird by Sanmao

Fable: 洗衣服 – Washing clothes

Short Story: 海上和床上 – On the sea and in bed

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Fable: 郑人买履 – A man from the State of Zheng buys shoes

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Children’s Story: 完美的弓 – The perfect (archery) bow

Essay:《打人》Hitting Someone by Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang)

Story behind the idiom: 狐假虎威 – Using powerful connections to intimidate others

Mythology: 八仙过海 – The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea

Story behind the idiom: 邯郸学步 – Making oneself ridiculous by slavishly imitating others

Novels: Start reading Chinese gangster novel 《一半是火焰，一半是海水》by Wang Shuo

Short story: 《卜妻为裤》Buzi’s wife makes a pair of pants

Communist folk tales: 《水缸的秘密》- The secret of the water jug

Communist folk tales: 《朱德的扁担》- Zhu De’s Carrying Pole

Political speech: Deng Xiaoping addresses the Hong Kong handover in 1984

Useful Chinese Essay Phrases

Chinese Essay Phrases Used in Abstracts

Research Background, Significance, and Current Situation

Proposing the Object of Study

Purpose of the Study or Study Aim

Research Methods and Results

Research Results

Chinese Essay Phrases: Main Body

Theoretical Basis, Approaches, and Methods

Research Impact and Value

Must-Try Authentic Chinese Dishes

The Guide to Writing Your First Mandarin Essay

Check you understand the basics

Set aside time to write

Clear space so you can focus

Have a daily word count in mind

Read widely to provide context

Take a break before you proofread

Final Thoughts

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Before You Learn to Improve Chinese Essay Writing

Increase Your Chinese Words Vocabulary

Acquire Grammar,Sentence Patterns and Function Words

Keep a Diary Regularly to Note Down Chinese Words,Chinese Letters

Persistence in Reading Everyday

Do Essay Writing Exercise on a Variety of Subjects

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