In 1985, Zhang Ruimin, head of the factory that later became Haier, found that 76 of the more than 400 refrigerators in the warehouse had quality defects. He ordered them smashed. He took up the hammer himself and struck the first blow, and the workers who had made the faulty units smashed the rest.
“If I allow these 76 refrigerators to be sold,” he told them, “it is the same as allowing you to produce 760 more like them tomorrow.” The hammer was later taken into the National Museum of China.
On August 6, 1977, at a forum on science and education that he chaired, Deng Xiaoping decided to restore the national university entrance exam, the gaokao. It had been closed for eleven years. The exam was to be restored that same year, with voluntary registration, a unified exam and admission on merit.
In the winter of 1977, about 5.7 million candidates of all ages sat the exam. They came from villages, factories and the army.
After Qin conquered the last of the rival states in 221 BC, the First Emperor imposed one system on the whole realm. He set up commanderies and counties everywhere and unified weights and measures. His measures are remembered in the phrase che tong gui, shu tong wen: carts on the same gauge, writing in the same script.
The six conquered states had each written in their own way. On the advice of his minister Li Si, the emperor abolished their scripts and made the small seal script the standard for the whole country.
On January 28, 1956, the State Council adopted the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme. People’s Daily printed it in full on January 31. From February 1, the first list of simplified characters came into use across the country.
In 1957, during a brief period of open criticism, Guangming Daily and Wenhui Bao printed many objections to simplification. On January 10, 1958, Premier Zhou Enlai answered them. He said that “rightists” had attacked the reform and wanted the State Council to withdraw its order. Simplification, he said, “should be firmly supported.”
On April 1, 2017, the Central Committee and the State Council announced their decision to create the Xiong’an New Area in Hebei. Official sources call it qiannian daji, guojia dashi, “a plan for a thousand years, a major matter of state.”
The new city counts its history from the day of the announcement.
On December 7, 2022, the State Council’s joint prevention and control mechanism issued ten new measures on COVID-19. People moving between regions would no longer have to show a negative test or a health code, and there would be no more tests on arrival. Infected people with mild or no symptoms could generally isolate at home. Temporary lockdowns could no longer be widened at will to whole residential compounds, communities or streets.
Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, visited IBM in 1997. In early 1999, Huawei began a reform of its product development, Integrated Product Development, designed by IBM as consultant. Ren described the policy as xue zu shi lü, cutting the feet to fit the shoes, and told the company: “The pain of cutting the feet to wear the American shoes well is repaid by the joy of a system that runs smoothly.”
The reform was summed up in a slogan: “First rigidify, then optimize, then solidify. Whoever does not change his thinking is replaced.”
一锤定音 One blow of the hammer fixes the tone. Originally the last blow that set the sound of a gong. Today, a single word that settles a matter.
令行禁止 Orders are carried out at once, and bans are obeyed at once.
雷厉风行 Like thunder and wind. Forceful and fast. In 2024, People’s Daily called it the spirit that leading officials should keep when they put work into practice.
On August 26, 1980, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress approved four special economic zones: Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou in Guangdong, and Xiamen in Fujian. Official accounts describe them as the vanguard of reform and opening, the first to go ahead and its “experimental zones.”
In early 1980, the Anhui Party committee backed the household contracting begun in villages such as Xiaogang. That spring, Wan Li, who had supported it in Anhui, moved to Beijing as vice premier. A fierce debate followed, in Anhui and across China, and some said that contracting land to households was not the socialist road.
From 1982 to 1984, the Central Committee’s “No. 1 Document” confirmed household contracting three years in a row as a socialist form of responsibility. According to official data, almost all production teams had adopted it by 1984. Grain output rose from 609.5 billion jin in 1978 to 814.6 billion jin in 1984.