Pragmatic Adoption Archives - understand-culture

Yellow Cat, Black Cat

On July 7, 1962, speaking about how to judge household contracting in farming, Deng Xiaoping said: “Comrade Liu Bocheng often quotes a Sichuan saying: ‘Yellow cat or black cat, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.’ He said it about fighting. We beat Chiang Kai-shek because we did not follow the old rules and the old roads.”

The saying is popularly remembered as “white cat, black cat.” In 1976, the Party journal Red Flag attacked the “white cat, black cat” theory for erasing the difference between socialism and capitalism.

Practice Is the Sole Criterion

In February 1977, the leading Party papers set out the “two whatevers”: whatever decisions Chairman Mao made would be upheld, and whatever instructions he gave would be followed. Hu Fuming, a philosophy teacher at Nanjing University, wrote an article against this.

On May 11, 1978, Guangming Daily published it, revised by several hands and finally approved by Hu Yaobang, as “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth.” People’s Daily and the Liberation Army Daily followed the next day. A national debate on the criterion of truth began. Hu Fuming said later that the idea was not new: “Every philosophy teacher at every university knew it.”

Take-ism

In June 1934, Lu Xun published the essay Nalai zhuyi, “Take-ism,” in the Zhonghua Ribao. It argues that China should take from abroad what it chooses: “So we must use our brains, open our eyes, and take for ourselves!”

Nomad Dress and Mounted Archery

The armies of the Warring States wore heavy armor, even on horseback. The nomad armies of the north dressed light and moved fast. In 307 BC, King Wuling of Zhao decided: “I want to wear nomad dress.” His soldiers would take up nomad clothing and mounted archery, hufu qishe.

His court objected that he was abandoning their own dress for that of distant peoples, “changing the teaching of the ancients and going against the hearts of the people.” The king answered that it would benefit the people and strengthen the state. Zhao’s army grew strong, destroyed the state of Zhongshan and defeated the Linhu and Loufan.

Learning the Foreigners’ Strengths

In January 1843, Wei Yuan printed the first edition of his Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms. Its watchword was shi yi zhi changji yi zhi yi, “learn the superior techniques of the foreigners in order to control them.” The phrase became the main idea of the Self-Strengthening Movement.

In 1898, Zhang Zhidong’s Exhortation to Learning argued for adopting Western technology. Its formula is remembered as “Chinese learning as the substance, Western learning for use.” One study traces this exact wording to a memorial by Sun Jia’nai in 1896. Zhang himself wrote “old learning as the substance, new learning for use.”

New Energy Cars

In July 2024, new energy vehicles made up 51.1 percent of retail car sales in China, according to the China Passenger Car Association. It was the first month in which they passed half. A year earlier, their share had been 15 points lower.

Shared Bikes

In June 2015, the graduate student Dai Wei bought 200 yellow bicycles with his own money and put them on the Peking University campus. This was the start of ofo. By one industry count, 23 million shared bikes were put on the streets in 2017, and ofo and Mobike held more than 90 percent of the market.

In April 2018, Meituan bought Mobike for 2.7 billion dollars. Under ofo’s official Weibo account, more than half of the comments were questions and complaints about deposit refunds.

DeepSeek in Government Offices

In February 2025, Shenzhen began to offer DeepSeek model services on its government cloud to all districts and departments. Guangzhou deployed DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3 on its government network. Nanjing, Suzhou, Zhengzhou, Foshan, Ganzhou and Linyi connected to DeepSeek one after another.

By February 25, China News Service counted more than 12 provincial-level government bodies that had announced DeepSeek applications, and it called the count incomplete.

Reading the Times

识时务者为俊杰 Whoever understands the times is a true hero.

随机应变 To act according to circumstances, and adapt as they change.

因地制宜 To fit measures to local conditions.

实事求是 To seek truth from facts. The phrase comes from the Book of Han. In the Yan’an years, Mao Zedong made it the summary of the Party’s ideological line.