述而不作 Book 7 of the Analects opens with Confucius saying: shu er bu zuo, xin er hao gu. “I transmit and do not create. I trust and love the ancients.” He compared himself to Old Peng, a figure whose identity scholars still dispute.
The Song philosopher Zhu Xi explained that Confucius passed on the old ways of the former kings and never created anything of his own. Even so, Zhu Xi wrote, the merit of this transmission was double that of creation.
In 1951, Mao Zedong wrote an inscription of eight characters for the new Chinese Opera Research Institute: 百花齐放，推陈出新. “Let a hundred flowers bloom. Weed through the old to bring forth the new.” It was read out when the institute was founded on April 3, 1951.
In 1964, Mao set out a second formula of eight characters: 古为今用，洋为中用. “Make the past serve the present. Make the foreign serve China.” The Handian dictionary explains tui chen chu xin as removing the dross of the old and creating the essence of the new.
In the search for a malaria drug, Tu Youyou’s team at first failed to extract an active substance from qinghao, sweet wormwood. Chinese medicine usually boils its herbs, and the heat destroyed the active ingredient.
Tu found a different method in the Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies by Ge Hong, a writer of the fourth century: “Take a handful of qinghao, soak it in two sheng of water, wring out the juice and drink it all.”
The plant was soaked, not boiled. Tu’s team then extracted it with ether, which boils at a low temperature, and from that extract obtained artemisinin. (Video in Chinese, with English subtitles.)
Besides the invention patent, Chinese patent law protects the shiyong xinxing, the utility model. The Patent Law defines it as a new technical solution for the shape or structure of a product, or both, that is “suitable for practical use.”
A utility model is granted after a preliminary examination only and is protected for ten years. In 2023, according to China News Service, China granted 921,000 invention patents and 2.09 million utility model patents.
On September 1, 1982, at the opening of the 12th Party Congress, Deng Xiaoping spoke of the task to “combine the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete reality of our country, take our own road and build socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
The idea had an earlier form. In October 1938, in his report On the New Stage to the Sixth Plenum of the Central Committee, Mao Zedong first spoke of the Sinicization of Marxism. Chinese Wikipedia describes it as combining Marxist theory with China’s conditions, its cultural traditions and its history.
At the China Internet Conference in 2010, Zhou Hongyi, founder of the software company Qihoo 360, spoke of wei chuangxin, micro-innovation. Chinese Wikipedia dates the first use of the term to this speech. For his 360 team, he explained, borrowing an existing business model in a practical way, improving a product’s functions and making its interface more attractive all counted as micro-innovation.
“When I speak of micro-innovation, I stress the ‘micro,'” Zhou later told Tencent’s technology site. A small point that moves users “is a big thing for the user. That is micro-innovation.”
In 1790, the Sanqing troupe of Yangzhou came to Beijing to perform for the Qianlong emperor’s 80th birthday. It sang mainly in the erhuang style of the Anhui troupes. Other Anhui troupes followed. Together with Sanqing, the Sixi, Chuntai and Hechun troupes became known as the Four Great Anhui Troupes. (Video in Chinese, with English subtitles.)
Many actors of Qinqiang and Kunqu opera moved into the Anhui troupes. In the Daoguang era, actors from Hubei brought the xipi tune to Beijing. There xipi and erhuang merged, took on the sound of Beijing speech and gradually became Peking opera.
Chinese tradition credits Cai Lun, an official at the Eastern Han court, with paper. In 105, he reported his improved papermaking to the emperor, who praised him and spread the method across the country. Cai Lun made paper from cheap materials, bark, rags, hemp ends and old fishing nets, which greatly lowered its cost.
Paper existed before him. In 1957, paper from the second century BC was found at Baqiao, east of Xi’an. Chinese Wikipedia describes Cai Lun as an important improver who made papermaking more reliable and cheaper.
From 2004, China bought high-speed train technology from Bombardier, Kawasaki, Alstom and Siemens and built the trains at home under technology transfer. These trains carried the name Hexie, Harmony. The CRH2 was based on the Japanese Shinkansen E2-1000, and the CRH3C on the Siemens Velaro.
In 2008, a joint plan of the ministries of science and railways built on the “digestion, absorption and re-innovation” of the imported technology. On June 26, 2017, the first trains of a Chinese standard design ran between Beijing and Shanghai. The day before, they had been named Fuxing, Rejuvenation.
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.”