In 2008, infant formula from the Sanlu Group and other dairies was found to contain melamine. According to Chinese Wikipedia, the main reason melamine entered the milk was that milk diluted with water could pass the protein test once melamine was added.
Melamine is rich in nitrogen. A Chinese food science journal wrote in 2009 that for this reason it had been added “to give a false impression of high protein content.”
On February 15, 1996, a newly developed Long March 3B rocket, on its first launch, crashed into a hillside about 22 seconds after liftoff from Xichang with the Intelsat 708 satellite. Six people died. In April 1996, the China Aerospace Industry Corporation first outlined five requirements for guiling, “zeroing” a quality problem. In October 1997, five more followed for management, and the “double five rules” of zeroing were complete.
Technical zeroing requires an exact location of the fault, a clear mechanism, reproduction of the problem, effective measures, and the lesson applied to similar cases. Management zeroing requires a clear process, clear responsibility, measures carried out, serious handling and improved rules. From October 20, 1996, to August 31, 2009, all 75 Long March launches succeeded.
Article 418 of the Tang Code punished anyone who made and sold goods that were xing or lan, not sturdy or not genuine, or “short and narrow,” with sixty strokes of the stick. The official commentary explains short and narrow: a bolt of silk under 40 chi long, a length of cloth under 50 chi, or a width under one chi eight cun.
The commentary quotes the Book of Rites: “Engrave the maker’s name on the object, to examine his sincerity.” Market, prefectural and county officials who knew about the goods received the same punishment as the seller. Officials who inspected and failed to notice were punished two degrees less.
The Ming imperial kilns at Jingdezhen made porcelain only for the court. Pieces of good quality went to the palace. Pieces with even slight flaws were broken and buried. According to The Paper, all surplus pieces and flawed seconds of the imperial kilns were “smashed together and buried on the spot.”
Excavations at Zhushan in Jingdezhen have recovered rejected and spoiled imperial porcelain from the Hongwu to the Wanli reigns. A 2024 report counted the fragments in tons and the restored pieces at 3,168.
“Almost every brick of the city wall carries an inscription,” says Ma Lin, deputy director of Nanjing’s city wall protection center. The inscriptions on the Ming bricks can name the kiln, the craftsmen, the manager and the officials of the prefecture and county who supervised the work.
One Ming brick inscribed for Changsha Prefecture names Chen Fu, the dianshi of a county, as the supervising official, and Leng Rong as the scribe. It is dated the eighth month of the seventh year of Hongwu. One article calls such names “a list of the people responsible for the quality of the work.”
On August 31, 2018, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued a guiding opinion that said: “Resolutely oppose ‘one size fits all.'” It prohibited responses such as “shut everything down” and “stop first, then see.” Xinhua, reporting on the opinion, called these “perfunctory responses” and wrote that firms meeting environmental requirements were not to be subjected to collective halts of production.
Chinese cities compete for the title National Civilized City, which is awarded after an assessment against a list of indicators. On May 27, 2020, the Central Civilization Office announced that roadside markets and street vendors would not be part of that year’s assessment.
A commentary on the website of the People’s Political Consultative Daily noted that some localities seeking the title had rushed to launch campaigns “to ban completely the stalls on the roads, business outside shops, and the morning and night-market food stands.” The change came as the country adapted to regular epidemic control.
In June 2026, Xinhua reported from the marking centers of the gaokao. An expert group studies the answer examples, marks a sample of papers as a trial, writes a reference answer and drafts the Detailed Marking Rules, with sample comments and the reasons for each point gained or lost. A second expert group reviews the draft.
In mathematics, the head of a marking team in Tianjin explained: “Markers give an exact score according to the scoring points in each method of solution.”
The Tang writer Han Yu begins his short essay known as On Horses: “Only when there is a Bole are there thousand-li horses. Thousand-li horses are always there, but a Bole is not always there.” Bole was the legendary judge of horses. Without him, a fine horse is mistreated by grooms, dies in the stable “and is never called a thousand-li horse.”
The essay ends with a man holding a whip over the horse. “He says: ‘There are no horses under heaven!’ Alas, are there truly no horses? He truly does not know horses.”
In 1904, a special palace examination was held for the seventieth birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi. Liu Chunlin of Suning, in Zhili, was placed first, as zhuangyuan. The examinations were abolished in 1905, and he became the last zhuangyuan in Chinese history.
A popular story says the examiners had ranked Zhu Ruzhen of Guangdong first. Cixi disliked the character zhen, the name of the Pearl Consort, and promoted Liu, whose name means spring rain. Sources disagree on Liu’s original place. Chinese Wikipedia calls the story an untrue legend. Under Qing rules, the emperor set the ranks of the top ten papers, and the candidates’ names were sealed.