Intellect PlusCards starting with C
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China recorded one hundred two official calendars across historyThe traditional Chinese calendar is lunisolar: twelve moon-linked months plus leap months when needed to track the solar year. Historians count 102 officially recorded calendar sy…
China spans five geographical time zones but officially observes only one single standard time.Spanning the distance of five theoretical time zones, China maintains a unified clock across its vast territory. While Beijing Time dictates the schedule for the entire nation, th…
China split north and south for 169 years before Sui reunitedFrom 420 to 589 AD, Northern and Southern dynasties divided China after the Sixteen Kingdoms and Eastern Jin. Sinicization sped among northern non-Han peoples and southern indigen…
China was sorting its soils into nine classes by the 5th century BCEThe oldest known soil classification appears in the Chinese text Yu Gong from the 5th century BCE, sorting land into three categories and nine classes by colour, texture and water…
China would need to cut carbon emissions by over 90% to meet 1.5°C goalA multimodel study found that for China to align with the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C, it would need to reduce carbon emissions by more than 90% and energy consumptio…
China: GDP per person then and nowIn 1960, GDP per person in China was $90. In 2025 it was $13,862.
China: infant mortality then and nowIn 1969, infant mortality in China was 88.8 deaths per 1,000 live births. In 2024 it was 4.1 deaths per 1,000 live births.
China: internet users then and nowIn 1990, internet users in China was 0.0%. In 2025 it was 91.6%.- China: life expectancy then and nowIn 1960, life expectancy in China was 33.4 years. In 2024 it was 78.0 years.
China: population then and nowIn 1960, population in China was 667.1 million. In 2025 it was 1.4 billion.
China: urban population then and nowIn 1960, urban population in China was 19.7%. In 2025 it was 66.3%.
China's bamboo fire lance evolved into the first metal gunsA Buddhist mural at Dunhuang from around 950 shows a fire lance, a bamboo tube that spat flame and debris. Within two centuries bamboo gave way to cast iron, and the oldest surviv…- China's BeiDou satellite network now rivals the global dominance of American GPS technologyNamed after the Big Dipper, China's BeiDou system has evolved from a regional experiment into a sophisticated global navigation constellation. By providing precise timing and geol…
China's capital has moved so often that its cities are named by compass pointBeijing means northern capital and Nanjing southern capital, and that is no accident. Tradition counts five great historic capitals of China, each tagged with a direction: Xi'an i…
China's car industry grew from four state giants to roughly 150 brandsAround 150 car brands are active in China today, 97 of them homegrown, in the largest automotive industry anywhere. For decades foreign carmakers could only enter through partners…
China's Chang'e program is methodically building a permanent robotic and crewed lunar presence.From the first robotic orbiters to the world's first far-side lunar landing, China's Chang'e program has evolved into a sophisticated multi-phase lunar strategy. Now, the nation i…
China's Changan builds electric cars, but it started as a 19th-century gun factoryLong before it made family cars and electric SUVs, Changan was an arsenal. Its roots go back to 1862, when the statesman Li Hongzhang set up a weapons workshop in Shanghai. The fa…
China's compass began as a Han-dynasty divination toolA compass shows cardinal directions, usually via a magnetized needle aligning with Earth's magnetic field. Degrees often run clockwise from north at zero. Among China's Four Great…
China's complex river networks are connected by thousands of years of human engineering featsChina's vast geography is defined by rivers that flow toward diverse seas, from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Arctic Ocean. Beyond these natural arteries, massive human-made canals ha…
China's Divine Farmer supposedly tasted every plant, and found tea by accidentShennong, the mythical Divine Farmer, is said to have had a transparent body so he could watch each herb act on his own organs. Legend credits him with swallowing seventy poisons …
China's earliest great capital still watches the LuoLuoyang sits where the Luo meets the Yellow River in western Henan, among China’s oldest cities and the earliest of the Four Great Ancient Capitals. Its name means the sunny north…
China's EV Surge: From Niche Market to Global Dominance HubThe Chinese electric vehicle sector is not merely growing; it is reshaping global automotive standards. With sales projections showing electric vehicles comprising over half of th…
China's first amphibious assault ship with an electromagnetic catapultThe Type 076 is redefining naval power by merging the roles of a landing dock and a drone carrier. By integrating electromagnetic catapults—technology typically reserved for massi…
China's first Buddhist temple was built on this mountain peak in the 1st centuryMount Emei is a sacred landscape where ancient architecture meets extreme biodiversity. Rising from the Sichuan Basin, this mountain has served as a spiritual sanctuary for two mi…
China's first carmaker was built with Soviet help in ChangchunChina's car industry began with a truck. In 1953, as Beijing launched its opening five-year economic plan, First Automotive Works broke ground in Changchun, a city reportedly pick…
China's first emperor invented the very word for emperorWhen King Zheng of Qin finished conquering the rival states in 221 BC, the old title of king felt too small. He coined a new one, huangdi, fusing names used for the mythical Three…
China's first great history weighed up to sixty kilograms in bambooSima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian runs to roughly 526,500 characters, longer than the Hebrew Bible. Written on bamboo slips bundled in groups of about thirty, the origina…- China's first rulers were demigods who taught people fire, farming and writingBefore the Xia dynasty, Chinese tradition places a golden age of sage kings: three semi-divine Sovereigns and five virtuous Emperors. They supposedly gave humanity houses, agricul…
China's food safety crisis sparked a digital revolution for organic farmingIn 2016, the Chinese government reported a staggering half million food safety violations in just nine months. This systemic failure created a vacuum for safe, sustainable nutriti…
China's founding revolutionary was once held captive inside a London legationIn October 1896 Qing agents detained Sun Yat-sen at the Chinese Legation in London, planning to ship him home for execution. His old medical teacher, the British press and the For…
China's great Legalist had a stutter and a former classmate who destroyed himHan Fei, a prince of the state of Han, could not argue his case well at court because of a stutter, so he wrote instead, in one of ancient China's most brilliant styles. His ideas…
China's Great Mosque of Xi'an looks like a pagoda, not a domed mosqueIn eighth-century Chang'an, then the largest city on Earth, one of East Asia's first grand mosques rose without a single minaret, because the state banned them. Its present buildi…- China's harshest school of statecraft may never have been a schoolLegalism helped the state of Qin conquer its rivals and found China's first imperial dynasty, then took the blame for Qin's cruelty. Yet the label was invented afterwards by Han-e…
China's Jade Emperor reportedly trained for hundreds of millions of years before ruling heavenIn Chinese folk religion the Jade Emperor rules the heavenly court, yet the stories insist he earned the job slowly. One legend gives him 3,200 trials lasting about three million …
China's Jin-class submarines represent the nation's first credible sea-based nuclear deterrent capability.The Type 094, known to NATO as the Jin class, marks a pivotal shift in Chinese naval strategy. Designed by Zhang Jinlin, these nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines have ev…
China's largest archipelago has evolved from a pirate stronghold into a modern economic hub.Zhoushan, a sprawling collection of over 1,300 islands off the coast of Zhejiang, holds a complex history. Once a base for rebels and maritime outlaws, it served as a strategic ba…
China's largest peninsula was once physically connected to the Korean Peninsula millions of years ago.Jutting into the Bohai and Yellow Seas, the Shandong Peninsula is a region of deep historical and economic significance. Once part of a continuous landmass with Korea, this hilly,…- China's last emperor became the powerless figurehead of Japan's Manchurian puppet statePuyi lost the Chinese throne at six when the 1911 revolution ended dynastic rule. Two decades later Japan, having seized Manchuria, installed him at the head of a new state called…
China's last emperor cried through his own coronation at age twoOn 2 December 1908, a toddler was carried onto the Dragon Throne by his father. Frightened by the crowd and the thunder of ceremonial drums, the new Xuantong Emperor burst into te…- China's last imperial eunuch lived until 1996For some two thousand years Chinese emperors staffed their palaces with eunuchs, trusting that men who could never found a family would never found a dynasty. Some became more pow…
China's longest-reigning emperor took the throne at seven and ruled 61 yearsEnthroned as a small boy while regents governed in his name, the Kangxi Emperor was barely a teenager when he had the most overbearing of them arrested. He then ruled China for mo…
China's Ministry of State Security: A Secretive Intelligence Giant Under the State CouncilThe Ministry of State Security is China's primary civilian intelligence and security service, blending the roles of the CIA and FBI. It operates a vast, secretive network of burea…
China's mobile revolution is the world's largest retail laboratoryRetail expert Angela Wang explores how 500 million Chinese consumers are redefining commerce. By moving the entire shopping experience onto mobile phones, China is creating a blue…
China's national anthem was born from a 1930s film about the Japanese invasion.The March of the Volunteers began as a rallying cry in a 1935 movie, Children of Troubled Times. Written by a playwright in prison and composed by a musician who died young, the s…
China's Nationalist government promised democracy in three stages but stalled at stage twoSun Yat-sen's plan for China ran in three steps: unify by force, tutor the people in their rights, then hand over to a constitution. The Nationalist government that ruled from 192…
China's naval ambitions faced a decades-long industrial roadblock before this shipThe Type 055 destroyer is more than just a modern warship; it is the result of a failed 1976 project that China couldn't build for nearly forty years. From technical bankruptcy to…
China's new supercarrier Fujian signals a shift in maritime power and naval technologyCommissioned in November 2025, the Type 003 Fujian is China's first supercarrier and the world's second to utilize electromagnetic aircraft launch systems. This vessel represents …- China's one-child rule covered only about a third of people by 1984China's one-child policy is remembered as near-universal, and a strict limit was imposed in 1980 and written into the constitution in 1982. Yet exceptions multiplied so quickly th…
China's reforming emperor spent his last decade under house arrest, then was poisonedThe Guangxu Emperor took the throne at three, chosen by his aunt, the Empress Dowager Cixi. When he finally tried to modernise the failing Qing state in the Hundred Days' Reform o…
China's rocket industry is exploding with a massive surge in private investment.Scott Manley examines the rapid expansion of China's rocket population over the last six years. This video explores how private capital and wealthy investors are driving a new wav…
China's rugged Yungui Plateau hosts the highest bridge in the worldIn southwest China, the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau is a maze of karst peaks and gorges so hard to cross that engineers have thrown the world's highest bridge over it. It splits Asia's…
China's ruling party finished its founding congress on a tourist boatIn July 1921 a handful of delegates began meeting in a house in Shanghai's French Concession. When French police interrupted them on 30 July, they moved to a pleasure boat on Sout…- China's screens began with a Peking opera reel in 1905 BeijingLouis Lumière's cameraman reached Shanghai a year after inventing cinematography; a variety bill there showed movies on 11 August 1896. China's own first film, Dingjun Mountain, a…
- China's southernmost province literally means south of the seaHainan Province pairs its namesake island with hundreds of South China Sea islets—33,920 square kilometres of land, 32,900 on the main island. Split from Guangdong in 1988, it is …
China's space agency is barely thirty years old and already landed on the Moon's far sideFounded only in 1993, the China National Space Administration became the first agency ever to touch down on the lunar far side, with Chang'e 4. It has since returned Moon samples …
China's state-owned enterprises are massive, complex, and central to the nation's economic strategy.China operates more state-owned enterprises than any other nation, with assets reaching a staggering US$78.08 trillion by 2019. Far from being simple government departments, these…
China's Taiji mission aims to detect gravitational waves from spaceChinese scientists have proposed the Taiji Program, a space mission using three spacecraft in a triangular formation around the Sun to detect gravitational waves. By measuring tin…
China's Tiangong space station is a modular marvel built for long-term scientific discoveryOrbiting Earth since 2021, the Tiangong space station represents a major leap in modular engineering. As only the third station of its kind, it serves as a high-tech laboratory fo…
China's tiles came first, but France launched modern dominoesDominoes are first mentioned in Song-dynasty China by Zhou Mi (1232–1298), yet the European game appeared in mid-18th-century France with no confirmed link to the Chinese one. Its…
China's Type 730 CIWS: A high-speed defense system against modern naval threatsThe Type 730 is a sophisticated seven-barrelled 30 mm rotary cannon designed to neutralize anti-ship missiles and precision-guided weapons. Operating as an autonomous closed-loop …