HKDSE Chinese History cheat sheet

分封制, 宗法制 and 井田制 are one package: kinship ranks politics and underpins the economy.

The selection sequence 察举 → 九品中正 → 科举 shows selection power centralising over centuries.

Compare the stated sequence of tax reforms through assessment, collection and social effects; do not infer a universal one-direction decline in coercion.

Three departments and later advisory institutions organized decision-making differently; formal structures alone do not establish every actual balance of power.

Distinguish 专制主义 (emperor vs chancellor) from 中央集权 (centre vs locality) in every answer.

Read the four treaties as one mechanism: defeat → indemnity → fiscal crisis → rural unrest.

马关条约 (1895) marks the shift from 商品输出 to 资本输出 and the cession of Taiwan.

The 器物 → 制度 → 思想 sequence gives the ladder for judging each rescue programme.

洋务 failed for lack of institutional change; 辛亥革命 succeeded politically but not socially.

The CCP's rural turn runs 南昌起义 → 井冈山 → 长征 → 延安 → 敌后根据地 → 解放战争.

1950–52 土地改革 created peasant private ownership; 1953–56 三大改造 created public ownership.

Distinguish 1956 party analysis, the 1958 Great Leap Forward and communes, and the severe human consequences of later campaigns; evaluation needs evidence and criteria.

The 1978 十一届三中全会 is the pivot: focus on 经济建设 plus 改革开放.

The market-economy goal dates to the 1992 十四大, following 南方谈话; not to 1978.

Judge revolution versus reform by whether the ownership relation itself changes.

Identify provenance, audience, genre and transmission before judging evidentiary value.

A normative text does not by itself establish actual compliance.

Chronological sequence alone does not prove a causal mechanism.

Periodization is an interpretation with explicit criteria.

Different perspectives remain subject to evidence and contextual evaluation.