Use of Numbers in Chinese Slogans

15 January 2013

The use of numbers in Chinese slogans is well known and has been covered very wittily by Ted Anthony at his article on Chinese Use Numbers as Slogans. The best-known example is probably the Four Modernisations (四个现代化 / 四個現代化 sìge xiàndàihuà) — modernisation in the fields of 1. agriculture, 2. industry, 3. defence, and 4. science and technology, a core component in the policy of reform and opening up.

A more recent example is Jiang Zemin‘s Three Represents (三个代表 / 三個代表 sānge dàibiǎo), an obscurely worded attempt to broaden the party beyond its old class-struggle ideological background. The essence of the Three Represents was that the party should represent 1. the requirements of the development of China’s advanced productive forces, 2. the orientation of the development of China’s advanced culture, and 3. the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people in China. The upshot of this word salad was that party membership became open to businessmen and managers.

But the predilection for this kind of terminology does not stop at politics. The Chinese are remarkably susceptible to encapsulations of policy using numbers. Recently I came across several interesting examples in the field of work safety.

One is ‘three-tier safety education’ (三级安全教育 / 三級安全教育 sānjí ānquán jiàoyù). This is the basic concept for worker safety training in factories and mines. New staff must undergo safety training 1) when they join the factory, 2) at the workshop level, and 3) at the job level.

Another is the ‘four new's’ (四新 sìxīn). This refers to the adoption of ‘new materials, new equipment, new manufacturing processes, and new technologies’ (新材料、新设备、新工艺、新技术 / 新材料、新設備、新工藝、新技術 xīn-cáiliào, xīn-shèbèi, xīn-gōngyì, xīn-jìshù), all of which are junctures for compulsory worker training.

My favourite is the ‘four not let passes’ (四不放过 / 四不放過 sì búfànguò),a principle for dealing with industrial accidents. Government policy is that no industrial accident should be allowed to pass until four conditions have been met: 1) the causes of the accident have been determined, 2) those responsible have been dealt with, 3) those responsible and the people around the accident have been educated, and 4) practical corrective measures have been implemented. This is an obvious attempt to combat lackadaisical attitudes to industrial accidents.

Finally, there is the ‘”three simultaneous” management system’ (“三同时”管理制度 / “三同時”管理制度 ‘sān-tóngshí’ guǎnlǐ zhìdù). This is a national-level policy on pollution prevention systems which mandates that they should be ‘designed, constructed and commissioned’ at the same time as the main project itself (hence the ‘three simultaneouses’). This is to ensure that pollution prevention measures are integrated into projects rather than tacked on later.

More recent examples: Xi Jinping is no slouch when it comes to making up slogans with numbers. One notable example is 四个意识 / 四個意識 sìge yìshí 'the four consciousnesses'. Unfortunately unpacking this one leaves us little the wiser unless we know the content of Xi Jinping's thought. The 'four consciousnesses' are consciousness of 'ideology, the whole, the core and the line' (政治意识、大局意识、核心意识、看齐意识 / 政治意識、大局意識、核心意識、看齊意識 Zhèngzhì yìshí, dàjú yìshí, héxīn yìshí, kànqí yìshí.

There are also the 'four conducives':

四个有利于；多推有利于增添经济发展动力的改革，多推有利于促进社会公平正义的改革，多推有利于增强人民群众获得感的改革，多推有利于调动广大干部群众积极性的改革

四個有利於；多推有利於增添經濟發展動力的改革，多推有利於促進社會公平正義的改革，多推有利於增强人民群眾獲得感的改革，多推有利於調動廣大幹部群眾積極性的改革

Sì gè yǒu lìyú; duō tuī yǒu lìyú zēngtiān jīngjì fāzhǎn dònglì de gǎigé, duō tuī yǒu lìyú cùjìn shèhuì gōngpíng zheng yì de gǎigé, duō tuī yǒu lìyú zēngqiáng rénmín qúnzhòng huòdé gǎn de gǎigé, duō tuī yǒu lìyú diàodòng guǎngdà gànbù qúnzhòng jījíxìng de gǎigé

(my translation) 'The four conducives: promote reforms that are conducive to economic development, promote reforms that are conducive to social equality and justice, promote reforms that are conducive to enhancing people's sense of benefit, promote reforms that are conducive to mobilising the enthusiasm of the cadres and the masses'.

This kind of expression is not unique to Chinese. Buddhism, for one, likes to speak of the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the five skandhas, the Twelve Nidānas, the Twelve Sense Bases, and other numbered classifications. What makes this kind of expression so daunting is that it verges on the totally opaque unless you have memorised all its definitions. Of course, English bureaucratic jargon is also filled with expressions that greatly strain the understanding and require a good idea of where it is coming from (what would a visitor from another culture make of ‘affirmative action’?), but a vague approximation of the meaning can generally be arrived at from the sense or etymology of the words themselves. Chinese number expressions of this kind require complete familiarity with policy to be understood at all. For example, the ‘four news’ make virtually no sense even in context unless the reader knows in specific detail what the ‘four news’ are.

In the past it would have been quite a job finding the meaning of such terms without access to official documents or people in the know. Fortunately we now have the Internet, making it possible to check the meaning with a quick search of Google or Baidu. But it is hard to imagine the Internet and all its electronic information being maintained intact for hundreds of years into the future, and one can only wonder how people will fare if they ever have to try and make sense of documents from our era.