IB History Asia and Oceania Key Definitions

A set of amendments to the Chinese constitution passed by the National People's Congress in March 2018. The most significant change removed the two-term limit on the presidency, allowing Xi Jinping to serve indefinitely. The amendments also enshrined "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" in the constitution, placing Xi alongside Mao Zedong as the only leaders to have their personal ideology written into the founding document during their lifetimes.

Agent Orange was a herbicide and defoliant used by the US military during the Vietnam War to destroy jungle cover and crops. It was sprayed over approximately 10% of South Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 under Operation Ranch Hand. Agent Orange contained dioxin, a highly toxic chemical compound linked to cancer, birth defects, and other severe health conditions in both Vietnamese civilians and US veterans exposed to it.

The successive stages of collectivisation in rural China between 1952 and 1958. The first stage (Mutual Aid Teams) involved shared tools and labour; the second (Lower APCs) partially pooled land ownership; the third (Higher APCs) fully pooled land into collective farms. By 1956, virtually all of China's rural population had been collectivised into Higher APCs. The APCs were then merged into the larger People's Communes during the Great Leap Forward in 1958.

A mass organisation established by the CCP in 1949 to mobilise women in support of CCP policies and to promote women's rights within the framework of socialist construction. The Federation campaigned for implementation of the Marriage Law, ran literacy programs for women, and recruited women into the workforce. It served simultaneously as a vehicle for genuine women's empowerment and as a CCP-controlled organisation that constrained independent feminist activism.

A mass political campaign launched by Mao Zedong in response to criticism expressed during the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–1957). When intellectuals, academics, and party members used the invitation to "let a hundred flowers bloom" to criticise the CCP's policies, Mao abruptly reversed course. An estimated 550,000 people were labelled "rightists", losing their jobs, being sent to labour camps, or suffering public denunciation. The campaign effectively silenced intellectual dissent in China for decades.

A mutual defence treaty signed in September 1951 between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The Korean War accelerated its negotiation: Australia and New Zealand sought a formal US security guarantee in the Pacific in exchange for their participation in the Korean conflict and their acceptance of a lenient peace treaty with Japan.

A regional organisation founded in 1967 by Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. ASEAN was partly a response to the instability created by the Vietnam War and communist insurgencies across the region. Its founding members sought to promote economic cooperation and political stability among non-communist Southeast Asian states.

Rural health workers given basic medical training from the late 1960s onward to bring healthcare to areas with no doctors, part of Mao's wider effort to extend welfare provision into the countryside.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), announced by Xi Jinping in 2013, is a global infrastructure investment programme through which China funds and builds roads, railways, ports, pipelines, and power plants across Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Named after the historical Silk Road, the BRI involves loans, equity investments, and construction contracts. Critics argue it creates "debt trap diplomacy," loading borrowing countries with debt that China can leverage for strategic concessions. Supporters argue it fills a genuine infrastructure gap in developing countries.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in Shanghai in July 1921 at its First National Congress. Inspired by Marxism-Leninism and shaped by the May Fourth Movement, the CCP initially worked alongside the Guomindang under Comintern guidance before breaking with it in 1927. Under Mao Zedong's leadership it went on to defeat the Guomindang in the Civil War and establish the People's Republic of China in 1949.

The Chinese Labour Corps was a force of approximately 140,000 Chinese workers recruited by Britain and France during the First World War. They served on the Western Front and in Mesopotamia, performing non-combat tasks such as digging trenches, repairing roads, unloading ships, and handling ammunition. China hoped this contribution would earn diplomatic leverage at any post-war peace settlement.

The force of Chinese troops that intervened in the Korean War in October–November 1950, officially described as "volunteers" to avoid a formal declaration of war against the United States. The CPVA numbered around 300,000 in its initial intervention and eventually exceeded 1 million troops, transforming the military balance in Korea.

A North Korean mass mobilisation campaign launched in 1958, named after a mythical winged horse capable of flying a thousand ri (roughly 400 km) per day. The Chollima Movement was modelled on Soviet Stakhanovite campaigns and called on workers to exceed production targets through ideological commitment and collective effort. It drove the rapid reconstruction of North Korea's heavy industry after the Korean War but also reinforced the pattern of state-directed overreporting of production figures.

Women, primarily Korean but also Chinese and other Asian nationals, who were coerced or deceived into sexual servitude for the Japanese military during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. An estimated 200,000 women were held in "comfort stations" across Japanese-occupied Asia. The issue remains a major point of historical grievance between Japan and its Asian neighbours and has been a recurring source of diplomatic tension.

Short for Communist International. An organisation originating from the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, with a mission to coordinate and promote the spread of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. Largely directed from Moscow, it eventually became a tool of Soviet foreign policy.

A decade-long campaign launched by Mao in 1966 to purge the Communist Party of perceived counter-revolutionaries and reassert his own authority after the failures of the Great Leap Forward. It mobilised millions of Red Guards to attack the "Four Olds", closed schools and universities, and caused widespread social and political chaos until Mao's death in 1976.

The deliberate destruction of forest and agricultural vegetation using chemical agents, primarily for military purposes. During the Vietnam War, the US military sprayed approximately 77 million litres of defoliants across South Vietnam under Operation Ranch Hand (1962–1971) to deny the Viet Cong jungle cover and destroy food supplies. The most widely used defoliant was Agent Orange.

A strip of land from which military forces have been withdrawn. The Korean DMZ is a 4 km-wide buffer zone running roughly along the 38th parallel, separating North and South Korea. It was established by the 1953 armistice and remains one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world.

The official name of North Korea, established on 9 September 1948 under Kim Il Sung with Soviet backing. The DPRK also claimed sovereignty over the entire peninsula, making both Korean states rival governments from the moment of their founding.

Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997) was the paramount leader of China from 1978 to 1992 and the architect of China's economic reform programme. He was twice purged during the Cultural Revolution but returned to power after Mao's death. Deng introduced the Four Modernizations (agriculture, industry, defence, science/technology), Special Economic Zones, and the "opening up" of China to foreign investment, while maintaining CCP political monopoly. He authorised the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. His reforms produced approximately three decades of ~10% annual GDP growth.

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu (March-May 1954) was the decisive engagement of the First Indochina War, in which Viet Minh forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap surrounded and defeated a French fortified position in northwestern Vietnam. The French surrender on 7 May 1954 ended French military power in Indochina and led directly to the Geneva Accords of 1954.

President Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of command of UN forces in Korea on 11 April 1951, after MacArthur publicly contradicted the administration's policy of limited war. MacArthur had issued an ultimatum to Chinese commanders and written a letter to a Republican congressman calling for the war to be expanded to China. Truman's dismissal affirmed the principle of civilian control of the military and the strategy of fighting a limited war to avoid escalation to a wider conflict.

A term for the approximately 10 million Koreans who were separated from relatives across the ceasefire line by the Korean War and its aftermath. With no postal service, phone calls, or travel permitted between North and South Korea, separated families had no contact for decades. South Korea and North Korea have held limited reunion programs since the 1980s, but the overwhelming majority of separated family members died without ever seeing their relatives again.

The collapse of the Soviet-backed government of Mohammad Najibullah in April 1992, when mujahideen factions captured Kabul following the defection of Uzbek militia commander Abdul Rashid Dostum. Najibullah had held power for three years after the Soviet withdrawal by exploiting factional divisions and maintaining a degree of Soviet financial support, which ended when the USSR dissolved in December 1991. His fall plunged Afghanistan into civil war as mujahideen factions fought each other for control of the country.