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S6 History: China’s Reform and Opening Up after 1978 | 10 Challenge Items
S6 History: China’s Reform and Opening Up after 1978 | 10 Challenge Items
Ten items train evaluation: dual-track prices and official profiteering, the 1988 price breakthrough, the 1992 tour and foreign capital, and the two historiographical readings of gradual reform.
Argue both sides Challenge items demand judgement. That means listing short-run gains and long-run costs, naming the time scale and the gainers, then backing the verdict with checkable figures.
01 Paper details (check answers afterwards)
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Questions | 10 |
| Suggested time | 25 |
| Difficulty mix | Challenge 10 |
| Chapter | Chapter: S6 History: China’s Reform and Opening Up after 1978 |
| Level | Challenge |
02 Questions (10 items)
- ChallengeShenzhen output rose from about 270 million yuan in 1980 to about 2.8 trillion yuan in 2020. Roughly how many times the original figure is that, to the nearest whole number?
- ChallengeThe plenum closed on 22 December 1978. How many full years had passed by 9 November 2026?
- ChallengeCompared with shock therapy in Eastern Europe, what were the main advantage and the main cost of China’s gradual, crossing-the-river-by-feeling approach?
- ChallengeWhy did the dual-track price system of the 1980s produce official profiteering?
- ChallengeWhat followed directly from the failed price breakthrough of 1988?
- ChallengeA firm earns 20 million yuan a year. Taxed at 15 per cent in a zone and 33 per cent inland, how much less tax does it pay in a year by locating in the zone, in million yuan?
- ChallengeForeign direct investment rose sharply after the 1992 southern tour. How should that be explained in terms of institutional certainty?
- ChallengeIn comparing China’s gradual reform with the radical transition in the Soviet bloc, what two main assessments exist among historians?
- ChallengeHow many years lie between the 1978 plenum and the 1992 congress that set the market economy as the goal?
- ChallengeHainan became a province and a zone in 1988. What was the biggest difference from the four zones of 1980 in scale and governance?
03 Answers and one-line notes
| # | Answer | One-line note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | About 10,370 times. | Convert both to the same unit in 100 million yuan first: 28,000 divided by 2.7. |
| 2 | 47 years. | The 22 December anniversary has not been reached in 2026, so it is not yet 48 years. |
| 3 | The advantage was keeping output, order and revenue intact; the cost was dual-track prices, weak state firms and rent-seeking postponed rather than solved. | A historical judgement must state both the gains and the costs, otherwise it is one-sided. |
| 4 | One good carried both a plan price and a market price, so whoever held the allocation permit could buy cheap and sell dear, capturing the gap. | The rent came from the institutional price gap, not from personal morality. |
| 5 | Sharp inflation and panic buying, then credit tightening and a slower pace of price reform. | Releasing prices before hardening firms’ budget constraints almost guarantees inflation. |
| 6 | 3.6 million yuan. | Take the 18 percentage point gap first, then multiply by 20 million yuan. |
| 7 | The tour confirmed the market direction would hold, cutting the risk premium on policy reversal, so long-term capital was willing to sink into fixed assets. | What foreign investors feared was not high tax but rules that could change without notice. |
| 8 | One stresses that China avoided an output collapse and social rupture; the other notes that weak state firms, environmental damage and local debt were deferred rather than avoided. | The two judgements work on different time scales: short-run stability and long-run costs are not contradictory. |
| 9 | 14 years. | Fixing the system goal came more than a decade after rural reform began. |
| 10 | It covered a whole province with far more land and people, so policy had to reach rural and ethnic areas too, which was harder to run. | Size is not success: Hainan grew more slowly than Shenzhen for years, showing zone policy needs geography and industry to work. |
04 What to do after marking
- After marking, redo only the wrong items and write down which step went wrong (formula, unit, or misread number).
- Repeat the same item two days later; move to the next paper only when both attempts are correct.
- Parents only need the answer and note columns; there is no need to explain every item.
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Questions and answers are written originally by the TutorZone team and are not taken from any school, publisher or examination authority paper. Every value is checked by computer.