History glossary
quotas
required production or delivery targets set by the state or planning system.
- Category
- Economic planning
- Region
- Global
- Date range
- Varies
What it means
Quotas are required production or delivery targets. In Mao-era and reform-era China, factories and farming households often had to meet state-set quotas before surplus could be used, sold, or rewarded differently.
Related terms
Stories using this term
The Holocaust
From legal discrimination to genocide, the Holocaust traces twelve years of escalating persecution that killed six million Jews and millions of others across Nazi-occupied Europe.
Operation Barbarossa
From Hitler's ideological war in the east to Soviet survival before Moscow, Barbarossa turned expected blitzkrieg into prolonged attritional catastrophe.
The Soviets
From revolution to superpower, the Soviet Union rose, struggled internally, and collapsed in 1991.
Feudalism and Medieval Society
From the estates of Charlemagne's empire to the flowering of Gothic cathedrals, this story explores how feudal hierarchies, manorial agriculture, and Church authority shaped the lives of kings, knights, and peasants alike.
The Qing Dynasty
From Manchu conquest to republican revolution, the Qing dynasty built China's largest empire, oversaw centuries of prosperity, and then struggled to survive foreign intervention, rebellion, and the collapse of imperial legitimacy.
Mao's China
After 1949, Mao transformed China through party rule, collectivisation, ideological campaigns, and mass upheaval, leaving a legacy of power, trauma, and state continuity.
The Rise of China
After Mao, China combined market reform with one-party rule, using exports, cities, technology, and nationalism to become one of the world's most powerful states.
