Seven lanes.

Every event sits on one lane. Each lane says what it holds, and what it refuses. The shape tells the lane, so colour never has to.

Outside China中国以外Forces originating outside China that acted on the Party: Marx and the Comintern, the October Revolution, Soviet aid and advisers, Stalin, the Sino-Soviet split, wars and openings, 1989 in Europe, the WTO.Not world history in general. A row earns its place only if a decision, campaign or consequence inside China turns on it.37
Party decisions党内决定Congresses, plenums, directives, constitutions, leadership changes, purges at the top. What the centre decided and who won the argument.Not implementation. A directive belongs here; what a county did with it belongs in Campaigns.41
War and armed force战争与武力Uprisings, encirclement campaigns, the Long March, the war with Japan, the civil war, Korea, border wars, and the use of the army inside the country.Not political violence carried out by campaign rather than by army. That is Campaigns or Consequences.29
Campaigns运动Mass political movements from Rectification to the present: land reform, the anti-rightist campaign, the Great Leap, the Cultural Revolution, and later drives.Not the decision that launched the campaign, which sits one lane up, aligned to the same date.20
Consequences后果What happened to people: famine, persecution, displacement, imprisonment, execution, disaster. Holds both the catastrophe and death categories you named.Never a running total, and never a figure without its argument attached in the estimates scene.17
Economy and daily life经济与日常Plans, communes, the hukou system, the household responsibility system, special economic zones, privatisation, the WTO, urbanisation, family policy.Not macroeconomic series. A series is a chart inside a record, not a row on a ribbon.20
Ideas and culture思想与文化New Culture and May Fourth, the Yan'an talks, Mao Zedong Thought, the Little Red Book, scar literature, patriotic education, the doctrine written into the constitution.Not every publication. A row belongs here if it changed what could be said or what words meant.13