It is impossible to estimate exactly what weight should be given to each of the various factors which have contributed to the conflict between the Communist regimes of Russia and of China, but there can be no doubt that Russia's refusal to assist China to become a nuclear power was one of the most important. According to the Chinese account of the matter, the Soviet Union promised to provide China with “a sample of an atomic bomb and technical data concerning its manufacture,” apparently as part of an agreement on “new technology for national defence” concluded in October 1957, but went back on this promise and unilaterally annulled the agreement in June 1959. The Chinese People's Republic, nevertheless, went ahead on its own and exploded its first atomic bomb on 16 October 1964; this was followed by China's first hydrogen bomb on 17 June 1967.

The twentieth anniversary of the Chinese Communist regime, unlike the tenth, is an appropriate time for retrospection and appraisal. A decade ago, the revelation of statistical exaggeration during the Great Leap Forward underlined Mao's inability to discover a sure-fire method of economic development. With Soviet-style methods previously found wanting and mass mobilization now proved inadequate also, it was not clear where China would go next economically. Politically, Mao had just faced the first major challenge to his personal authority since the late 1930s. Would the leadership be able to close ranks or would there be further splits? In foreign policy, China had clearly adopted a more militant line. The crucial question, as Khrushchev flew to Peking for the tenth anniversary celebrations fresh from his meetings with Eisenhower, was how the Chinese leadership would react to their guest's advocacy of peaceful coexistence with the imperialist bloc.

Public interest in China, as reflected in the level of media attention, is burgeoning in the West and elsewhere in the world. This interest is driven by China's increasing presence and importance in the lives of people around the world; and for the same reason is likely to continue growing. Since media discourses are the main way in which Western publics receive information about China, contributing to media reports and helping journalists reach deeper understandings is an important task and opportunity for academics whose specialist knowledge of China is often more nuanced than that of generalist China correspondents. Although developments in the two professions are demanding closer and more frequent interactions, many scholars are reluctant to engage. This is partly due to structural disincentives within the academy, and partly due to obstacles in the scholar–media relationship. Focusing on the latter, the objective of this article is to illuminate how China scholars and journalists currently interact, and to identify means to increasing their efficiency and sustainability.

Does local democracy induce better service to citizens? While elected officials can be punished at the ballot box if they fail to address citizens’ needs, appointed bureaucrats may have policy knowledge that enables them to better serve citizens. Employing a multimethod design, this paper uses variation in local political institutions in Taiwan to assess the relative merits of direct election and bureaucratic appointment for local government responsiveness. While democratic institutions are often thought to induce responsiveness, I find that in Taiwan, with its historically strong bureaucracy and relatively new democratic institutions, the picture is somewhat more complicated. Elected and appointed officials face different incentives that motivate the latter to respond more quickly and effectively to online requests for help.

In a famous article written in 1928 when the Left-wing writers of the Sun and Creation Societies were criticising Lu Xun for being behind the times, Qian Xingcun (A Ying) asserted that the age of Ah Q was already past. Fifty years later Chen Baichen's dramatization of Ah Q Zhengzhuan, which was staged in 1981 as part of the Lu Xun centenary celebrations, ends with the narrator declaring that although Ah Q had no women it was not true that he would have no descendants, because his line would continue for generations to come. It is, of course, possible to reconcile these two apparently contradictory statements. Qian Xingcun was referring to the fact that the peasant masses were becoming politically organized, having played an important role in the revolutionary movements of those years. He did not claim that people like Ah Q no longer existed. Chen Baichen, on the other hand, was referring to the Ah Q mentality which still lives on in people's minds, long after Ah Q himself has been executed. He did not see this mentality as the dominant force in society. Nevertheless there have been striking changes of attitude towards Ah Q in recent years. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution it has been generally recognized that the Ah Q mentality is still a force in China which is holding back attempts at modernization and that many other aspects of the Chinese traditional society and culture which Lu Xun criticized in his stories and essays have still not been eradicated 45 years after his death.

Obviously, literature is a question of quality rather than quantity. In a speech given on 19 June 1961, which was only published in the Literary Gazette (Wenyi bao) in February 1979 as the cultural testament of the late premier, Zhou Enlai drew a crude parallel between literary and industrial outputs: “Certain laws governing material production also hold good for mental production. When pressed too far mental production will suffer, perhaps even more seriously. Quotas and pressures of time are vexing problems for mental workers. Take the writing of poetry as an example. Among our leading cadres, Comrade Chen Yi likes to write poems. He composes very quickly and is a prolific writer. He is a genius in this respect. But, it is different with Chairman Mao. He writes only after much deliberation. Though he writes less, he writes with such magnificence and vitality and produces extremely concentrated poems. We should not demand a poem a day from Chairman Mao, nor should we interfere with Comrade Chen Yi and ask him to write less. Mental work cannot be uniform.”