The purpose of this article is to show what Communist literary dictatorship has done to some of the writers, who, though not literary giants, had in the past shown some promise in the art of letters.

After the turbulence of the anti-rightist movement of 1957 which silenced those who held different views from the Communist Party line, Ma Yin-ch'u, then Dean of Peking University, refusing to yield to pressure, continued to express his “unorthodox” views and accepted a challenge to defend them against some two hundred critics. He stated in November 1959, “Although I am nearly eighty years old and outnumbered, I shall accept this challenge [to defend my position] and fight single-handed till I die. I shall not yield to those critics who resort to force rather than reason.” Professor Ma's integrity and courage in defending his beliefs command our respect and would justify the following biographical account even if he were not one of China's leading intellectuals.

Deng Xiaoping's attempt to modernize and professionalize the People's Liberation Army (PLA) will surely be remembered as one of the most important components of his historical legacy. Yet, ironically, Deng's military activities formed a decidedly minor part of his career. Deng received no formal military training, and Chinese Communist sources have very little to say about his military contributions before 1980; most of what was reported comes from his enemies and is difficult to corroborate. What has been written after 1980 has a suspiciously hagio-graphic ring and is also difficult to confirm.

Hsiung Hsiang-hui, Peking's Chargé d'Affaires in London, is one of the extremely few American-educated Chinese Communists. Now in his mid-forties, Hsiung comes from a large and well-to-do gentry family (his father was once a district judge) in which, as the second son, he bridled under the petty tyrannies of his elder brother. By the mid-1930s he was a student in one of China's finest universities, Tsinghua, where he first came into contact with left-wing elements. After the war broke out in 1937, he studied briefly in Changsha but then joined the First Army of Hu Tsung-nan, a top KMT general. After a year's schooling in the Central Cadets School in Sian, Hsiung became aide-de-camp to General Hu, a post he held from about 1940 to 1943. Hu began to suspect him of being a communist and, to get him out of the way, assigned him back to the Cadets School. Towards the end of the war Hsiung attended a training course established by Hu in preparation for taking over areas held by the Japanese. After this, Hsiung took and failed a government scholarship examination. But then Hu provided the necessary funds for Hsiung to study in the U.S.

The purpose of this article is to describe the developments in rural trade following on the formation of the rural people's communes in 1958, but first it is necessary to say something about the events leading up to the situation in the summer of that year. This topic has been treated by the author at greater length elsewhere. A brief summary of certain points must, however, be made in order to sketch the background of the present subject.

China's nuclear detonation at Lop Nor has dramatised the last decade of advancement in Chinese Communist strategic thinking and weapons production: use of Uranium-235 suggests the availability of a uranium hexafluoride gaseous diffusion plant, aside from the plutonium-producing reactors already identified, and suggests the imminence of a Communist Chinese H-Bomb. The recent evidence of Chinese nuclear competence and speculation regarding the development of modern delivery systems underscore advances in strategic thought over the last decade. It is perhaps less obvious that the intellectual genesis of current weapons developments dates from the first decade of the nuclear era, when Chinese Communist leaders attempted to reconcile their concepts of nuclear warfare with Maoist revolutionary doctrines. Although public pronouncements between 1945 and 1955 emphasised the conservatism of Communist Chinese military strategy, they hinted at strategic innovations—regarding “tactical” nuclear and thermonuclear weapons—which may help to explain the priority, sacrifice and direction of China's weapons programme in more recent years.

The opening of China to economic reforms from 1978 and subsequent political and social developments both in mainland China and in Taiwan have facilitated substantial reassessment of China's Republican era. The Republican years are seen by researchers increasingly as part of a continuous transition during which China modified its traditional society and adapted to new roles in world affairs - sometimes with considerable success. This special issue brings together recent studies of China's Republican era, the legacy of which can still be observed in current Chinese affairs

Although there is no detailed definitive Chinese Communist interpretation of the thinkers of the 100 Schools Period, this does not mean that one cannot isolate certain constants from which deviation is not permitted. The sayings of Marx-Engels and Mao Tse-tung which are directly relevant to the early thinkers, if not strictly about them, have obviously been the primary guidelines for the scholar in Communist China. Especially in the material produced since 1957, when relatively intensive study of the period began, one becomes aware of more specific trends in interpretation. With the basic tenets of Marx and Engels as tools for interpretation, it is axiomatic that understanding the class struggle of a given time is the key to understanding the thought of that time. The “contention” among the 100 Schools is taken to be a reflection of the intensity of class struggle in the Warring States Period. It is also axiomatic that the history of the struggle between progressive and reactionary forces is reflected in the enduring philosophical struggle between materialism and idealism. But the philosophical concepts associated with materialism and idealism are not native to China; nor are their Marxist definitions universally accepted in the history of Western philosophy. Therefore, in interpreting the thought of the 100 Schools Period, scholars most frequently cite Marx-Engels definitions as support for their own interpretations or to criticise those of others. Engels states that all those who take spirit as prior to the existence of the natural world and thus in the last analysis admit a creator (Old Testament variety or the more sophisticated Absolute Spirit of Hegel) belong in the idealist camp.

China had no Second Five-Year Plan (1958–62) only five ad hoc annual plans during that period. In basic construction and industrial production a great leap forward did take place in the first three years, only to be followed by collapse and readjustment in the last two years. In agriculture, the period started with an unprecedented bumper crop in the first year, after which there commenced an agricultural crisis that grew in intensity from year to year until 1962 when the output of food grains and green vegetables began to show recovery. This was in sharp contrast to the First Five-Year Plan period which concluded with spectacular achievements in heavy industry, moderate success in light industry and slow but steady improvement in agriculture.

Though Chiang Kai-shek may vow to “sleep on faggots and drink gall” until the mainland is liberated, he has some reason to rest more easily today than at any time in his long career as Nationalist leader. On the mainland his government never clearly controlled more than one of China's three “key economic areas” (the Yellow River plain, the Yangtze valley, and the Szechuan basin). At least he can effectively control Formosa, a realm 1/260th the size of the mainland. Nationalist cells permeate schools, factories and government bureaux. Local police organisations, semi-autonomous in mainland days, are now under the central control of loyal mainlanders. The powerful security force, the Formosa Garrison Command (FGC), operates under martial law. The two minority parties are as impotent as their mainland counterparts. There are no treaty ports to harbour leftist critics and the mountainous half of the island is effectively patrolled by government forces painfully aware of the dangers of banditry and rebellion.

Over the past 20 years, studies of grain production and use in China have figured prominently in debates concerning economic efficiency, income disparities and the contours of the Maoist development strategy. Virtually all analysts now agree that grain production in China exhibited a strong tendency toward provincial self-sufficiency and that the inter-provincial grain trade declined during the Maoist era (from the 1950s to 1978), that provincial self-sufficiency obstructed efficient allocation of agricultural resources and contributed to the persistence of poverty, and that the tendency toward selfsufficiency is attributable partly to a policy of “grain first,” which promoted concentration upon grain production in every province regardless of comparative advantage. Recent studies point to significant changes in the pattern of grain production and trade since 1978 and trace these changes to relaxation of “grain first” and introduction of institutional reforms affecting the grain sector.

A sharp contrast stands between the mood of optimism in 1958 and 1959 when official as well as unofficial reports of industrial progress continued to pour out of Communist China and the silence and complete black-out of statistical information which has characterised the Chinese scene since 1960. If the principal landmarks are retraced, the first major sign of a change in official policy appears to have come in early 1961 when the Chinese Communist Party decided to reverse the policies which had characterised the “leap forward” of 1958–59. This was followed by a drastic policy of retrenchment in investment and reorientation of industrial production during the latter part of 1961 as the economic crisis deepened. Since then the new slogan has been “adjustment, consolidation, reinforcement, and improvement”; the new order of priorities is agriculture, light industry and heavy industry; the new approach is to regard agriculture as the economic base and industry as the “leading factor.”

For more than a decade Western policy towards revolutionary China has been dominated by the attitude which the United States adopted in early 1950, before the Korean war broke out. This attitude arose out of conditions prevailing in the United States rather than in the Far East. Almost at once American policy lost any flexibility it might otherwise have had, when the Chinese intervened in the Korean war, an event which might have been avoided altogether if the American posture towards China had been different.