After war, years of hostility and a long period of gradually improving Party and state relations, the study of China has begun to re-emerge in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Vietnam has had a sinological tradition for hundreds of years, linked to China by history, language, trade, a common border and in a myriad of other ways. From the mid-1950s until the early 1970s, thousands of Vietnamese students and officials studied in the People's Republic of China. Today the People's Republic remains Vietnam's key strategic threat. But the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong and overseas Chinese communities are also among Vietnam's key trade partners and a growing source of investment for its economic reforms.

Given this close relationship – including the direct hostility in the late 1970s and early to mid–1980s, one of a series of conflicts going back hundreds of years – it is perhaps paradoxical that the study of China in Vietnam has remained relatively weak. During the war against the French which led to the founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and the victory at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnamese sinology was a field largely limited to one or two universities and institutes in Hanoi and some additional capacity in Hue and Saigon, with scholars trained in either the older Vietnamese or French tradition. The thousands of Vietnamese who studied in China in the 1950s and 1960s were trained largely for other fields, although Chinese studies did see some development during the 1949 to 1966 period.

The angry outbursts of Chinese intellectuals against the Chinese Communist Party at the time of the Hundred Flowers in 1956–57 revealed that China's intellectuals, even those who were oriented towards the left, were in conflict with many of the Party's practices. Actually, this tension between the Party and the intellectuals had been smouldering for a long time. It had come to the surface many years earlier during the Cheng Feng movement in Yenan in the early 1940s. At that time the Party, as it did later in the Hundred Flowers period, embarked on a drive “to rectify the style of work” of both Party members and intellectuals. One aspect of this drive was that the Party encouraged intellectuals and lower-rank cadres to speak out on the misuses of Party power.

This article investigates the role of foreign technical experts in developing China's aviation infrastructure from the 1980s to the present. Focusing on a series of training and technical aid programmes, it traces the influx of critical know-how from Europe, Japan and North America during the period of reform and opening up. Through fieldwork conducted at airports in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai – and expert interviews with architects, planners and engineers – the article sheds light on the instrumental role played by foreign technical experts. By establishing a leading-edge set of airport planning practices, these aviation professionals accelerated the modernization of China's transport infrastructure and its reintegration into the world economy. Moreover, by positioning China as a global leader in infrastructure development, they laid the technical foundations for Chinese foreign policy endeavours that seek to export an infrastructure-led model of economic development to Africa, Asia and the former Soviet sphere.

The Chinese have released a new figure for grain output in 1974 that is far larger than output claimed for any previous year. At an FAO conference held in Rome in mid-November 1975, the vice-minister of agriculture and forestry, Yang Li-kung, reported that total grain output was 274.9 million tons. And a 10 December Reuters dispatch from Peking speculated on the basis of this 1974 figure that China's 1975 harvest could be more than 280 million tons.

This article examines the process, causes and repercussions of the accession of Taiwan, as a contested state, together with China, to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in 1991, the first intergovernmental organization that Taipei has joined since 1971. Based on an analysis of elite interviews, primary and secondary data, the paper traces the under-explored diplomatic history of the accession. It argues that changes in Taiwan's domestic and external environments, as well as changes in the diplomatic process, account for Taipei's admission, rather than the China factor alone. The paper examines four positive effects of accession on Taiwan's international space and the implications for Taiwan's continuous survival as a contested state. By undertaking a nuanced analysis of an important yet little explored milestone in the contested state's struggle to mitigate its international isolation, the article sheds light on Taiwan's external ties against the backdrop of the sovereignty dispute between Taipei and Beijing.

This article examines two major recent CCTV documentaries on the Third Front and its afterlives. The Big Third Front (2017) and Vicissitudes of the Third Front (2016) construct strong narratives about the Third Front during the Mao era, depicting it as a heroic struggle against nature which was forced upon China by foreign enemies. However, both documentaries encounter difficulties in adhering to the usual presentation of the Deng era as a resoundingly successful transformation. Vicissitudes ambivalently characterizes the Deng era as one of relative decline in contrast to the glorious early years of the Third Front and the flourishing present. The Big Third Front, meanwhile, conflates historical footage of the 1950s–1990s in a way that undermines the usual official division of PRC history into Mao and reform eras. This paper concludes by suggesting that academic focus on the Third Front can serve as a methodological tool for complicating the periodization of PRC history.

Communist literature on “Contemporary (post-May 4) History” in which China begins a “bourgeois democratic reVolution” is more than an ideological exercise; it is autobiographical. The leading character is none other than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself. The emotional inVolvement of mainland scribes is comparable to that of a public figure writing his biography. Every event from 1919 to the present is regarded in the light of the CCP's role. Communist leadership is even attributed to the May 4 Movement, which antedated the Party's formation by two years.

The commercial, cultural and educational agreement between the State of Ohio and Hubei province has become a major element in Hubei's efforts to modernize its industrial and agricultural sectors. At the same time, the agreement also provides evidence of increasing provincial autonomy in China's economic development. This latter fact is seen in the negotiating practices adopted by provincial officials before and after the agreement was reached.

In the months prior to the recent fighting with India, China initiated a new policy in Tibet and towards the Himalayan border countries in order to recover the ground lost—in the case of Tibet—by its previous policies, and—in the case of the neighbouring Himalayan territories—by its suppression of the Tibetan revolt. China's recent successful attacks in the border areas will probably lend added strength to her diplomacy in the border states whatever the immediate reactions of some local statesmen.