Given the extraordinary pace of across-the-board expansion in Korea–China relations, the lack of assessments on the state of studies of contemporary Chinese politics in Korea is a crucial void to be filled. This evaluative article first offers a socio-demographic sketch of the Korean scholarly community of contemporary Chinese politics. More specifically, it examines how the epistemological community has evolved over the last half century in terms of generational and orientational changes. The second section assesses scholarly outputs in the field of contemporary Chinese politics by looking at monographs, refereed journal articles and doctoral dissertations produced by Korean scholars. The article concludes with some suggestions for further advancement of the studies of contemporary Chinese politics, which may be applicable to Korea as well as to the peer communities in other countries.

For over four years from the Marco Polo Bridge incident to Pearl Harbour China fought alone against Japanese military expansionism in the Far East. Both Britain and the United States recognized China's strategic importance but gave relatively little in the way of material help. On the one hand sufficient aid had to be given to ensure that China continued to act as a bulwark against Japanese imperialism and to keep China from gravitating to the Soviet Union (whose aid programme was more immediate, more generous and took the form of military supplies). On the other hand assistance was limited by British resource constraints, by American isolationist public opinion and by the fear, on both sides of the Atlantic, that overt military aid would provoke Japan into widening the conflict into their own respective spheres of interest.

Poetry in the People's Republic of China during the past 30 years has been dominated by works intensely political in nature – a kind of poetry known by the name zhengzhi shuqing shi (political lyric). The function of this poetry was to eulogize current political movements and to generate public support for them. This phenomenon reached its height during the xin minge yundong (New Folksong Movement) of 1958 when millions of peasants were mobilized to write poetry to praise the Great Leap Forward and the people's commune. Even when the Great Leap backfired and a widespread famine ensued, poetry was still boasting of “commune members piling rice all the way to the sky.” The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–76) proved a greater disaster than the Great Leap Forward, hence, the greater need for poetry to supply optimism. It was also a time of personality cult and xiandai mixin (modern superstition); poetry was therefore obliged to provide eulogies. To meet these demands, large quantities of what poet Gong Liu called “huanhu shi” (hail-to-the-chief poems) flooded the market. Many of them were considered to be little more than “rhymed lies.”

The cultural level of North Vietnam is undoubtedly one of the lowest imaginable. Eighty per cent, of the population is illiterate, ignorant to an incredible degree and subject to the most extraordinary superstitions. Apart from the masses there remains the élite—and the hopes that one should be able to place in the youth. But here, also, we find the same deep division that was created in the population as a whole by the war—on the one hand the members of the Resistance and on the other those who remained outside it.

Opportunities to observe a people's court in action dealing with a criminal cases are relatively rare. Therefore, the following summary of the trial of an embezzler at the Hungkou District People's Court, Shanghai, which I attended on the morning of 14 December 1977, may offer some additional understanding of the way the legal system currently works in China. The visit to the court formed part of a tour by a group mainly drawn from the University of Adelaide. The fact that we were invited to attend the court, however, was mainly due to the presence among us of the attorney-general of South Australia, Mr Peter Duncan. The visit was preceded by a meeting with two judges of the Shanghai Higher People's Court who outlined in fairly familiar and general terms the basic structure of the Chinese legal system. The judges also accompanied us to the district court.

In my view, the fundamental disagreement between Garver and me i, the estimation of the nature of the CCP-Moscow relationship, personalized in the relations between Mao and Stalin. Garver believe, that Stalin regarded Mao as a “dissident communist” who frustrated Stalin's intention to sacrifice the CCP's revolutionary interest; in order to meet the need for Soviet security. In the decade after 1935, Garver continues to argue in his comment, Mao “repeatedly deviate[d] from Comintern line and ultimately emancipate[d] the CCP from Moscow's control.” Therefore, Stalin had good reason to distrust Mao. If the CCP-Moscow radio communication had not been disrupted, Stalin could have prevented Mao from launching a successful coup at the Zunyi Conference, Garver says in his China Quarterly article. After finding some evidence of Stalin's willingness to supply the CCP with weapons, Garver states that “our estimates of Mao's willingness to antagonize Stalin must be adjusted.” To Garver, the Mao-Stalin relations were utilitarian in nature, just like those between Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek – they were all each other's “fishes.” Given the discrepancy between the Soviet security need and the CCP's revolutionary interests, Garver's depiction of the relationship between Mao and Stalin leaves the impression that they were adversaries, rather than comrades.