China's recent economic surge has called attention to factors that may slow down, and perhaps even reverse, this vigorous trend. There is no shortage of items to explore, ranging from brittle politics and ingrained corruption to intensifying environmental pollution and runaway unemployment. In the long run few among these considerations are more decisive than the country's ability to feed itself: it is of critical existential importance, and it subsumes a universe of political, social, environmental and technical capabilities and limitations.

1995 is the 35th year of publication of The China Quarterly. London has been the home of the journal throughout its existence and, as the world's leading scholarly journal on modern China, The China Quarterly has long been a distinguishing feature of British sinology. Since its inception The China Quarterly has been recognized world-wide as the journal of record on 20th-century Chinese affairs, publishing timely, reflective, informed and new research on a wide range of subjects. The journal's Quarterly Chronicle and Documentation (so ably compiled by Robert F. Ash since 1982) is a venerable history of all but the first decade of the People's Republic. The extensive list of books received and books reviewed (195 in 1994) are also histories of the China field in themselves.

To a casual observer, Canada may appear to be very much like the United States, to which it is attached by a long and undefended land border. A more detailed inspection, however, indicates that Canada is different. The differences can be seen in many aspects, and have coloured the development of academic disciplines and the character of intellectual debate, including studies of China.

When David Wilson was appointed editor, one of the best-known American sinological professors who knew both of us wrote to congratulate me, saying I had the ideal qualifications for the job. But I was surprised all the same when my name was put forward to succeed David in the editorial chair. He had made it such a distinctively academic journal, with far more footnotes and those more abstruse, than Roderick MacFarquar ever provided. The idea seemed to me a bit out of character. I had some good degrees, it was true, and I had in early days produced a few learned legal articles with all those footnotes. But I had used my degrees to stray from the legal path into journalism and writing books about East Asia.

In the beginning was Soviet Survey, published in London by the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). The Hundred Flowers episode sparked a special issue, the communes a special supplement. The editors of Soviet Survey persuaded Paris HQ that China had become interesting enough to merit its own journal. I had contributed to the Soviet Survey Hundred Flowers issue and in 1958 the CCF had commissioned me to prepare a documentary volume on the theme (The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals in the United States). In early 1959, Walter Laqueur, then Soviet Survey's principal editor, asked me to edit a new journal on China.

This article examines the extent to which labour markets are emerging in the Chinese countryside, focusing on nonfarm work, and whether women participate in those new markets. The examination is based on a 1993 survey that provides new detail on types of work, employment channels, migration and income

In 1968, when I took over the editorship, The China Quarterly had already established itself as the leading English-language journal on China in the world. Great credit is due to the founder editor, Rod MacFarquhar, for this achievement. It was a time for consolidating that position of pre-eminence and giving the journal a firm academic basis. The stars were right. At the School of Oriental Studies in the University of London, the Contemporary China Institute was being set up under Stuart Schram, with generous support from the Volkswagen and Ford Foundations. The China Quarterly, with its new editor, moved from an upstairs room in Oxford Street to a modern office block near the University and then into the faded grandeur of Fitzroy Square.