With the proclamation of Document 1, 1983, reform of marketing became one of the major targets of agricultural policy in China. This official emphasis on the need to liberalize the marketing system was, however, little more than a confirmation of a process which was already taking place. The initial reforms of labour management and prices in 1978 had led to a decentralization of economic authority to the household level. The commune system was in decline and the number of small-scale free markets was increasing rapidly as peasants took advantage of their new-found freedom to trade their surplus production as they wished. Responding to the economic stimulus offered by the new structure of prices and to the organizational flexibility offered by the decentralization of management, some households began to plan at least part of their production for sale on the market, there by initiating a process of specialization and commercialization. Once begun, this process fed backwards into production by encouraging further specialization and diversification and forwards into marketing by stimulating the emergence of longdistance trade carried out by specialist merchants and traders. In effect, the free market began to act as an engine of economic change, shaping both the structure of agricultural production and employment and the network of new economic linkages through the emerging hierarchy of market centres.

In October 1983 the secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hu Yaobang, formally announced the beginning of a two-stage, three-year Party rectification. The first stage, from November 1983 to around December 1984, would concentrate on the rectification of Party committees (dangwei) and leading offices at the Centre and in the provinces, major municipalities and autonomous regions. The second stage, from early 1985 to the end of 1986, would focus on rectification of Party organizations below provincial level. In fact, however, rectification was not officially ended until May 1987.

The 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) finds it in the throes of a dramatic reform process that has discarded the principles and practices advocated by its founder. Necessitated by the sorry state of the PLA at the end of the Maoist period and facilitated by the sweeping political changes that have occurred since then, this process seeks to convert the Chinese army into a modern and professional force. Although large-scale weapons updating has been ruled out for economic and technological reasons, nevertheless considerable progress has been made, while in other areas the changes have been fundamental and far-reaching.

China entered the nuclear and space age as a result of a crusade that began almost as soon as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had completed the conquest of the mainland. In this article we will comment on some aspects of the entire nuclear programme over the past 30 years as it has affected the strategic role of the PLA.1