The purpose of this report is to focus upon two events of some significance that took place at Beijing University (Beida) between late November 1977 and 1978. The first of these was a spontaneous, grassroots polemic concerning an innovation of the Cultural Revolution period. At issue was the radically new approach to the problem of rearing new generations of proletarian intellectuals, namely, the “worker-peasant-soldiers7” student enrolment policy, whereby university students were selected through recommendation by the masses instead of on the basis of examination results. This polemic constituted an uninvited interlude in the carrying out at Beida of the nationwide “third campaign” in the criticism of the “gang of four,” and focused upon the problem of how, in the light of recent changes in educational policy, the status of worker-peasant-soldier students was to be evaluated.

During the first decade of the People's Republic of China from 1949, overseas Chinese affairs were considered important to the national interest of China, and a special department called the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission was established under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But during the period from 1967–69, when the Cultural Revolution was caught in the wild wind, overseas Chinese and their institutions, particularly the ones at home, were considered ideologically suspect and undesirable because of their allegedly bourgeois background and foreign connexions. The privileges previously given to them as a cushion to adjust themselves gradually to the socialist system were repudiated and removed. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission was disbanded.

Information obtained during a research tour of communes in rural China in the summer of 1979 clarified, among other things, the structure of grain marketing by production teams and other basic units of production. Explanations advanced by officials at various levels above and within the communes Showed that the grain sold by units to the state included a tranche, named “ discussion grain ” (yigou), Which was unfamiliar to us although it was said to have been introduced generally in 1972–73, and in Guangdong Province as early as 1963. We obtained the following understanding of the system currently in operation throughout China.

Demobilized soldiers have been widely regarded, by political analysts and politicians alike, as a distinctive political group of considerable importance. Politicians in a number of countries have been acutely aware of the ambiguous potential of ex-soldiers and have striven to mobilize them under their own colours. In several western countries, notably the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, veterans' organizations have often been a powerful bulwark of conservatism, advocating the virile values of patriotism, sanctifying the status quo and supporting the political forces of the right. During the Vietnam War, on the other hand, the anti-war movement in the United States realized the political potential of Vietnam veterans and effectively mobilized a section of them in opposition to official war policy.

In more respects than one, the Fifth Encirclement Campaign launched by Chiang Kai-shek in 1933–34 against the Jiangxi Soviet may be considered as an important landmark in contemporary Chinese history. From a purely military standpoint, in view of its scope and the particular means used, it is undoubtedly the first modern Chinese campaign. General Jacques Guillermaz points out, quite rightly, that “the methodical nature of the operations, the importance given to fire power and logistical resources, and the tactical use of large and small units all bring the Fifth Campaign closer to certain phases of the 1914–18 war than to traditional Chinese civil wars.” Precisely because of its scope and its methodical nature, the Fifth Campaign, rather than the first four, led Mao, after the Long March, to evolve a theory of guerrilla warfare which “has broken out of the bounds of tactics to knock at the gates of strategy.” This theory, applied first of all to the war against Japan and later to the Third Revolutionary Civil War, was to change the face of China.

It has become conventional wisdom that the U.S.–China rapprochement was a result (from the Chinese side) of Beijing's fear of the Soviet Union. Specifically, the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the border confrontation which developed rapidly in the months after the clashes at Zhen Bao island on the Ussuri River in March 1969, are seen as exacerbating Chinese fears of Soviet attack.1 These fears had emerged during the Cultural Revolution when Moscow began insinuating that it might intervene in China in support of the anti-Maoist, “healthy forces.” 2 It was in hopes of deterring possible Soviet invasion, surgical strike, or intervention – so the argument runs – that Beijing wanted to improve relations with Washington. By establishing more cordial relations between Beijing and Washington, the risks which Moscow would assume in making a decision to attack China would be increased. Soviet-American détente would, conceivably, be endangered. The possibility of a Soviet-American confrontation arising out of such a Soviet attack on China could not be ruled out. This added increment of uncertainty about the U.S. response to a Soviet attack on China would be useful in preventing such an attack. Thus, it is concluded, in November 1968 Beijing moved to reopen the talks with the U.S. at Warsaw as a first step towards substantially improving Sino-American relations. Two years after the clashes at Zhen Bao the U.S. table tennis team arrived in Beijing in April 1971. A snowballing series of events rapidly unfolded, culminating in the 15 July 1971 announcement of Henry Kissinger's visit to China and President Nixon's impending visit