The history of Chinese Communist literature up to this point has been one of ever-contracting boundaries, and all efforts on the ground to push back the frontiers or mark out reserves for tolerance have only fortified that trend, by defining what become yet other heresies to be avoided. The process had been uneven until the Cultural Revolution came along; then the presses shut down, the board was swept clean, and a unique opportunity offered itself to create a literature cleansed of historical impurities, impeccable in doctrine (given the new vetting procedures), and immaculate in conception (the lure of personal gain and fame being banished). Positively the new art had to guide it communist thought sharpened by the struggle between the two lines, negatively the treacherous ground has all been freshly sign-posted. It is the purpose of this paper to show what was made of this opportunity in the field of the short story. It will first be necessary to review briefly the central literary dogma and the interdictions established by case-law in the few years prior to the Cultural Revolution.

Since September 1976 new provincial population figures have been appearing in news items from the People's Republic of China, most of which are much larger than those previously available for the same provinces. The figures seem to point to a new order of magnitude for the total population of China that is well above most current estimates.

During the two years I spent as an exchange student in the People's Republic of China, from October 1974 to July 1976, under the auspices of the Sino-Canadian Student Exchange Programme, I was witness to such major political events as the convening of the Fourth National People's Congress, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat Campaign and the Campaign to Criticize Water Margin. This report focuses on the events that occurred in the last 10 months of my stay, and most particularly on the Educational Debate of late 1975, the passing of Chou En-lai, the campaign against Teng Hsiao-p'ing, and the events surrounding the T'ien An Men Incident. My sources include personal observations: in the first few months of 1976 I witnessed the uneven unfolding of the “Educational Debate,” and I was in T'ien An Men Square on 3 and 4 April, when the first open attacks against the “Shanghai four” took place, on the eve of the riot of 5 April; material I collected from posters at Peita and in Shanghai; conversations with other foreign and Chinese students; and various contacts with Chinese teachers and officials. I also had contact with some members of the foreign community.

The Chinese have broadcast a number of statements on industrial performance in Kweichow during 1977. Piecing these statements together shows that the political events of the past two years–the death of Chou En-lai, the activities of the “gang of four,” the death of Mao Tse-tung, and the struggle over the restoration of Teng Hsiao-p'ing-have seriously disrupted production. Even though Kweichow is not a major industrial province, the results are worth considering because they give month-by-month changes in industrial production from January through October 1977 as well as levels of output for two months in 1976. The level of industrial output in Kweichow was depressed for more than 12 months far below that of September 1975, the previous peak month. This pattern may be similar to declines in industrial production in other more important provinces for which similar but much more fragmentary statements have been broadcast.

In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, a dramatic surge of rural industrialization occurred in China. Thousands of small-scale enterprises using intermediate technologies were set up in the rural hsien and communes.

On the morning of 8 November 1977 I was given the opportunity to interview the director, Jen Chien-hsin, and another member of the Legal Affairs Department of the China Council for the Promotion of Foreign Trade. We discussed the Chinese legal system in general and some legal aspects of the law of foreign trade in particular

[W]hat the Soviet leadership is practising is certainly not socialism but, as Lenin put it, socialism in words, imperialism in deeds – that is, social-imperialism.… A simple but important principle of Marxism-Leninism is that one must judge a person not merely by his words but [also] by his deeds (Ch'iao Kuan-hua, 1971).