The following consists of extracts from a transcript of a tape recording of an interview which took place on 17 November 1974 at the Min–ts Hotel in Peking, between myself and Professor Yang, chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Faculty of Law, Peking University and Judge Wu, member of the Supreme Court of China. The interpreter was Comrade Kuang of Lü–hsing–she, Peking Branch.

“Recently, amid clamor and cries of ‘rural bankruptcy’ and ‘rural collapse,’ the slogans ‘rural reconstruction’ and ‘rural revival’ reverberate through the entire nation; this is really a kind of sudden awakening of government and people.” Thus, the major chronicler of rural reform movements during the Republican period began his 1934 compendium. Another reporter counted almost 700 distinct organizations devoted to rural work of various sorts. The pens of the intelligentsia churned out hundreds of monographs and specialized periodicals, and thousands of articles on the rural problem and the rural reconstruction solution. The powerholders – the Nanking regime itself, the provincial governments under its control, and the semi-independent militarist provincial governments – were concurrently formulating policies, instituting measures, establishing agencies, reorganizing local government structures, and generally manifesting great concern for the giant rural sector of Chinese society they had previously ignored.

The study of migration is generally conducted along the lines of communication theory and it is assumed that we deal with a source, a medium of transfer and a receiver. An investigation of a particular migratory movement should ideally embrace two discrete geographical territories and their socio–cultural contents, and the means providing passage from one to the other. The communication model provides an overview understanding. However, when anthropologists have scrutinized migratory movements, the clear–cut categories of source and receiver have turned out to be less obvious. In this paper it is my intention to give an ethnographical account for the “end” of a channel in a process of migration, the final stage of a transfer in which people who are on the move reach their destinations. It is obvious that “destination” is not the same thing as “terminal.” Often people move in stages, and it is quite possible that what we regard as a destination in one study would turn out to be a stage in a chain of stages in a future enquiry.

Rectification as an approach to inner–Party discipline emphasizes persuasive methods and education, but it does not eschew coercive measures including the purge. As students of Chinese politics are well aware, this form of coercive persuasion was comprehensively developed in the early 1940s as Mao Tse–tung consolidated his leadership, rectification theories were expounded, and the first rectification campaign of 1942–44 was carried out. Official histories and much scholarly analysis identify rectification with Mao while asserting that other leaders advocated sharply contrasting approaches. Thus CCP leaders before 1935 purportedly pushed coercive disciplinary methods – dubbed “ruthless struggles and merciless blows “ – while Mao attempted to foster systematic education. Mao's undoubted contributions to rectifi cation notwithstanding, the following analysis argues that this view both overstates actual differences and overlooks the developing nature of Mao's position.

Claims by the Chinese authorities that annual grain production has been in the region of 250 or more million tons in the past few years have been greeted with scepticism by some foreign analysts. However, this level of grain production is now possible because of agro-technical change in “high and stable yield” areas ana regions with improved agriculture.