Although many readers would probably interpret William Parish's article in the previous issue of The China Quarterly (“Factions in Chinese Military Politics,” CQ, No. 56, pp. 667–699) as an attack on my 1969 assessment of the historic role of the Field Army in post-1950 Chinese politics, I am nevertheless sincerely grateful to him for keeping the dialogue about “loyalty systems” alive. Indeed, I am struck by the irony of our respective positions. He seems to argue that, while the Field Army loyalty system apparently (according to my statistics) had little demonstrable impact on elite assignments before the Cultural Revolution, the same system apparently (according to his statistics) helps clarify factional behaviour within the PLA during and after the Cultural Revolution. The irony of this is doubled since the statistical evidence which I now have available argues that “the old boy net” of the Field Armies actually had a diminishing impact on the domestic politics of China in the late 1960s. By then the Military Region as a geo-political unit had replaced the Field Army as a temporary focus of individual and collective PLA loyalties.

It is remarkable how little is known about current contraceptive practice, family planning, and population growth in the People's Republic of China. Since so little is published by the Chinese themselves - virtually nothing since the mid 1960s - nearly all western literature on these topics comes from professional “China-watchers” (primarily social scientists) and from occasional first hand reports of travellers. This latter group has not included experts in contraception and family planning nor, with one notable exception, have physicians who have recently written on medicine in China addressed themselves to the topic of fertility control, so that, until now, hardly anybody seems to have bothered about “contraceptive hardware” especially of the sophisticated type such as steroid oral contraceptives. Yet this is precisely the area where one could gain a real insight into Chinese chemical and clinical competence. Indeed, if production figures of such contraceptives could be ascertained, this would be the first hard numerical evidence about the extent of contraceptive practice in the People's Republic. I am convinced that, at this stage, it is impossible to write a definitive treatise on contraceptive practice in China. The country is too large, national statistics are unavailable, many areas are not yet open to foreigners and the extent of contraceptive usage - qualitative and quantitative - is still very uneven. The current need is for individual reports by professionally qualified observers citing data which, as far as possible, are backed up by hard facts. Once a sufficient number of such studies has appeared, then the time might be ripe for someone, ideally a Chinese author, to discuss the topic authoritatively from a national perspective.

Different currents appeared to be at play in the political events of the quarter, with many of the trends being unclear or only barely discernible. One expected event which did not take place was the convening of the National People's Congress; the absence of which is also giving grounds for believing that many political problems remained unsolved. While it appeared, particularly in the field of foreign relations, that the post-10th Congress leadership, dominated by Chou En-lai and including in the second rank many of those prominently abused during the Cultural Revolution, remained firmly in control, there also appeared to be a re-emergence of some of the ideological formulations of the Cultural Revolution. The slogan “going against the tide is a Marxist-Leninist principle,” which had been attributed to Mao during the 10th Congress in August, was frequently repeated, although with markedly different emphasis in different provinces, and the war-cry of the Cultural Revolution, “to rebel is justified,” reappeared, although without national prominence. Some of the more abstruse press discussion even suggested the possibility that Chou En-lai himself was under pressure despite the apparent dominance and security of his position.

During March 1973, I was part of a study tour visiting, as is common with such groups, a variety of units in China. My own particular subject is education and I was therefore particularly interested in the various educational institutions we visited as a group: such as the Canton Medical College, Peking University, Nanking University, Futan University, Canton Province Teachers’ Training College and middle and primary schools. At Nanking and Futan universities I was also able to have discussions, separately from the main group, on purely educational issues