By 1964 Mao Tse-tung had lost effective control over much of the Party hierarchy set up by his “successor,” and also over the state administrative apparatus… Liu Shao-ch'i and his like-minded comrades utilized the Mao cult in theory and slighted Maoism in practice… Mao was convinced that the people and Party rank and file were with him but were misled by his disloyal opposition. … Edgar Snow, “Aftermath of the Cultural Revolution,” in The New Republic, 10 April 1971.

Whatever may have been the objectives of the principal participants in the Cultural Revolution, there can be little doubt that they did not include what turned out to be, at least in the short term, the most striking and significant outcome of the upheaval: the rise of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to a pivotal position in China's power structure. Compelled to intervene in the political process when the disruptive effects of the struggle reached dangerous dimensions, the army gradually ascended to the commanding heights of political power in the provinces, and acquired a substantial voice in the policy-making councils of Peking. When the Ninth Congress of the Party finally met in April 1969 to write the epilogue to the Cultural Revolution, it was the PLA rather than the Party that held most of the key positions of power in China.

The theatrical life of the Chinese in recent years has closely reflected the evolution of Chinese society as a whole since the Cultural Revolution. Although the ninth Party Congress in April 1969 confirmed the success of the Maoist line established in the Cultural Revolution, deciding exactly how to apply that ideological system has not always been easy. Debate has continued in all sections of the community, and is reflected very clearly in the newspapers and media. Amid these debates enough concrete decisions have been reached to begin new cultural activity, largely suspended while the issues were being thrashed out during the Cultural Revolution, and with the passing of time the pace of the revival in the arts has quickened. The resurgence is based on Maoist theory, and it may conseqeuntly be useful to begin with a discussion of how the Chinese are formulating their ideas on what the theatre is all about.

So little detailed information on the Chinese economy is available, even in the present relatively relaxed atmosphere, that readers of The China Quarterly may well be interested to hear about the attempt of Mr G. Hidasi, an East European “China-oriented economist,” to give his own account on the basis of data available to him. Mr Hidasi published his findings last year in the journal sponsored by the Academy of Sciences in Budapest.1 In his paper, he not only gives his assessment of China's economic performance from 1952 to 1970, but even ventures to guess what things will be like by the end of 1975: a unique undertaking for a foreigner who does not seem to have been in direct contact with Chinese economic reality. Like many other commentators, Mr Hidasi admits to suffering from a lack of data on targets planned and results achieved and he does not claim to have had any access to information other than that generally available to those interested in Chinese affairs. Nor does he say which of the internationally available sources, such as, for instance, the American Congressional reports or the volumes published under the auspices of the American Social Science Research Council, he has consulted. Indeed, the lack of a list of sources used somewhat weakens the author's otherwise interesting and complex “correlation calculations.” Nevertheless, they certainly merit a close examination and a comparison with communist and non-communist compilations of a similar kind.

On 15 January 1949 Tientsin fell to Chinese communist forces. As the first of the major treaty ports captured by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and with a population of over 1·8 million, it presented its new rulers with a vast array of complex problems, considerably greater than any they had previously encountered. One of the most important of these was the question of how to deal with the various socio-economic groups which dominated Tientsin society at the time of Liberation. Tientsin is a particularly useful case study in this respect, for not only was it the first major metropolis where strategies had to be devised to cope with this problem, but also the solutions worked out in Tientsin frequently served as models for other areas. Within Tientsin, perhaps the most powerful type of social organization was the secret society. This article begins with a brief survey of the general social situation, to put the secret societies into their proper context; it then details the Chinese Communist Party's strategy for handling Tientsin's secret societies and the problems which it encountered.

Since August 1966, apart from the scattered reports of a few visitors, the western world has seen nothing substantial of Buddhism in China. In this field, as in many others, the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution brought an almost total eclipse. But today Buddhism is beginning to re-emerge. There are two principal signs of this: in Peking, the Chinese Buddhist Association is starting to function again; and, throughout the country, a number of Buddhist monasteries are once more open to visitors. In addition, there are numerous minor indications: Peking University, for example, is planning a course on Chinese Philosophy which would include lectures on the history of Buddhism; Buddhist art treasures are on display in many of the recently re-opened museums; Mao Tse-tung is said to have patterned his calligraphy on that of a Buddhist monk in Hunan; and handicraft factories are once again producing ivory Kuan-yins and miniature pagodas for export.