When a memorial service was held in Peking on 14 December 1972 for the deceased Teng Tzu-hui, member of the Central Committee (CC) of the Chinese Communist Party and formerly Vice-Premier and Director of the Party's Rural Work Department, among those present to pay their last respects were a dozen or so veteran cadres making their first known public appearance for several years. Likewise, some 30 ranking civilian and army officials appeared publicly for the first time since the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution at a Peking reception given by the Ministry of Defence on the eve of Army Day, 31 July 1972. These men were among the victims of the Cultural Revolution – they were accused of a variety of serious political crimes, humiliated in public, and dismissed from their posts in the Party, government, or army. However, their appearance in public now, even on such purely ceremonial occasions, serves to indicate that they have been restored to good political standing. Some of them have already been assigned to new posts, but the present positions of most others have not yet been revealed.

During the Cultural Revolution, “Party life” (tang ti sheng-huo) was temporarily interrupted when leading members of Communist Party organizations at all levels were called (or “dragged”) out to defend themselves against the criticisms of revolutionary mass factions. As these issues were resolved, new coalitions formed and Party organs were carefully restructured to reflect the new distribution of power. The analysis here is of the 158 secretaries and deputy secretaries elected by the new provincial committees of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) between 4 December 1970 and 24 August 1971. It yields some unexpected findings.

This note discusses the current state of publishing in the People's Republic of China and the acquisition of Chinese-language materials by American libraries, with special reference to the factors which are likely to influence the future flow of materials from China. The subject is one about which no one can be very certain in his assessment, given the rather uncertain state of Chinese publishing during the last few years. Nevertheless, some speculations are possible on the basis of Peking's official announcements, a sampling of recent publications from China, and the way in which such publications have been made available to the West. What the future will hold, I believe, depends on two main factors. One, the extent to which publishing activities return to a pre-Cultural Revolution level, and second, the Chinese Government's policy with regard to library exchanges, the export of printed materials and to the purchase and export of such materials by visitors to China.

Since 1966, there have been no articles in the Chinese press about language reform and no specialist journals to provide an alternative forum for discussion. In 1972, however, the Party's leading political publication, Hung ch'i (Red Flag), carried in its April issue a letter on what had come to be seen as an almost taboo subject, by no less a personality than Kuo Mo-jo. This letter and its manner of publication are both of great interest. Language reform is clearly on the agenda for discussion once again and the letter enables one to look both at its more recent history and at its future development. Such is the importance of the letter that I have translated it in full and discuss it section by section (the text being distinguished by bold type), adding a commentary to each section, rather in the manner in which commentaries were added to classical Chinese texts.