In the name of thought reform in Mainland China, there have been many campaigns against the ideas of non-communist Chinese thinkers. For the scale and vehemence of the campaigns against them, two targets have been conspicuous: Hu Shih and Liang Shu-ming. The former was an exponent of western liberal ideas; the latter of Chinese traditional values. One must assume that the influence of their ideas was still strong in the minds of the Chinese people, since only this can explain such extensive and intensive criticism.

On 3 August 1966 a brief dispatch was included in the English service of the New China News Agency. That day, it said, the Chinese Buddhist Association had given a banquet in honour of a group of visiting Japanese Buddhists, members of the Shingon sect, led by Juncho Onozuka. The day before they had joined in performing a religious ceremony at the principal Peking monastery; and the day after, 4 August, they were received by Kuo Mo-jo.

China's bitter population dilemma is clearly summarized in just one short statement from the People's Daily: “We insist on family planning, but generally speaking we think it is a good thing to have a large population.” For the past two decades China's population policy has been shrouded in secrecy, has been expressed only through Communist polemic and has suffered from apparent indecision and consequent vacillations. Official thinking on this subject is almost never expressed in direct statements and proclamations. It must be gleaned from casual remarks by Chinese leaders, from newspaper and magazine articles and official radio broadcasts, which usually discuss implementation but omit reference to the initial decision, and from visitors to China who describe the visible signs that suggest a particular policy is currently in effect.

Summing up the Campaign against the Enemy's 5th “Encirclement”* Resolutions of the Centre of the CCP Adopted by the Conference of the Politburo, Tsunyi, 8 January 1935 Having listened to Comrade X X's survey of the 5th “Encirclement” and Comrade X X X's supplementary report, the enlarged conference of the Politburo regards Comrade XX's survey as fundamentally incorrect.

As other analysts have suggested in different ways, the Cultural Revolution involves differences of emphasis among Chinese leaders over basic directional choices for the society at large: whether Maoist-style politics (or ideology) can continue to “take command” or must yield at least equal place to the practical problems and limitations involved in fixing priorities and setting goals; whether radical Maoism befits a China in transition or must be modified if China is to realize its historically based claim to great power status; or whether China must inevitably “change colour” or can remain ideologically “pure red” even in the throes of modernization.