There is one substantial difference between Chinese and Soviet attitudes toward the spread of nuclear weapons. From the point of view of the Soviet Union, China is basically an Nth country and a potentially very powerful one at that. As a consequence, the Soviet position on the spread of nuclear weapons has been strongly influenced by the development of the Chinese nuclear programme and by the increasing cleavages in Sino-Soviet relations in recent years. For the Chinese, however, the question of nuclear diffusion refers only to the possible spread of nuclear weapons beyond the group of five powers which presently possess at least some nuclear capability. And although there are several additional powers in the international arena with nuclear potential that might eventually pose problems for China, none constitutes the immediate challenge which China herself does to the Soviet Union.

In July 1955 Mao Tse-tung made one of his rare public policy statements when he addressed party secretaries of provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions “on the question of co-operativisation.” It proved to be one of the most important speeches in recent Chinese history, terminating a dispute about the nature and timing of agricultural socialisation which had been going on inside the Chinese Communist Party for three years. Coming from Mao, this was not merely a contribution to the debate, but the final, authoritative pronouncement on what policy should be. Its impact was swift and dramatic. At that time only 16.9 million (14·2 per cent.) of the 120 million peasant families in China were members of co-operatives, almost all of which were semi-socialist in character. Hardly any fully socialist collectives existed. But between autumn 1955 and spring 1956, a “high tide of socialism in the countryside” transformed most of Chinese agriculture, replacing the traditional small privately-owned farms by large co-operatives and collectives. By May 1956,91·2 per cent. of China's rural households had joined co-operatives, 61·9 per cent. of them collectives.

During the heyday of the Hundred Flowers period the Chinese literary rebels sought their models outside China. They understood that, if liberalisation were to have any chance at all, it should reach China via the communist countries and not via the Western world. Therefore many Chinese writers studied Soviet literature, and made no secret of their admiration for those Soviet writers who had presented unorthodox views, or views that, though correct in the Soviet Union, seemed to be unorthodox in the Chinese context. Zoshchenko, Ehrenburg, Galina Nikolayeva, Ovechkin and Simonov were admired by the very Chinese writers who were later labelled as major “rightists,” such as Liu Pin-yen, Ch'in Chao-yang and Huang Ch'iu-yün. Several liberal Chinese writers also readily adopted the Soviet habit of extolling the Russian classics as literary models. Thus, in 1956, during the Chinese commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Dostoyevsky's death, one Chinese critic spoke of “humanism” (jen-tao-chu-i) as one of Dostoyevsky's contributions. Feng Hsüeh-feng praised the humanistic spirit of the old Russian literature and criticised contemporary Chinese works as untruthful. Hsiao Ch'ien, another major “rightist,” in an essay on short story writing advocated the style of Chekhov and I. A. Bunin. One dogmatic Party leader, moreover, was criticised by the non-conformists for having a low opinion of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.

One of the most notorious episodes in the history of the communist movement in Manchuria, and one that involved both the Chinese and the Korean Communists, was the so-called Min-sheng-t'uan incident of 1933–36. In today's North Korean régime, where some of the veterans of the Manchurian guerrilla activities hold positions of leadership, the incident is often cited as a prime example of incorrect handling of enemy infiltration of the revolutionary ranks. Many years after the incident Premier Kim Il-song stated: “The Japanese set up an anti-revolutionary organisation called the Minsaengdan and infiltrated its members into the revolutionary district in Chientao. The object of the scheme was, through this organisation, to estrange the Koreans from the Chinese and to incite the Koreans to fight among themselves. Temporarily deceived by the trick, [we] engaged in murders within our ranks and many innocent people were sacrificed.” Indeed, the incident had a grave impact upon the Korean Communists and eventually upon the communist movement in Manchuria as a whole.

From an economic point of view, a ration coupon can serve at least three purposes: it can control the movement of people from one place to another, thereby easing employment, housing and transportation problems; it can distribute basic necessities, such as foodstuffs, more evenly in times of scarcity; and it can shift purchasing power away from certain goods, thus helping to maintain stable prices on these goods during periods of inflationary pressure. However, while each of these goals can be analysed in a narrowly economic framework, it is important to consider their political consequences as well. Inflation, for example, may cause political discontent even before it brings about economic dislocation. Any consideration of Peking's rationing policies, therefore, must touch on both the economic and non-economic aspects of the problem.

For years, observers have been able to fit developments in Indonesia into the neat framework of a balance of forces between the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the army. The coup attempt of October 1, 1965, which came within a hair's breadth of effecting an irrevocable shift in this balance of forces in favour of the PKI, compels us to re-examine the validity of this frame of reference. The facts of the abortive conspiracy lead me to believe that the Sukarno-PKI relationship under-went a gradual qualitative change and, at some point prior to the illuminating flash of October, became the core of a political dynamo that was propelling the Indonesian revolution forward at an accelerating rate.