The question of who will succeed Mao Tse-tung is a fascinating and important question. The related question of the composite group of leaders which will emerge in about a decade is, if less fascinating, of at least equal importance, particularly given the increasing complexities of an industrialising society on the China mainland.

Are we actually nearing a period when the present hierarchy will begin to fade away? Seemingly we are, as a quick flashback to 1949 will illustrate. When the Chinese Communists came to power thirteen years ago, they were rightfully considered a young group of leaders. Their triumphant general in the field, Lin Piao, was just over forty, Chou En-lai just over fifty, and Mao himself in his mid-fifties. Among his international peers, Mao was fifteen years younger than Stalin, eleven younger than Attlee, and almost ten younger than Truman. To emphasise their youth hi another way, only two men among the forty-four elected as full Central Committee (CQ members hi 1945 died a natural death from that time until 1960.

Anyone who has been scanning the news sections of the world press over the past few months must have come across headlines proclaiming Peking's “revived birth control bid” and the “renewal of the birth control campaign in Communist China.” The implication, as suggested by most of the articles, is that since China has suffered a series of grave agricultural reverses she is finally coming to her senses and again instituting controls over fertility. Has there recently been a change in the régime's attitude with respect to the population problem, and are the present measures likely to produce significant results in the rate of growth of China's population?

Let us briefly review some of China's population policies over the past ten years. The initial jubilation over the results of the 1953 census, showing a population of almost 600 million on the Chinese mainland, was gradually modified to concern over the economic and social implications of both the size and the rate of growth of this population. The official propaganda, however, never admitted the economic problems inherent in a rapidly growing population, and the birth control campaign which started slowly in late 1954 and 1955 stressed the health and educational advantages of having a small family. After the campaign reached its peak in the middle of 1957 and the early part of 1958, it began to lose its impetus; and by the autumn of that year it became obvious that Communist China had reversed its recently introduced policy of birth control, at the same time introducing the communes and the “great leap forward.” The new policy proclaimed a severe labour shortage and attacked all proponents of controlled fertility as Malthusians and rightists. The labour shortage, proclaimed in 1958 as an excuse for the reversal of the birth control policy, became a reality in 1959, when the overzealous cadres created an artificial labour crisis by conscripting millions of men into a variety of mass projects.

When the Chinese Communists spelled out their policy of regional autonomy for ethnic minorities, it appeared to many observers that a significant break with the past had been made. Throughout China's modern history, central governments sought to amalgamate the various ethnic minorities with the dominant Han group. Now, hi 1949, it seemed as if, for the first time, a central Chinese government was determined to end this process of sinification and to give its non-Chinese subjects a degree of autonomy. This self-rule, as outlined hi official documents of the Peking regime, included the administrative, economic, educational and cultural spheres of life.

In Chinese Communist fashions, Confucius seems to be “in” this year. Earlier, certainly in the nineteen-twenties, revolutionaries were quite ready to see him out, and even now, in the first decade or so of the People's Republic, there are plenty of people with little patience for the sage of the old intelligence. Indeed, “despise the old” and “preserve the national heritage” have been chasing each other down the mneteen-fifties and incipient sixties, and contemporary historians, hi this area, should perhaps not dwell too seriously on trends pro and anti, so foreshortened, if discernible at all, in the foreground of our age. What seems historically significant is the range, not the petty successions, of recent Communist options in evaluating Confucius. For all the possibilities are equally modern, all plausible and consistent within a new Chinese view —an essentially anti-Confucian view informing even the pro-Confucius minds.

The trading potential of China, with its population of some 650 million people, has for long been a subject of absorbing interest, and never more so than in recent years, with the rapid expansion of economic growth which has been brought about since the establishment of the People's Republic.

The policies of the Chinese Government have led to drastic changes in the orientation of its international trade, in its administration and to notable modifications in the nature of both imports and exports. These have all derived primarily from the change to a Communist Government and to its implementation of the corresponding political and economic systems.

Anyone who had hoped that the proceedings of the National People's Congress would shed more light on China's current problems and future prospects than previous pronouncements had done, could console himself after its adjournment with the thought that he had been right in his suspicions, after all. By convening behind closed doors, the Congress avoided having to provide information on the state of the economy in the customary detail and thus merely reinforced the common speculation that all was not well or all was ill, depending on one's predilections.

In an “interim appraisal” of Peking's interest in Laos, which appeared in The China Quarterly last autumn, I expressed the view that China's security would be better served by the creation of a neutral buffer state in Laos than by the imposition of a Communist one, which would tempt the United States to intervene. Though we are here, of course, in the realm of reasoned speculation, recent events have seemed to confirm both halves of this proposition. That the Chinese Communists believe a neutral Laos would be the best way of getting the Americans out is suggested by their readiness to accept some of the more controversial provisions for Laotian neutrality that were agreed on July 23 at the Geneva International Conference on Laos. That the danger, from Peking's point of view, of an American military intervention is a real one was shown in May when the United States decided to strengthen its force in Thailand. Various other developments, however, suggest that the Chinese are taking an increasingly direct interest in Laos.

The present condition of Communist China raises a political question of great theoretical and practical importance. The question is whether there are limits to the hardships which any government can safely inflict upon the governed.