Ever since it first raised the standard of revolt in Japanese-occupied French Indochina, the Viet-Minh régime has devoted an inordinate amount of time and attention to problems of local government and administration. The emphasis was just as apparent in its first Basic Law of 1945 as in the latest organic act of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which went into effect in 1960, and in the manifold supplementary statutes promulgated in the interim to implement the constitutional provisions. This obvious concern on the part of Ho Chi Minh's leadership with the instrumentalities of local rule may be explained by reference to two different, though closely related, sets of considerations.

Paradoxically, the contemporary phase of China's development under Communism is at once an extreme form of Westernisation and a partial reversion to traditional patterns. The totalitarian character of the present regime is not only reminiscent of the ancient autocratic order but is attributable to that tradition for its acceptance and acquiescence. On the ideological front, the state of confusion of thought, compounded by almost a century's cultural dislocation, has been brought to an abrupt end, with the promulgation of Marxism-Leninism as the state ideology which, though antithetic to Confucian orthodoxy in every essential way, is equally pervasive. Inasmuch as the ideological ‘reconditioning of the Chinese nation is first and foremost an educational task, education has become the exclusive concern of the Communist state. Moreover, within the Marxian ideological framework, the pursuit of concrete national goals requires the education of the Chinese people. Hence there are two major aspects in the study of Chinese education under Communism: Fundamental principles and actual implementation; in short, theory and practice.

For more than a decade Western policy towards revolutionary China has been dominated by the attitude which the United States adopted in early 1950, before the Korean war broke out. This attitude arose out of conditions prevailing in the United States rather than in the Far East. Almost at once American policy lost any flexibility it might otherwise have had, when the Chinese intervened in the Korean war, an event which might have been avoided altogether if the American posture towards China had been different.

A unique view of the Sino-Soviet dispute may be had from Belgrade. Yugoslavia is at once on the side-lines of the affair, but in another sense is vitally concerned. Since the League of Yugoslav Communists “codified” Titoism in 1958 in its new, revised programme, the Chinese Communists have become the main critics of their Yugoslav comrades and thereby—obliquely—of Soviet policies as well. It was an interesting development of this that when Moscow mobilised its satellites and Communist Parties against the Chinese “dogmatists,” the time came for Belgrade to reply to Chinese attacks, siding in the main with the Kremlin. In this Yugoslav counter-attack against their Chinese critics, a book by Edvard Kardelj, Yugoslav Vice-President, Socialism and War, A Survey of Chinese Criticism of the Policy of Co-existence, has played a key role. It is a document of considerable importance, and through it we are able to see much more clearly the basic differences in the Communist camp. The revelations of the Sino-Soviet dispute in the documents, now in the hands of Western governments, correspond closely to Kardelj's assertions.

During the past several years, changes have occurred within the Communist bloc which have led to important institutional and political developments. A prominent example of these changes has been the shift in economic and political ties which characterised Albania's relations with the Soviet Union. The Albanians have joined with the Chinese to form the first apparently successful fraction within the Communist world despite great geographic separation and strong Russian coercion. Notwithstanding harsh Russian political and economic pressure, the leaderships of China and of Albania have persisted in their rigidity. It remains to be seen what factors led to this unusual entente within an international movement which China and Albania have continuously maintained must be characterised by “steel-like unity.” For ironically, through their actions, they have definitely weakened that unity. It is the purpose herein to describe what issues and events in Soviet-Albanian relations caused Albania to turn to the CPR for major political and economic support, as well as to show how the accession of a small ally in Eastern Europe has proved to be of importance to the Chinese.

The international advance of Communism in our time is in no small measure due to the apparent flexibility with which Marxist and Leninist concepts have been applied—often with startling selectivity—to the problems of the newly emergent and underdeveloped countries of the world. While generally and carefully observing all strictures against “revisionism” and “subjectivism,” Communist leaders in these new nations dip with ease into the reservoir of the thought of Marx and Lenin and its practitioners for a justification of their particular tactics, pointing out that Communist thought itself invites flexibility and adaptability. Stalin could quote with approval Lenin's dictum that “We do not regard Marxist theory as something complete and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the cornerstone of the science which Socialists must further advance in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life.”

On December 26, 1961, Mao Tse-tung, master and master-mind of the Communist Party of China for the past quarter century, reached the age of sixty-eight. While der Alte in Peking still appears reasonably durable, he has nevertheless reached the stage in his career where the succession problem may soon pass from the sphere of speculation to that of political reality. Well aware of the intra-party struggle in Moscow following Stalin's death, Mao Tse-tung has already taken steps to avoid internecine strife in China. Practically speaking, he has made his selection.

In the general history of the social sciences we assume that the marriage between sociology and anthropology comes late, having been preceded by a long courtship. China does not fit this pattern. Almost as soon as the social sciences were established there anthropology and sociology were intertwined—to be disentangled in a strange way when the Communists arrived. To avoid a tedious recitation of evidence let me call just one witness, a scholar whose later career in the United States makes his testimony underline the Chinese paradox. Writing in China in 1944 Francis L. K. Hsu says: “In this paper. the word sociology is used synonymously with the term social anthropology. Few serious Chinese scholars today maintain the distinction between the once separate disciplines. Sociologists teach anthropology in our universities as a matter of course, just as scholars with distinctively anthropological background lecture on sociology.”

The distinguished Chinese scholar Hu Shih died on February 24. Born in 1891 and educated at Cornell and Columbia, Dr. Hu will always be remembered as the apostle of the literary revolution that led to the replacement of classical Chinese by the vernacular (pai-hua) as the literary medium. During the twenties and thirties, he held important academic posts including that of Dean of the College of Arts at the National Peking University during 1930–37. During much of the war (1938–42), he was his country's ambassador in Washington, but later returned to academic life as Chancellor of the Peking National University (1945–49). A disciple of Dewey, Dr. Hu had remained faithful to liberalism and pragmatism when many of his colleagues turned to Marxism, and when the Communists took over he left China. Because of their great influence, his ideas were selected by the Communists as a prime object of attack during the early fifties in their campaign to remould the intellectuals. After living in the United States for a number of years, Dr. Hu settled in Formosa where he was appointed President of the Academia Sinica in 1958.

For the past twelve years relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China have remained in an almost rigid posture of hostility. One can point to a few minor accommodations since the beginning of ambassadorial talks, but there have been no signs of development towards even the increased contacts and less ubiquitous hostility that now characterise relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

There are a variety of agencies engaged in elementary education in Communist China. Besides the regular elementary schools for children, there are adult schools of elementary grade and spare-time elementary schools for youth as well as older people; there are winter schools in the rural areas, worker-peasant schools, and various kinds of literacy classes. In view of limited space, this article will deal only with the regular elementary schools. Kindergartens and nursery schools are not included in the discussion.

The divergence of policy between Britain and the United States over the recognition of Communist China is now twelve years old. In the spring of 1950 nobody could have anticipated that it would go so deep or last so long. When the British Government transferred de jure recognition as the Government of China from the Kuomintang régime still holding out in Formosa to the new Communist authority which by victory in the civil war had gained control of the whole Chinese mainland, it was not considered in London to be an act contrary to American policy because it was understood that the American Government would do the same after a short interval of time. The policy of the Truman Administration, after the failure of the ill-conceived Marshall Mission, had been one of disengagement from the Chinese civil war; it was in accordance with this line that the War Department obstructed the delivery to the National Government of the arms voted by Congress in the China Aid Bill of 1948. When the Kuomintang régime collapsed on the mainland, the American Government made it clear that it would take no action to preserve its remnant in Formosa; the Secretary of State declared that America's “defence perimeter” lay in Japan, Okinawa and the Philippines, excluding Formosa and South Korea. No objection was raised in Washington to the British Government's intention to give de jure recognition at an early date, but it was hinted that because of the domestic political situation the United States would have to wait until the mid-term Congressional elections of 1950 were safely over.

The policies of containment and of liberation were based on the premise that there is a united Soviet bloc. The purpose of containment was to prevent Soviet expansion; the purpose of liberation to roll back Communist frontiers. These policies have ceased to be relevant for the sixties. Today, the unity of the Communist camp is being strained by the increasingly open Sino-Soviet dispute.

In order to understand the policy of the United States towards China it is necessary to go back to die Chinese civil war. It is at this point that the confusion over ‘the real issue obscured the thinking and frustrated the policies of the United States. When it became obvious that the Nationalist régime was unable to cope with the revolutionary situation even if supported by American arms and advice, only two courses, which General Wedemeyer's report of 1947 clearly envisaged, were logically open to American policy. One was military intervention on such a scale as to be sufficient not only to crush the Communist armies but also to keep discontent permanently in check. Military intervention of this kind would have entailed military and political commitments of incalculable magnitude. This course of action was rejected by the framers of the United States' foreign policy on the advice, among others, of the then-Secretary of State, George Marshall.