For the past year (especially since last March), the Chinese Communist leadership has attempted to revive the “Hundred Flowers” campaign which, Party statements notwithstanding, ended in June of 1957. Yet this revival, and the “blooming and contending” which has issued from it, is basically different from the fierce, unabashed criticism heard briefly four years ago. In 1961, the Party is seeking what it had expected in 1957: academic contention and the gratitude of non-Party intellectuals for a small, measured relaxation—not political criticism. Party leaders have long been aware of the need to secure the co-operation of China's disenchanted intellectuals if industrialisation is to go forward at a rapid pace. However, current overtures are more studied and conservative than was the case in 1957 and, as such, reflect a more realistic Party assessment of its popular support. The differences between the 1957 “Hundred Flowers” and the revival are further shown by: 1. Party emphasis on ground-rules for the present campaign; 2. The strict separation of academic discussion from political discussion and ideological contention; 3. The response of the intellectuals.

There is little reason for thinking that the anti-rightist campaign of 1957–58, which closed the Hundred Flowers interlude, was undertaken in order to overcome an organised opposition in the central leadership of the Chinese Communist Party rather than to deal with a political situation that was clearly getting out of hand. The victims were either bourgeois intellectuals and members of the so-called “democratic parties” or communist officials of the second rank, for the most part provincial administrators. Their fate presumably strengthened the hand of the doctrinaires in the Party and weakened the will of the moderates to oppose the extravagances of the subsequent “great leap forward”; and there are doubtless many in China as well as the West who believe that Mao's personal involvement in the fiasco of liberalisation may have constituted the first stage in a process which would lead eighteen months later to his withdrawal from the chairmanship of the republic. The political repercussions were, however, long-term; the immediate effect of the change of line may have been to cement rather than undermine the solidarity of the leaders.

The reasons for the visit to Russia, Eastern Europe, and China last summer of a DRV (Democratic Republic of [North] Vietnam) mission led by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong and Chairman of the National Planning Board Le Thanh Nghi gave rise to some speculation in the West. The inclusion of Le Thanh Nghi suggested that it was connected with economic aid to the DRV, more particularly with aid for the carrying out of the extremely ambitious five-year plan, which was first announced during the third Congress of the Lao Dong (Communist) Party in September, 1960.

An energetic new intellectual élite is being moulded in Communist China's rapidly growing network of higher educational institutions. Some time from now members of this “new class” are expected to replace the distrusted old-style intellectual. Each year an increasing number of young men and women enter colleges and universities and, emerging four or five years later, take up responsible positions of leadership in the country's economic and intellectual life. Many phases in the training of the present-day Chinese student are still little known to us. Who are, after all, these new students in China's new universities? On what basis are they selected? Who does the selection and how? And, last but not least: why is selection necessary? In the following pages we shall attempt to find answers to some of these questions.

The purpose of this article is to describe the developments in rural trade following on the formation of the rural people's communes in 1958, but first it is necessary to say something about the events leading up to the situation in the summer of that year. This topic has been treated by the author at greater length elsewhere. A brief summary of certain points must, however, be made in order to sketch the background of the present subject.

Appended to this article are two excerpts from Lao She's writings. The first comprises most of a chapter from his first novel; the second is a brief sequence from one of his latest plays. Each is concerned to establish a character, a man who has found his niche in society. Each of these men is quite peripheral to the piece in which he appears, each is a humble creature anxious only to do right by his fellows. On Chao Number Four are lavished all the colourful touches which leap from the brush of a young writer glorying in invention; Wang Jen-te is sketched with the master's economy of line. But the greater contrast appears in the resolution of the two men's respective fates: Chao, pressed down by his own ingenuousness and the cupidity of others into the trough of the “old society” as a beast of burden; Wang Jen-te, proud recipient of a new dignity as chef de cuisine to a People's Commune!

Recently reports have filled the columns of the world Press suggesting that malnutrition or even starvation is widespread in the most populous country in the world. This is clearly a matter of far-reaching implications and no longer a subject for discussion only among scientists. The evidence available is scanty and far from conclusive. Reports remain conflicting, but they seem to indicate that malnutrition is not a general feature of the Chinese scene. Whereas Western observers have tended to conclude from sparse reports emanating from China that malnutrition may be widespread, the Chinese authorities have denied these reports and have rejected all offers of relief by voluntary organisations as based on misconceptions.

According to Po I-p'o (Chairman of the State Economic Commission), mainland China's steel output in 1960 amounted to 18·45 million metric tons. This output level shows an increase of 245 per cent, over 1957, or an annual average increase of 51 per cent, for the three-year period 1958–60. This latter rate is considerably higher than that achieved hi the First Five-Year Plan period. The purpose of this paper is to examine the major changes hi the steel industry which have made possible a higher growth rate since 1958, and the problems with which the industry has been confronted hi the course of expanding its output.

A quarterof the human race resides hi Communist China, the largest population under a single authority in the world, and it has been growing. No one is likely to quarrel with that statement. But there are differences of opinion over just how large the population of China is and how rapid its rate of growth. This article will not attempt to review the technical aspects of these differences or to set one view against another, but will try to indicate what the range of opinion is, how the differences arise, why they cannot presently be resolved, and what they mean for those who wish to use Chinese population data.

Although based on fragmentary data, analysis of employment in the six years 1953 to 1958 is of great interest for what it reveals of the relationships between urban working age, population growth, increasing non-agricultural employment, and Chinese Communist economic policies. The sharp reversal in 1958 of past trends in the growth of the urban population and non-agricultural employment has no parallel in the history of China or probably any other country. In a single year the earlier phenomenon of urban population steadily growing at an average rate far higher than that of nonagricultural or urban employment disappeared. In 1958 both nonagricultural and urban employment grew so much that a migration from countryside to town of unprecedented magnitude occurred in order to meet the increased demands for urban labour. Most curious of all, the connection between growth of the urban population and growth of non-agricultural employment, implicit in programmes of expansion of the non-agricultural branches of the economy undertaken by the Chinese Communists, appears to have been largely outside the scope of Marxist-Leninist concepts and of Communist economic planning.