The policy declaration and the appeal to the peoples of the world adopted last December by the Moscow conference of eighty-one Communist parties mark the end of one phase in the dispute between the leaderships of the ruling parties of China and the Soviet Union—the phase in which the followers of Mao for the first time openly challenged the standing of the Soviet Communists as the fountain-head of ideological orthodoxy for the world movement. But the “ideological dispute” which began in April was neither a sudden nor a self-contained development: it grew out of acute differences between the two Communist Great Powers over concrete diplomatic issues, and it took its course in constant interaction with the changes in Soviet diplomatic tactics. Hence the total impact of that phase on Soviet foreign policy on one side, and on the ideology, organisation and strategy of international Communism on the other, cannot be evaluated from an interpretation of the Moscow documents alone, but only from a study of the process as a whole, as it developed during the past year on both planes.

In our third issue, Lord Lindsay of Birker reviewedFeng Pao Shih Nien, an account of the Communist Chinese régime given by a leader of the China Democratic League who had co-operated with it until 1956 when he fled to Hong Kong. Since then, the book has appeared, reduced in size, in an English translation entitledTen Years Of Storm. In his review, Lord Lindsay indicated the main points of interest in Mr. Chow's work. Here we print, with the kind permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, two eyewitness accounts from the book. The first describes an episode during the 1951 campaign against counter-revolutionaries; the second is even more personal, telling as it does of the attacks made on Mr. Chow himself during the “Three-Anti Movement” against waste, corruption and bureaucracy in 1952.

Throughout Asia agriculture is still the largest single economic sector and the village is the principal form of human society. Outside Japan on the Pacific and Israel on the Mediterranean shores of the Asian continent the villages provide the homestead and determine the way of life of three-quarters to four-fifths of the population, and as a rule two-thirds to three-quarters of the working people are engaged in agricultural pursuits. Villagers not occupied in this way usually earn their living by processing, financing and trading the products of their communities. The town dwellers, rapidly increasing in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the total population, are rarely far removed geographically and in their mental make-up from their ancestors. As much as two-thirds of their personal expenditure is spent on foodstuffs and thus a substantial portion of urban incomes flows back to the countryside.

This paper attempts to develop some hypotheses concerning Communist China's political strategy toward the Asian area, with particular reference to the function in this strategy of neutralism. I have chosen November 1957 as the initial date for the period to be examined in the belief that a major shift in the overall Chinese line on both domestic and international problems took place at or about this time. At the root of this shift was the Chinese conviction that a decisive shift in the world balance of power, symbolised by Sputnik I, had occurred. I take this Chinese estimate to be genuine and to provide the essential standpoint from which all problems of foreign political strategy have been evaluated by the Chinese for the past three years.

A young girl was walking along the road to Hung-wu-chen, the road which led to market. You would say she was about seventeen or eighteen, and clasped in her arms she carried a white hen. Trotting by her side was a little girl of seven or eight who had come along to buy some little cakes and see what was going on. They were sisters, and their names were Kai-kai and Eh-eh. The sisters talked as they went.

During the Yenan period the Chinese Communists built up a literature as they built up a party organisation and an army: as an instrument of policy, fashioned in accordance with Marxist principles. Like the organisation and like the army, the literature served the needs of the time. Plays, poems, stories, novels, ballads, reportages flowed in profusion from professional writers emerged from Kuomintang jails; from trainees of the Lu Hsün Academy in Yenan itself; from farmers and soldiers who after initial success were welcomed into the ranks of “art workers.” These writings whipped up popular support for the new government and established flesh-and-blood examples of behaviour-patterns for the new society. More effectively than any textbook of theory, they gave instruction in practical Communism.

The third Congress of China's Literary and Art Workers, the first since the Hundred Flowers Campaign, was held in Peking from July 22 to August 13 “to review and assess” the literary and artistic achievements in the years between 1953 and 1960, “summarise and exchange experience, further define the road of development of socialist art and literature, and consider the tasks to be faced in the coming years.” The presence of Liu Shao-ch'i, Chou En-lai, and other political leaders and the large space which the People's Daily devoted to the meeting indicated its importance. Of the 2,300 delegates there were professionals and amateurs working in local governments and the services and from them a praesidium of over 180 members was elected before the long speeches on the opening day began. Kuo Mo-jo, as the President of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, first spoke a few words of welcome and then went on to outline the circumstances under which the Congress was convoked and the general political lines along which China's art and literature had been and would be developing. These lines were repeated once more, and elaborated, by Lu Ting-yi, Director of the Party's Propaganda Department and Deputy Premier, who represented the Party and the Government, and subsequently they were to be repeated many times over. The third speaker on the opening day to recite them was Chou Yang, Vice-President of the Federation and a Deputy Director of the Party's Propaganda Department, who also laid down six tasks for the Congress.

In terms of his impact on the young intelligentsia of China, particularly in the 1930s, and of the emotional symbolism as patriot and reformer with which his name is charged, Lu Hsün (1881–1936) was the most powerful figure in modern Chinese letters. For the last seven years of his life he was openly identified with Communist-led left-wing cultural movements in China. Today he is honoured by the Chinese Communist Party as the great cultural hero of the Chinese Revolution. His homes have become museums, jiis tomb a shrine. He is presented as a Communist in everything but name.