The opening of China to economic reforms from 1978 and subsequent political and social developments both in mainland China and in Taiwan have facilitated substantial reassessment of China's Republican era. The Republican years are seen by researchers increasingly as part of a continuous transition during which China modified its traditional society and adapted to new roles in world affairs - sometimes with considerable success. This special issue brings together recent studies of China's Republican era, the legacy of which can still be observed in current Chinese affairs

Although there is no detailed definitive Chinese Communist interpretation of the thinkers of the 100 Schools Period, this does not mean that one cannot isolate certain constants from which deviation is not permitted. The sayings of Marx-Engels and Mao Tse-tung which are directly relevant to the early thinkers, if not strictly about them, have obviously been the primary guidelines for the scholar in Communist China. Especially in the material produced since 1957, when relatively intensive study of the period began, one becomes aware of more specific trends in interpretation. With the basic tenets of Marx and Engels as tools for interpretation, it is axiomatic that understanding the class struggle of a given time is the key to understanding the thought of that time. The “contention” among the 100 Schools is taken to be a reflection of the intensity of class struggle in the Warring States Period. It is also axiomatic that the history of the struggle between progressive and reactionary forces is reflected in the enduring philosophical struggle between materialism and idealism. But the philosophical concepts associated with materialism and idealism are not native to China; nor are their Marxist definitions universally accepted in the history of Western philosophy. Therefore, in interpreting the thought of the 100 Schools Period, scholars most frequently cite Marx-Engels definitions as support for their own interpretations or to criticise those of others. Engels states that all those who take spirit as prior to the existence of the natural world and thus in the last analysis admit a creator (Old Testament variety or the more sophisticated Absolute Spirit of Hegel) belong in the idealist camp.

On the morning of 8 November 1977 I was given the opportunity to interview the director, Jen Chien-hsin, and another member of the Legal Affairs Department of the China Council for the Promotion of Foreign Trade. We discussed the Chinese legal system in general and some legal aspects of the law of foreign trade in particular

The publishing world, like everything else in China at the moment, manifests both signs of change and resistance to change. Some publishers are cautiously hopeful about the current reforms, others feel change is not happening fast enough, and yet others do not ally themselves with reform at all but would prefer to have more stringent controls. This field note will attempt, therefore, to offer a portrait of how Chinese publishing is organized at the moment with areas of likely change, as well as highlighting the relations between Chinese publishing establishments and their counterparts in the west.

China's nuclear detonation at Lop Nor has dramatised the last decade of advancement in Chinese Communist strategic thinking and weapons production: use of Uranium-235 suggests the availability of a uranium hexafluoride gaseous diffusion plant, aside from the plutonium-producing reactors already identified, and suggests the imminence of a Communist Chinese H-Bomb. The recent evidence of Chinese nuclear competence and speculation regarding the development of modern delivery systems underscore advances in strategic thought over the last decade. It is perhaps less obvious that the intellectual genesis of current weapons developments dates from the first decade of the nuclear era, when Chinese Communist leaders attempted to reconcile their concepts of nuclear warfare with Maoist revolutionary doctrines. Although public pronouncements between 1945 and 1955 emphasised the conservatism of Communist Chinese military strategy, they hinted at strategic innovations—regarding “tactical” nuclear and thermonuclear weapons—which may help to explain the priority, sacrifice and direction of China's weapons programme in more recent years.

On October 15, 1957, Communist China and the Soviet Union signed an agreement on new defence technology according to which the Soviet Union would supply China with technical data for manufacturing nuclear weapons. In May 1958 Foreign Minister Ch'en Yi told German correspondents in Peking that China would make atomic bombs. On June 20, 1959, the Soviet Union, according to China, unilaterally abrogated the 1957 agreements on weapons development. On July 31, 1963, China issued a statement denouncing the Moscow Partial Test Ban Treaty as “a big fraud to fool the people of the world.” On October 16, 1964, China announced that an atomic device had been exploded in western China and proposed that “a summit conference of all the countries of the world be convened to discuss the question of the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons.”

Between 28 January and 9 February 1978, the Toronto Symphony orchestra visited the People's Republic of China. This was the first time since the 1973 tour of the Philadelphia Orchestra that a western symphony orchestra had performed for concert hall audiences in Peking, Shanghai and Kwangchow, and for television audiences throughout China. The Canadian musicians gave China an impression of orchestral music abroad; they also took their own glimpse of the musical world in China. It was an unprecedented opportunity to see at first hand the state of China's musical culture since the repudiation of the “gang of four,” and in particular, to see the revitalization of China's national orchestra, the Central Philharmonic Society.

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.

In 1968, when I took over the editorship, The China Quarterly had already established itself as the leading English-language journal on China in the world. Great credit is due to the founder editor, Rod MacFarquhar, for this achievement. It was a time for consolidating that position of pre-eminence and giving the journal a firm academic basis. The stars were right. At the School of Oriental Studies in the University of London, the Contemporary China Institute was being set up under Stuart Schram, with generous support from the Volkswagen and Ford Foundations. The China Quarterly, with its new editor, moved from an upstairs room in Oxford Street to a modern office block near the University and then into the faded grandeur of Fitzroy Square.

Hsiung Hsiang-hui, Peking's Chargé d'Affaires in London, is one of the extremely few American-educated Chinese Communists. Now in his mid-forties, Hsiung comes from a large and well-to-do gentry family (his father was once a district judge) in which, as the second son, he bridled under the petty tyrannies of his elder brother. By the mid-1930s he was a student in one of China's finest universities, Tsinghua, where he first came into contact with left-wing elements. After the war broke out in 1937, he studied briefly in Changsha but then joined the First Army of Hu Tsung-nan, a top KMT general. After a year's schooling in the Central Cadets School in Sian, Hsiung became aide-de-camp to General Hu, a post he held from about 1940 to 1943. Hu began to suspect him of being a communist and, to get him out of the way, assigned him back to the Cadets School. Towards the end of the war Hsiung attended a training course established by Hu in preparation for taking over areas held by the Japanese. After this, Hsiung took and failed a government scholarship examination. But then Hu provided the necessary funds for Hsiung to study in the U.S.

During the period of the Readjustment China has faced numerous and difficult problems in the sphere of energy. The two greatest difficulties now confronting the Chinese are energy supply and energy transport. Even if we put aside for a moment the long-range aspects of these problems, the immediate issues are complex. At present energy investment is directed towards securing the supply in the long run, but while this is occurring shortages remain acute, and conservation and increased efficiency of utilization are critical.

Some 150 Germans in all served as advisers to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) in the decade between the Guomindang's Northern Expedition against the warlords (1927–28) and the end of the first year of Japan's full-scale invasion. Their importance to a government struggling to survive and modernize in the face of Japanese aggression and the threat of rural-based communism is recognized, and several studies describe the diplomacy and work of the unofficial mission at Nanking. But it is difficult in military as in civil reform to uncover how policies worked in practice. Chinese plans and pronouncements tended to gloss over contemporary realities, of which the most intractable were the persisting habits of warlordism within ex-warlord and even nominally Central armies. A cross-check of German, American, and British assessments with evidence from the Chinese side can indicate how genuine were the reform efforts, how influential the German officers, how intrusive warlord-style habits, and how impressive the results. I shall focus here on the neglected topics of German-directed officer education and troop training, and the much misunderstood German role in Chiang Kai-shek's strategy.

Among the minority of Communist Parties supporting China at the Moscow Conference last November was the Australian party. The feuds that have riven that Party since then illustrate the most damaging result for the Communist movement of the Sino-Soviet dispute—the end of the era of unique ideological authority.