For the most part, the history of Communist Party activity in Guangxi before 1949 is one of modest success in difficult circumstances. Guangxi was the home base of one of the most formidable military factions of the Kuomintang. In association with Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), provincial leaders Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi and Huang Shaoxiong – the “Guangxi Clique” – played a major part in planning and executing the April 1927 Party purge and thereafter, throughout the Republican era, proved bitter opponents of communism.

This paper surveys the process of discursive contestation by intellectual agents in Hong Kong that fostered a counter-public sphere in China's offshore. In the post-war era, Chinese exiled intellectuals leveraged the colony's geopolitical ambiguity and created a displaced community of loyalists/dissenters that supported independent publishing venues and engaged in the cultural front. By the 1970s, homegrown and left-wing intellectuals had constructed a hybrid identity to articulate their physical proximity to, yet social distance from, the Chinese nation-state, as well as to appropriate their sense of belonging to the city-state, through confronting social injustice. In examining periodicals and interviewing public intellectuals, I propose that this counter-public sphere was defined first by its alternative voice, which contested various official discourses, second by its multifaceted inclusiveness, which accommodated diverse worldviews and subjectivities, and third by its critical platform, which nurtured social activism in undemocratic Chinese societies. I differentiate the permissive conditions that loosened constraints on intellectual agencies from the productive conditions that account for their penetration and diffusion. Habermas's idealized public sphere framework is revisited by bringing in ideational contestation, social configuration and cultural identity.

Asian economies have long pegged their exchange rates to the US dollar and used the dollar in international transactions. The increasing importance of intra- and extra-regional trade, together with the latest financial crisis and the adoption of a single currency in Europe, raises the question of forming an international monetary union in Asia.

For much of the past half-century, Taiwan's development has been inextricably tied to the drama of the Chinese civil war and the Cold War in Asia. Both the government on Taiwan and many of its supporters abroad have sought to link the island's history with that of the mainland. The result has been partially to obscure the distinctive history of Taiwan and, with this, to ignore factors which have decisively shaped the development of the island. The bulk of the papers in this volume seek to contribute to the ongoing efforts of scholars in Taiwan and abroad to illuminate the early 20th-century portion of this history and to join it to discussions of the post-war evolution of the island.

The following note was originally intended to be part of our Lu Xun symposium (in issue No. 91). Tang Tao, a disciple of Lu Xun in the latter's last years, is now Research Fellow at the Institute of Literature, CASS – Editor.

We can be grateful that Edgar Snow once wrote, in his straightforward uncompromising style, a book about himself. He called it Journey to the Beginning. At a later point in the book he returned (briefly) to talk about his origins, but the “beginning” (Chapter One, line one) was: “When I first reached Shanghai. …”

The spectacular rise of Wang Hung-wen, who was elected as second Vice-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the Tenth Party Congress in August 1973 and now officially ranks number three in the Party hierarchy behind only Chairman Mao Tse-tung and the first Vice-Chairman, Chou En-lai, has aroused a great deal of speculation. The biographical sketch below is an attempt to consider, and answer where possible, some of the questions raised about his personal and political background.

Taiwan entered the international spotlight in 1996. No longer seen as just an economic powerhouse and diplomatic dilemma, the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROCOT) caught international attention in two new dimensions: politics and security. In March the ROCOT's first ever direct presidential election took place against the backdrop of unprecedented military coercion from the People's Republic of China (PRC). The world watched nervously as Taiwan's presidential candidates campaigned while Chinese missiles landed near the island's two major ports and air and naval forces of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) held live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait.

Until recent events so rudely contradicted them, the Nationalists officially regarded Mao Tse-tung et al. as a puppet government whose strings were pulled from Moscow; the Communists, for their part, have found it equally convenient to look at the Nationalists as a rebellious local government suffering under American “occupation.” However, in spite of the often renewed vows of one side to eliminate the other a sporadic dialogue has gone on between Peking and Taipei. This is not so surprising when one remembers the many short honeymoons which have occurred during the oft-renewed marriage of political convenience between the Nationalists and the Communists.

The years 1927 and 1928 are crucial in the history of the Chinese Communist Movement. But because of the lack of primary source material in the past, these years have not received adequate attention from scholars, and therefore have not been well understood. In contrast, the years up to 1927 have received extensive scholarly treatment, because of the availability of key policy documents for the Communist movement during that period. Similar conditions apply concerning the study of the movement beginning in 1930. Rich primary materials exist illuminating internal policy debates and political struggles that helped shaped Communist programmes and actions during those later years.