Maoist ideology and policy imposed on the realities of China's economic backwardness and the scarcities resulting therefrom have produced a peculiar and sharply contrasting pattern of development during the past two decades. The differences in economic performance were so marked – characterized by rapid expansion in the 1950s and stagnation in the 1960s – that it almost seems as though one were dealing with economies in two entirely different settings, perhaps even in two different countries.

On 15 January 1949 Tientsin fell to Chinese communist forces. As the first of the major treaty ports captured by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and with a population of over 1·8 million, it presented its new rulers with a vast array of complex problems, considerably greater than any they had previously encountered. One of the most important of these was the question of how to deal with the various socio-economic groups which dominated Tientsin society at the time of Liberation. Tientsin is a particularly useful case study in this respect, for not only was it the first major metropolis where strategies had to be devised to cope with this problem, but also the solutions worked out in Tientsin frequently served as models for other areas. Within Tientsin, perhaps the most powerful type of social organization was the secret society. This article begins with a brief survey of the general social situation, to put the secret societies into their proper context; it then details the Chinese Communist Party's strategy for handling Tientsin's secret societies and the problems which it encountered.

“Kremlinological” approaches to the study of contemporary Chinese politics are sometimes criticized for seeming to embody the “rather crude view of politics being concerned with factional strife and power politics.” Certainly, for most politicians most of the time, it would be wrong as well as cynical to regard “power” as being the ultimate goal. On the other hand, few would deny that politics does, in part, involve factional strife and power politics, and some political scientists believe that political behaviour may be best explained through a focus on the play of power. Thus, Joseph Schlesinger explains certain aspects of American politics by what he calls “ambition theory”: “A politician's behavior is a response to his office goals.” Anthony Downs works out a good deductive explanation of the behaviour of political parties in a democracy by starting with the hypothesis that politicians act in a rational manner, espousing ideologies and policies which enable them to maintain or expand their power. The point of these hypotheses is not that politicians are an unusually venal race of men; the hypotheses do not purport to be accurate descriptions of political motivations. Rather, the assertion is that whatever the ultimate motives of political actors, an approach which hypothesizes that they will behave as though power were their goal does yield helpful and concise explanations of their behaviour. This article about the political career of one Chinese politician, T'ao Chu, from 1956 through 1966, will attempt to see how far hypotheses concentrating on “pure power” provide a useful explanation of events in comparison with those which give more weight to stated political opinions.

During the Cultural Revolution, “Party life” (tang ti sheng-huo) was temporarily interrupted when leading members of Communist Party organizations at all levels were called (or “dragged”) out to defend themselves against the criticisms of revolutionary mass factions. As these issues were resolved, new coalitions formed and Party organs were carefully restructured to reflect the new distribution of power. The analysis here is of the 158 secretaries and deputy secretaries elected by the new provincial committees of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) between 4 December 1970 and 24 August 1971. It yields some unexpected findings.

The machine-building industry covers a very wide field: rolling stock for railroads, blast furnaces for new iron and steel complexes, trucks and tractors for agriculture, bicycles, radios, clocks and thermos bottles for personal use, not to mention thousands of other commodities. An interest in any of these things or in more aggregate measures such as the volume of construction or the growth of industry, presupposes an interest in the machine-building industry. As it was put in the first Five-Year Plan, “The machine-building industry is the key to the technological transformation of [the] national economy.”

Since August 1966, apart from the scattered reports of a few visitors, the western world has seen nothing substantial of Buddhism in China. In this field, as in many others, the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution brought an almost total eclipse. But today Buddhism is beginning to re-emerge. There are two principal signs of this: in Peking, the Chinese Buddhist Association is starting to function again; and, throughout the country, a number of Buddhist monasteries are once more open to visitors. In addition, there are numerous minor indications: Peking University, for example, is planning a course on Chinese Philosophy which would include lectures on the history of Buddhism; Buddhist art treasures are on display in many of the recently re-opened museums; Mao Tse-tung is said to have patterned his calligraphy on that of a Buddhist monk in Hunan; and handicraft factories are once again producing ivory Kuan-yins and miniature pagodas for export.

When a memorial service was held in Peking on 14 December 1972 for the deceased Teng Tzu-hui, member of the Central Committee (CC) of the Chinese Communist Party and formerly Vice-Premier and Director of the Party's Rural Work Department, among those present to pay their last respects were a dozen or so veteran cadres making their first known public appearance for several years. Likewise, some 30 ranking civilian and army officials appeared publicly for the first time since the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution at a Peking reception given by the Ministry of Defence on the eve of Army Day, 31 July 1972. These men were among the victims of the Cultural Revolution – they were accused of a variety of serious political crimes, humiliated in public, and dismissed from their posts in the Party, government, or army. However, their appearance in public now, even on such purely ceremonial occasions, serves to indicate that they have been restored to good political standing. Some of them have already been assigned to new posts, but the present positions of most others have not yet been revealed.

So little detailed information on the Chinese economy is available, even in the present relatively relaxed atmosphere, that readers of The China Quarterly may well be interested to hear about the attempt of Mr G. Hidasi, an East European “China-oriented economist,” to give his own account on the basis of data available to him. Mr Hidasi published his findings last year in the journal sponsored by the Academy of Sciences in Budapest.1 In his paper, he not only gives his assessment of China's economic performance from 1952 to 1970, but even ventures to guess what things will be like by the end of 1975: a unique undertaking for a foreigner who does not seem to have been in direct contact with Chinese economic reality. Like many other commentators, Mr Hidasi admits to suffering from a lack of data on targets planned and results achieved and he does not claim to have had any access to information other than that generally available to those interested in Chinese affairs. Nor does he say which of the internationally available sources, such as, for instance, the American Congressional reports or the volumes published under the auspices of the American Social Science Research Council, he has consulted. Indeed, the lack of a list of sources used somewhat weakens the author's otherwise interesting and complex “correlation calculations.” Nevertheless, they certainly merit a close examination and a comparison with communist and non-communist compilations of a similar kind.