The singular importance attached to the pedagogical functions of economics in socialist countries where the ruling Marxian ideology seeks to correlate each and every aspect of society's “superstructure” with the peculiarities of its “economic base” leads curiously, but logically, to a periodic negation and thrashing of economics itself.

On 26 June 1979 Peng Zhen, in a report to the Second Session of the Fifth National People's Congress, announced that as from 1 January 1980 Local Revolutionary Committees are to be replaced by local people's governments and the posts of provincial governors, mayors, chairmen of the autonomous regions, prefects of the autonomous prefectures and county heads restored accordingly.

Perhaps no other foreign policy area brought forth the emotional anti communism characteristic of the 1950s as did American relations with the People's Republic of China. The so–called “ loss of China ”issue beginning in 1949, for which the Republicans primarily blamed the Democrats, severely strained the bipartisan approach towards foreign policy. In addition, four years before he died in 1951, Republican foreign policy leader Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg excluded China policy from the area of bipartisan agreement, while his party's loyalty to the defeated Nationalists remained strong. Senator Joseph McCarthy's“communists–in– government” charges during the Korean War, when American forces were engaged in combat with the People's Liberation Army, further exacerbated relations between the Republican and Democratic parties, and between the legislative and executive branches of government. Ominously, the possibility of a preventive strike on the China mainland also became the focus of serious consideration and possible implementation during the Formosa Strait confrontation of 1954–55.

Between mid-1977 and mid-1979, the average annual rate of growth in Chinese industry fell below 5 per cent, and it appeared that the Chinese would not be able to fulfil the annual plan for 1979, especially in light industry.1 As it turned out, however, output surged in the second half of the year and the targets shown in Table 1 were met easily.

The single largest territorial issue explicitly in dispute between China and the Soviet Union is in the region of the Pamir Mountains-just north of Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan corridor. The nature of this dispute is important because it impinges on the ease with which major sources of tension between the two countries may be eliminated. Moreover, the potential resolutions of this issue have important geo-political implications for the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In 1979, at about the same time that the birth control campaign received renewed impetus, China released impressive data on demographic trends. If these and other more recent data are reliable, the decline of the natural increase rate has been both belated and spectacular. Contrary to what has been assumed the birth rate would seem to have reached its peak during the 1960s (43·6 per 1,000 in 1963). After a secondary peak in the late 1960s, it then declined precipitously during the 1970s, declining by almost half (46·7 per cent) over nine years (33·59 per 1,000 in 1970; 17·9 per 1,000 in 1979). The natural increase rate was, for its part, more than halved during the same period (25·95 per 1,000 in 1970; 11·7 per 1,000 in 1979).

The National Library of Beijing is the largest library in China currently open to foreigners. During 1979 and 1980 I used this library while carrying out research on the People's Bank of China and its role in industrial enterprise decision-making. Consequently, this report, in so far as it deals with the materials available, will focus only on those which are broadly related to the field of economics. It.is not, therefore, an account of all the Library's holdings, just a small part of them.