In his keynote political report to the Ninth Party Congress, Lin Piao discussed at some length the history of the “great proletarian cultural revolution” from its formal inception at a May 1966 Central Committee work conference to its nominal conclusion at the Party Congress in April 1969. Although he listed the objectives of the Cultural Revolution as ideological, political and economic in character, Lin stressed that “the fundamental question in the current revolution” is “the question of political power, a question of which class holds leadership.”

The machine-building industry is one of the newest branches of modern industry in China. Even as late as 1949, machinery accounted for only 2·7 per cent. of the nation's gross industrial output value. Since 1952, however, the industry has been given a high priority in development plans; in official statements, it is often referred to as “the basis for technological transformation of the national economy” and “the pillar of national defence.” By 1966 the relative share of machinery production in total gross industrial output value had increased to 12 per cent., making it one of the most dynamic branches of Chinese industry. A study of this industry not only serves as a gauge of China's potential economic and military strength but also illustrates the role of machine-building in the development of an under-developed economy.

This article has two purposes. Firstly, to indicate that the currently available statistics on foodgrains output for the years 1958–65 appear to have little internal consistency and even less plausibility. Second, to place before the reader alternative estimates for this period. The new series, unlike the estimates it seeks to replace, is not derived from secondary data; it, in fact, incorporates a set of figures provided by Chinese officials to Mr. Burki, a member of a Pakistani delegation that went to China in July 1965, to study the communes. The series presented in this paper was given in response to a questionnaire submitted to the officials of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Bureau of Commune Management.* By then the delegation had visited seven communes in north and north-east China, and all the communes visited had provided output data along with statistics of major inputs. It was with the purpose of checking the performance of these communes and those to be visited later, that the members of the delegation sought to obtain output and input data for all Chinese agriculture.

In the name of thought reform in Mainland China, there have been many campaigns against the ideas of non-communist Chinese thinkers. For the scale and vehemence of the campaigns against them, two targets have been conspicuous: Hu Shih and Liang Shu-ming. The former was an exponent of western liberal ideas; the latter of Chinese traditional values. One must assume that the influence of their ideas was still strong in the minds of the Chinese people, since only this can explain such extensive and intensive criticism.

Taiwan>, a fertile island lying approximately 120 miles off the coast of Fukien Province in South China, cut in half by the Tropic of Cancer, has recently come to the notice of western sinologists as a rich source for the study of traditional Chinese life and customs. Prior to the Second World War, during the Japanese occupation, the scholars of that learned nation devoted much effort and printed space to the study of the folk religion, customs and folklore of the Taiwanese, works which can still be purchased in the second-hand bookshops of Taipei. These works were perhaps the first to take notice of the existence of Taoism and Taoist priests in Taiwan, alongside Buddhism and “Confucianism.” But the reports were scanty, only a few pages being devoted to the two kinds of Taoists, “Red-head” and “Black-head,” and the rituals they performed. By far the greater part of the Japanese research was devoted to the “popular religion,” that nameless entity which the masses of China's peasants traditionally believed in, sometimes described as the “Three Religions in One,” an irenic mixture of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

China in the 1920s, in spite of the significant and painstaking study that has been devoted to it, remains very imperfectly researched and analysed. In large part this is to be attributed to the great number and complexity of forces involved—warlord, nationalist, imperialist and communist; operating alone or in rapidly fluctuating alliances.