The decentralization of fiscal and administrative powers to lower echelons of government is arguably the most outstanding facet of the economic reforms of the past decade and a half. Following this move, the relationship between the centralgovernment and the localities – which has certainly undergone shifts of some sort since 1980 – has been the subject of endless analysis and conjecture, both scholarly and in the press.

During the regime of Mao Zedong (1949–76), a number of Western scholars described Chinas modern history as moving from one orthodoxy, the Confucianism of the Qing dynasty, to the Marxism–Leninism– Maoism of the Peoples Republic. The cultural and intellectual pluralism of the intervening years of die early decades of the 20th century, the May Fourth movement, and even the more limited pluralism during the weak Leninist state and watered–down Confucianism of the Kuomintang Republic (1928–49) looked like an interregnum between two orthodoxies.1 When Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978 and established a milder form of authoritarianism than that of his predecessor, a number of Western scholars revised their views of 20th–century Chinese history. As Deng carried out economically pragmatic policies and relaxed controls over the intellectual community as well as over peoples personal lives and geographic regions, they pointed out that the 1949 divide of the Chinese Communist revolution was not as sharp and as singular a break in modern Chinese history as it had been presented. Rather, it should be seen as part of the ongoing effort to build a strong Chinese state and modern economy, inspired by nationalist pride, going on since the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911.

Substantial gender imbalances in Chinese higher education and in the urban occupational structure are widely recognized.1 Women comprise only about one–third of students in colleges and universities, and they tend to be concentrated in particular types of institutions, such as teacher training colleges, and departments such as humanities, while men predominate in the scientific and engineering fields that have served as the primary avenues for upward occupational and political mobility. In the urban workforce, men are overrepresented in state–run factories and in positions of authority and expertise generally, while women are overrepresented in the collective sector, medium and light industry, and in the lower clerical and service sectors. These circumstances are the result of pervasive societal sorting processes which begin much earlier in life than sitting for the college entrance exams or entering the labour force, and which channel girls and boys towards different if partially overlapping futures. The research we report here on the determinants of educational attainment at the senior high school level helps to shed light on processes of gender differentiation and stratification in urban China.

One of many things that Joseph V. Stalin and Mao Zedong had in common, according to Chinese official perceptions, was that late in life they “committed almost identical errors.” Both men supposedly “ignored the socialist democratic and legal systems and destroyed the democratic life inside the party....” Western historians may be prepared to go along with the substance of this assessment, allowing for minor qualifications and the use of a different terminology. Closer scrutiny of what took place in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge and in China during the “Great Cultural Revolution,” however, does point to some interesting differences. These differences, as Stuart R. Schram has suggested, lay not so much in the amount of extreme violence the leaders of the two Communist countries sanctioned, but in their preferences for different “modes” of violence.

The performance of top Chinese women athletes in the 1990s has been unprecedented in the history of sport. Not only have they made remarkable progress from virtual obscurity to world champions and record breakers, they have far surpassed the performance of their male compatriots in international sport. This unique phenomenon extends from middle and long–distance running to swimming and diving, from weightlifting and chess to volleyball and basketball, from shooting and archery to wrestling and rowing, from badminton and gymnastics to softball and soccer – and table tennis dating back to the early 1970s.

With Deng Xiaoping preparing to “meet Marx,” speculation over the future shape and stability of the Chinese polity has mounted steadily. In the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen crisis some observers predicted the early demise of China's Communist regime, triggered by a dramatic breakthrough on the part of resurgent democratic forces.1 When the regime failed to collapse as expected, attention was drawn to the apparent absence of such putative prerequisites of “civil society” as semi–autonomous social forces, civic associations and a well–defined “public sphere.” China, it seemed, wasn't quite ready for democracy after all.

The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Inside Story of the Man Who Made Modern China.By Li ZHISUI. Written with the editorial assistance of ANNE F. THURSTON. Translated by TAI HUNGCHAO. Foreword by ANDREW J. NATHAN. [London: Chatto Windus, 1994. xxx+ 682 pp. 20.00. ISBN 0–7011–4018–6.]