The Deng Xiaoping government has, since 1978, been tackling the task of achieving Four Modernizations by the end of this century.

China's industrial wage reforms, initiated with much fanfare in 1977, have currently reached an impasse. Despite large increases in wages over the past decade, the expansion of incentive pay, and several new schemes to link incentive funds to factory performance, low labour productivity and lax work discipline remain major problems in state industry. Moreover, the reforms have created consequences that were unintended: they have heightened contention over wage matters in the work place; they led in the initial years of the reform to uncontrolled increases in bonus expenditures that outstripped increases in productivity and profitability; and they have inadvertently provided an incentive for sharp business practices and financial deception, both of which hinder broader industrial reform.

The aggressive action of Japan's Kwantung Army in 1931 is widely known. Its armed takeover of most of Manchuria from a conglomeration of Chinese forces which greatly outnumbered the Japanese, points to a weakness in China's defences other than that of numbers. None of the various Chinese armies was as modern in firepower or as well supplied logistically as Japan's crack army in Manchuria. The disarray within the Chinese Government of Nanjing (Nanking) that was obvious in mid 1931 also tempted the adventurous field officers of the Kwantung Army (KA). These veteran officers with years of duty in China, decided, from their reading of the situation in China as well as in Japan and the West, to act on 18 September 1931 rather than make further preparations as recommended in Tokyo.

No part of China's educational system has undergone more radical changes since 1977 than senior secondary education.1 Three trends have dominated reforms at this level: reduced intake, streaming based on aptitude and the re-introduction of a vocational secondary school system that has already enrolled a considerable proportion of senior middle school students.