On 6 April 1969, Joseph R. Levenson drowned in the Russian River of Northern California. This was his last article, written specifically for this issue of The China Quarterly, (here published in unedited form.

The achievements of the Chinese Communist regime over the past 20 years are impressive, whether seen in terms of the Communists' own ideology or of universal human desires for security and material sufficiency. Under the Party's leadership, the Chinese people have unified their nation, constructed a considerable industrial base, transformed their country's internal distribution network, explored thoroughly for the first time China's natural resources, overcome the threat of famine, begun to master the field of nuclear energy, and accomplished many other changes which reflect favourably on China in comparison with other nations that have set for themselves equal or lesser goals in a similar period of time. This is not to deny shifts and setbacks in the general strategies for socialist construction. The capital-intensive industrialization of the first five-year plan moved to the labour-intensive industrialization of the Great Leap and culminated in the balanced strategy which emerged after 1962 of building the agricultural prerequisites for industrialization. The failure of the Great Leap may have cost China as much as a decade in terms of a potential time schedule for development, but it is important to stress the achievements of the economic plan which followed the Leap.

Some aspects of the Chinese People's Republic have been explained as reversions to traditional Chinese patterns. There are resemblances between the Chinese Communist ideal for society and the traditional Confucian ideal. Both assume that, in a properly ordered society, there should be universal acceptance of a true doctrine and universal agreement on what is right. Paul Linebarger, describing the Confucian ideal, wrote, “Government, once cheng ming has been set in motion, is not a policy making body. There is no question of policy, no room for disagreement, no alternative; what is right is apparent. … government needs only to administer for … the maintenance of the ideology. Once right views are established, no individual is entitled to think otherwise. … control of the individual will devolves upon persons making up his immediate social environment. …” One can compare this with the frequent Chinese Communist statements about the universal validity of Marxism-Leninism and the thought of Mao Tse-tung and the continually appearing assumption that a process of discussion must end with unanimous agreement on what is right. Also, control of the individual by persons in his immediate social environment is a characteristic feature of the Chinese Communist system.

“Oppose the strategy of striking with two ‘fists’ in two directions at the same time, and uphold the strategy of striking with one ‘fist’ in one direction at one time.” This is a good year for looking back at the triangular relationship between China, the Soviet Union and the United States—and not only because it is the twentieth anniversary of the People's Republic. For it is also a year which has seen the contradictions in this relationship sharpened to an extreme and almost satirical degree.

The twentieth anniversary of the Chinese Communist regime, unlike the tenth, is an appropriate time for retrospection and appraisal. A decade ago, the revelation of statistical exaggeration during the Great Leap Forward underlined Mao's inability to discover a sure-fire method of economic development. With Soviet-style methods previously found wanting and mass mobilization now proved inadequate also, it was not clear where China would go next economically. Politically, Mao had just faced the first major challenge to his personal authority since the late 1930s. Would the leadership be able to close ranks or would there be further splits? In foreign policy, China had clearly adopted a more militant line. The crucial question, as Khrushchev flew to Peking for the tenth anniversary celebrations fresh from his meetings with Eisenhower, was how the Chinese leadership would react to their guest's advocacy of peaceful coexistence with the imperialist bloc.

It is impossible to estimate exactly what weight should be given to each of the various factors which have contributed to the conflict between the Communist regimes of Russia and of China, but there can be no doubt that Russia's refusal to assist China to become a nuclear power was one of the most important. According to the Chinese account of the matter, the Soviet Union promised to provide China with “a sample of an atomic bomb and technical data concerning its manufacture,” apparently as part of an agreement on “new technology for national defence” concluded in October 1957, but went back on this promise and unilaterally annulled the agreement in June 1959. The Chinese People's Republic, nevertheless, went ahead on its own and exploded its first atomic bomb on 16 October 1964; this was followed by China's first hydrogen bomb on 17 June 1967.

Few behavioural attributes rank higher in the Chinese Communist system of values than that of activism (chi-chi-hsing). In apparent continuity with the Leninist tradition, the Chinese Communists have made the activist the archetype of their new political man, and a key operational figure in their system of political control. This analysis is an exploration of the Chinese Communist use of the concept of activism as a political value, and of the role that the activist plays in Party efforts to penetrate and control Chinese society.