Everyone with interests in Chinese studies who has had occasion to become aware of it will agree that within the past two or three years there has been a marked upswing in the quantity and in the quality of publication in Taiwan. The present writer observed some of this new development on the scene in 1954–55, and others both better informed and better qualified to judge report that the trend continues. Although the Journal has on several occasions during the last five or six years reported briefly on publication there, now there is perhaps some value in reporting more comprehensively on recent developments, both because the phenomenon itself is of interest, and because many recently published items will be desired by scholars and by research libraries.

The current belief is that China is a country where most land belongs to landlords who do not till their soil but suck the blood of their tenants. Dr. Sun, founder of the Chinese Republic, was under this impression when he specified in his program that “all tillers must own their soil.” The Chinese Communists took this as one of their most basic points of attack. To quote Edgar Snow:

Now, wherever the Reds went there is no doubt they radically changed the situation for the tenant fanner, the poor farmer, the middle farmer, and all the “havenot” elements. All forms of taxation were abolished in the new districts for the first year…. Secondly, they gave land to the land-hungry peasants…. Thirdly, they took land and livestock from the wealthy classes and redistributed among the poor. Redistribution of land was a fundamental of Red policy.

Until 1945, the Japanese nation had never suffered a really major defeat. Humiliations, actual as well as imaginary, had been imposed, but never outright and final loss of a war, never invasion and occupation since the descent of the Yamato people themselves from the high plain of heaven. Her remoteness in fact, and in the calculation of her leaders, her unique polity under the rule of a dynasty established for ages eternal in the minds of her people had saved Japan on each previous threatening occasion. But this time there was no escape. Japan lost the war, and all Japanese know that she lost. Just as, at an earlier date, the country provided a unique laboratory for the student of social stability and of cultural integration–a much neglected laboratory, unfortunately–so, now Japan offers the opportunity for a study of society under the most extreme forms of stress. What have been the effects of war, of catas-trophically losing war, upon Japanese society?

The 1953 Chinese census reported a total population on the Chinese mainland of 582.6 million. This figure came as a surprise to Western observers, since the population figures most frequently quoted for China during the preceding twenty years had been on the order of magnitude of “about 450 million,” the 1933 estimate of the League of Nations. Although the inadequacies of Chinese population statistics and their controversial nature are well known, some understanding of the latest figure is possible by viewing it in historical perspective. Such an analysis is here presented, and is confined to the 1953 census data referring to the size of the population and its distribution among the provinces.

The progressive shift of formerly subject peoples from political acquiescence to participatory citizenship has been the focus of numerous diverse studies of modernization in India and elsewhere. As modernization proceeds, such studies inform us, this transformation is reflected in new attitudes and new social relationships. At the same time, there is not a complete break with the past, but rather an adaptation of traditional structures and relationships to meet modern needs.