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History is not going to find it easy to render a full judgment on the Second World War. The impact of the technological developments which that war stimulated is still working itself out. These developments alone have set to the politicians of various countries a series of problems which demanded action and which required a more complex, sustained intellectual effort than was needed in earlier times. The more advanced and more powerful the country, the more the problems arising from technological development, especially in weaponry, placed themselves in the centre of attention. For a full decade after the end of the war, it was generally thought that the bipolar distribution of power was a lasting phenomenon. The second postwar decade produced some evidence that this might not be so, but even now no one can be quite sure what qualifications or exceptions to bipolarity are significant today or will be in the future. The decolonisation process, attended by the emergence of many new, for the most part modernising, states and paralleled by the restructuring of European politics, clearly is one of the major phenomena of the period. Here, too, the future is obscure. Throughout the period, there has been a pervasive uncertainty as to what cultural and social values the world's peoples would subscribe to and what political leadership they would follow.

This article attempts to set forth, in as nearly comprehensive and organized a manner as possible, a range of problems referring to the political development of Communist China whose investigation would not only advance our understanding of contemporary Chinese politics but would also produce results of value for the general study of politics. Our focus is particularly, but not exclusively, on events since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Our procedure is to move from the general to the specific: that is, to inquire, first, what are the most general classes of political phenomena with which the Chinese political system has affinities; second, what are the most general developmental trends which can be observed in the Chinese revolution; and third, what are the particular aspects of the dynamics of the Chinese political system which offer rewarding opportunities for research.

If one were to choose a single adjective to apply to the pattern of Communist China's foreign relations since the Moscow declaration of 1960, "reactive" would be as nearly accurate a choice as any other. China's circumstances during 1961 and 1962 provide ample reasons for a reactive posture. The crisis in the economy, though not exactly measurable, has been evident. The course of internal politics has been less clear. The dominant trend has been a controlled retreat from the organisational methods of the Great Leap Forward. In the course of this manoeuvre, the role of the Party and its relation to non-Communist elements hi the population, organised or unorganised, has had to be redefined. What may be more diagnostic of this period, however, is a serious decline of public morale and of confidence in the régime.

The proposition needs no arguing that it would be desirable from everybody's point of view if some way could be found of bringing the 600 million people of mainland China back into effective, approximately normal relations with all the rest of the world. It is often argued that the early realisation of what the present Communist régime on the mainland claims as its legal and moral right—to represent China in the United Nations—would go very far towards accomplishing the purpose. I must confess to a considerable scepticism concerning the predictions often made about the changes in attitude and behaviour the Chinese Communists would display if they were admitted to the United Nations. Communist China's external relations depend on a number of factors besides her standing in the United Nations. There has been nothing in China's actions or declarations over the years to indicate that U.N. membership is so highly valued by the Chinese that they would of their own accord significantly modify any of their other major goals in order to achieve this one. The record indicates rather that the contrary is true.