Suchergebnisse

Contents: Leadership and succession in Communist China, by William F. Dorrill; Communist China as a military power, by Ralph L. Powell; Peking and the "third world", by Shen-Yu Dai; Communist China's foreign aid program, by Melvin Gurtov; New citizens for a new society, by Theodore H. E. Chen; The economy: critical questions, by Yuan-li Wu; Agriculture in China today, by Kang Chao.

Even though it is a truism, it is worth pointing out that with relatively little foreign trade and even less foreign aid, Communist China's economic growth must in the main result directly from the development of her indigenous resources. In her comparatively backward economy, most of those resources were to be found initially in two traditional sectors of production: in agriculture, and in various crafts and trades. Due to limited division of labour, these two traditional sectors were not separated sharply from each other, but overlapped in the person of the peasant-craftsman who was relatively common in the countryside.

Communist China entered the "constitutional stage" of its experience on September 20, 1954, when the Constitution of the Chinese People's Republic (CPR), adopted by the first National People's Congress (NPC) on that date, was promulgated. The ordinary Chinese citizen could detect no immediate effect of this event upon the conditions of his daily life, and he had no reason to believe that things affecting him would be done very much differently in the future than in the recent past. He could understand from the incessant propaganda of the preceding months that the "transition to Socialism" was moving toward its climax. The new Constitution promised him no surcease from the incitements and pressures of the interminable "mass movements"—for "land reform," "suppression of counter-revolutionaries," "Resist America, Aid Korea," "3-Anti," "5-Anti," "democratic reform," "national elections," "On to Taiwan," and the others. Instead, he would be told that the past was merely the prologue: the pre-constitutional measures of September, 1949—the Common Program, the Organic Law of the Central People's Government (CPG), and the Organic Law of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)—had only enabled the "people's democratic dictatorship" to lay the foundations for the superstructure of Socialism.

Archaeology has a long history in traditional China where it served as the handmaiden of history, lexicography and geography, as well as preserver of art and literature. References to ancient material remains are common in the early Chinese literature. In the early fifth century b.c. Feng-hu-tzu, presumably after a study of early implements, proposed a four-stage sequence for the ancient period, each characterised by a weapon made of stone, jade, copper and iron, respectively. The grand historian of the second century B.C., Ssu-ma Ch'ien, made special efforts to visit as many ancient sites and monuments as possible to substantiate his records. In the second century a.d. Hsü Shen compiled a dictionary of 10,516 characters, many of which were drawn from ancient bronze and stone inscriptions. In the sixth century Li Tao-yuan wrote his commentaries on the Book of Rivers, which was fully documented with archaeological data. Throughout the ages many important discoveries were recorded and large numbers of ancient art objects and literature preserved. By the twelfth century Chinese archaeology had become a specialised subject, known as Chin-shih-hsueh, literally, a study of bronze and stone objects. A vast literature began to accumulate, reaching its height in the last two centuries.