China's third national census, taken as of 00:00 hours 1 July 1982, presumably counted more than one billion people. This census is of enormous importance not only for Chinese statistics but for world demography, because it may resolve at last the perennial doubts about the size of China's population. It will also provide many kinds of demographic data not now available from any other source in China and add greatly to the national stock of statistics. The data will support a tremendous upsurge in demographic analysis and serve as a base for future sample surveys. They will have many immediate practical applications in planning and administration. Assuming that the central instructions have been generally observed, the census will do much to enhance China's statistical credibility throughout the world.

The Draft Constitution of the People's Republic of China (PRC), released on 27 April 1982, appears to be the most comprehensive, detailed (if somewhat wordy) and reasonable (as opposed to revolutionary, erratic) since 1949. Unlike its predecessors of 1975 and 1978, it is, no doubt, a product of more careful, more balanced efforts, involving the participation of scholars and legal professionals as well as politicians and Party cadres. Barring unforseen developments, this document will be adopted in more or less its present form later this year. The Constitution of the Communist Party of China (CPC) will also be revised, probably at the same time or a little later. Significantly, the State Constitution will probably set the tone for the Party Constitution to follow rather than the other way round. In this respect as in its fundamental conception, style, and contents, the 1982 Draft resembles the Constitution of 1954 and differs from those of 1975 and 1978. Perhaps this is why the new Draft has been described as “the Second Constitution”-to-be by Hu Sheng, a deputy secretary-general of the Committee for the Revision of the Constitution.

Because Lu Xun as a man, not just as a writer, loomed so large in the consciousness of his age, his death was both an event of great public importance and a bitter loss to many. Of the hundreds of millions of deaths in China during the 38 years of the Republic none made a bigger impact, with the possible exception of that of Sun Yatsen, which though perhaps less deeply felt had a more immediate political effect. To this day, educated Chinese who were old enough in October 1936 to be aware of what was happening in the world remember how and where they heard the news, just as Europeans of the same generation remember learning of the outbreak of the Second World War.

In a famous article written in 1928 when the Left-wing writers of the Sun and Creation Societies were criticising Lu Xun for being behind the times, Qian Xingcun (A Ying) asserted that the age of Ah Q was already past. Fifty years later Chen Baichen's dramatization of Ah Q Zhengzhuan, which was staged in 1981 as part of the Lu Xun centenary celebrations, ends with the narrator declaring that although Ah Q had no women it was not true that he would have no descendants, because his line would continue for generations to come. It is, of course, possible to reconcile these two apparently contradictory statements. Qian Xingcun was referring to the fact that the peasant masses were becoming politically organized, having played an important role in the revolutionary movements of those years. He did not claim that people like Ah Q no longer existed. Chen Baichen, on the other hand, was referring to the Ah Q mentality which still lives on in people's minds, long after Ah Q himself has been executed. He did not see this mentality as the dominant force in society. Nevertheless there have been striking changes of attitude towards Ah Q in recent years. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution it has been generally recognized that the Ah Q mentality is still a force in China which is holding back attempts at modernization and that many other aspects of the Chinese traditional society and culture which Lu Xun criticized in his stories and essays have still not been eradicated 45 years after his death.