“Recently, amid clamor and cries of ‘rural bankruptcy’ and ‘rural collapse,’ the slogans ‘rural reconstruction’ and ‘rural revival’ reverberate through the entire nation; this is really a kind of sudden awakening of government and people.” Thus, the major chronicler of rural reform movements during the Republican period began his 1934 compendium. Another reporter counted almost 700 distinct organizations devoted to rural work of various sorts. The pens of the intelligentsia churned out hundreds of monographs and specialized periodicals, and thousands of articles on the rural problem and the rural reconstruction solution. The powerholders – the Nanking regime itself, the provincial governments under its control, and the semi-independent militarist provincial governments – were concurrently formulating policies, instituting measures, establishing agencies, reorganizing local government structures, and generally manifesting great concern for the giant rural sector of Chinese society they had previously ignored.

The study of migration is generally conducted along the lines of communication theory and it is assumed that we deal with a source, a medium of transfer and a receiver. An investigation of a particular migratory movement should ideally embrace two discrete geographical territories and their socio–cultural contents, and the means providing passage from one to the other. The communication model provides an overview understanding. However, when anthropologists have scrutinized migratory movements, the clear–cut categories of source and receiver have turned out to be less obvious. In this paper it is my intention to give an ethnographical account for the “end” of a channel in a process of migration, the final stage of a transfer in which people who are on the move reach their destinations. It is obvious that “destination” is not the same thing as “terminal.” Often people move in stages, and it is quite possible that what we regard as a destination in one study would turn out to be a stage in a chain of stages in a future enquiry.

There were various objectives behind the decision of the Chinese Government to launch a land reform movement in 1950. In political terms, it served to eliminate a serious obstacle to the consolidation of its authority by depriving the landlord class of the roots of its power. In economic terms, the redistribution of essential resources (draft animals, seed, tools and buildings as well as land) promised to release rural forces of production. In terms of social welfare, too, the change in land relations was likely to be beneficial if it were accompanied by a more equitable distribution of agricultural output.

Perceptions as well as realities have always played an important role in international politics and it is frequently difficult to separate the two. By the 1960s the realities of increased American involvement in South east Asia and a more militarily and politically influential China heightened the possibility of a Sino-American confrontation. It is the thesis of this study that the United States and the People's Republic of China, both fearful of that possibility as a spill-over from the conflict in Indochina, reached a tacit understanding limiting their involvement. This understanding was transmitted through a series of subtle public signals and, quite possibly, by a number of confidential communications. The primary motive was to prevent an unwanted Sino-American con frontation which could have resulted from a misperception of intentions. As will be demonstrated in this study both Peking and Washington sought, on a number of occasions, to transmit their intentions in order to prevent misperceptions and possible over-reactions.

There is practically no knowledge in the west regarding the status of psychiatry in the People's Republic since the time of the Cultural Revolution. The three publications on Chinese psychiatry that I was able to find, all of which are based largely upon the primary literature, terminate abruptly at the Cultural Revolution. At that time the Chinese Journal of Neurology and Psychiatrystopped publication and has not been reinstituted. The only medical journal which has begun publication, the China Medical Journal, carries occasional papers in neurology but thus far there have been none in psychiatry. A group of American psychiatrists who had been hoping to participate in an exchange visit to China under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health and the American Psychiatric Association had not succeeded in making the necessary contacts, and were in fact unable to give me the names of any Chinese psychiatrists in responsible positions.

The following consists of extracts from a transcript of a tape recording of an interview which took place on 17 November 1974 at the Min–ts Hotel in Peking, between myself and Professor Yang, chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Faculty of Law, Peking University and Judge Wu, member of the Supreme Court of China. The interpreter was Comrade Kuang of Lü–hsing–she, Peking Branch.

Dr Lardy (in The China Quarterly, No. 61, March 1975) denies that the economic decentralization of the late 1950s impaired the ability of the central government to control allocation of economic resources. If such impairment had occurred, he argues, “ More developed provinces with high remission rates in the period before decentralization would have vastly greater resources at their disposal which they could use to maintain or increase the level of health, education and welfare (HEW) services they provided to their populations. Because provincial remittances would be reduced the central government could no longer subsidize areas previously dependent on net central government subsidies. Thus I hypothesize that the level of HEW expenditures in these areas would decline after decentralization as compared with the previously less dependent provinces. Similarly I hypothesize that the share of total national investment in provinces with proportionately greater fiscal resources would have increased sharply while the investment shares of the less developed provinces would have declined” (pp. 33 and 36). Dr Lardy's calculations indicate that “the dependency variable is significant but its effect is exactly the opposite of that predicted by the ‘decentralization hypothesis.’ That is, provinces that were more dependent on the central government prior to 1958 experienced larger increases, on the average, than did the less dependent provinces” (p. 38). “These tests,” he continues, “do not support the view that the decentralization measures transferred resource allocation power to provincial governments ”(pp. 38–39). Dr Lardy draws the conclusion that “ The central government's continued control of the fiscal system assured that the level of social services provided in the less developed provinces did not decline compared to more developed regions.”