An interesting reconstruction and description of the Nanchang Uprising of August 1, 1927, which the Chinese Communist Party and the people on the Mainland now celebrate as Red Army Day, was given by Colonel Guillermaz in The China Quarterly, No. 11. As a footnote I present translations of four accounts by three participants—Li Li-san, Chang Kuo-t'ao and Chou I-ch'ün—all written within a few weeks of the smashing of the revolt on about October 1 near Swatow, together with four other nearly contemporary Communist items.

The second half of 1927 is one of the most obscure periods in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. From a large and well-organised force openly playing a major role in the political and military affairs of the country, the Chinese Communist Party rapidly found itself reduced to a few small remnants fighting for their existence. As a result, the printed sources available for future historians were drastically reduced. The Communists cut their output of publications both for lack of the means to produce them, and because it was no longer prudent to reveal even as much about their plans as they had done before. The Nationalist authorities further decimated this scanty output by confiscation and repression. So much of what has been written about this period is based on verbal testimony or secondary sources, and cannot be regarded as altogether reliable.

On August 5, 1963, the State Department released a set of secret Chinese military papers, which is the most illuminating first-hand material that scholars have had on the Chinese Communists since the Hoover Institution acquired the Yenan Documents in the mid-forties.

China's rulers in 1961 surveyed their shattered dreams and then, with studied self-confidence, hailed the vitality of their revolutionary “mass-line” credo. This resolute re-affirmation of standard principles had a hollow ring, however, and doubts about the “real methods of control” employed during the years of retreat and readjustment coincided with angry charges that the language of the “mass-line” disguised terror and brutality on an appalling scale. In the confusion, fact has until recently seemed entwined irretrievably with propaganda and invective, but now a unique collection of the Kung-tso T'ung-hsun (Bulletin of Activities) makes it possible to disentangle the contradictory methods of control and leadership used in 1961 and to evaluate their widely varied effects in that crucial year.

Peking's pronouncements in the Sino-Soviet dispute have left the public with an image of a reckless and bellicose Chinese Communist régime. This image has been reinforced by the Soviet Union, which has exaggerated the Chinese statements and their significance to paint an over-simplified contrast between the supposed Chinese addiction to war and Soviet dedication to peace.

China's “Everyone a Soldier” movement of Autumn 1958 represents on paper perhaps the most ambitious military enterprise in the history of mankind. Two hundred and twenty million men and women of a predominantly agricultural population were to be transformed into an “ocean of soldiers,” equipped and prepared to defend their homeland against the invader.

One of the most pressing needs of the Chinese Communists when they established their régime, was to convert the sprawling semi-guerrilla force which had brought them to power into a modern army capable of maintaining that power. China's leaders were acutely aware of this need and they lost little time in launching the armed forces on the long march to modernisation. No modernisation, however, could have succeeded without large numbers of officers skilled in running a complex military establishment. The Red Army commanders, though resourceful and battle-tested, were by and large not equipped for this task. It was necessary, therefore, to develop a professional officer corps.

Mao Tse-tung, the Marxist, may believe in the “objective” and “inevitable” forces of history, but Mao, the politician, general and revolutionary has argued that Communist success depends on the “subjective factor of ability of direction.” This article analyses the variation in the Chinese Communist definition of good military leadership and the relationship between this definition and officer training programmes.

Perhaps the most significant development affecting the Chinese army in recent months has been the campaign to “Learn from the Experience of the People's Liberation Army in Political and Ideological Work” launched by the People's Daily editorial of February 1, 1964. In the context of the nation-wide emulation movement, the Liberation Army's achievements in this field of political work make it a model for the whole nation to “learn from, study and compare with.” Industries, commercial enterprises, government departments, trade unions, rural work cadres and other important sections of the community are reported to have taken up the challenge to “learn from the People's Liberation Army.” At the same time there has been an exceptional quantity of news about the political achievements of the Army and of its model soldiers and companies.

Among the most significant polemical fall-out of the past year has been the increasing indication that modern weapons questions lie near the heart of Sino-Soviet estrangement. Whether or not the recent Chinese Communist charge is true, that the Russians later reneged on a 1957 “advanced technology” commitment, Soviet and Chinese behaviour since 1957 testifies to considerable Russian long-range concern over a nuclear-armed China, Russian reluctance to assist China to gain this end quickly, and accumulating Chinese anger at such un-comradely behaviour. The only unique ingredient in recent polemical exchanges is added explicitness; the modern weapons messages have been there all along. This is not to say that the Sino-Soviet schism is not the product, as well, of competing revolutionary strategies, theological pretension, struggle for supreme Communist authority, and fundamental disagreement over whether Stalin should be praised or buried. Underlying such antagonisms and contributing to them, however, have been deep-seated differences over modern weapons central to the initiation and aggravation of Sino-Soviet estrangement.

Chou en-lai's recent “western expedition” to Africa and the Mediterranean was Peking's greatest diplomatic effort to date outside the Communist world. Coming at a time when China had openly split from Russia and yet remained at odds with America, India, and most other countries, it marked a turning point in Peking's foreign policy and perhaps in the entire post-war structure of international relations.

On January 27 a communiqué was issued in Paris and Peking which read, somewhat baldly:

The Government of the People's Republic of China and the Government of the French Republic have decided in mutual agreement to establish diplomatic relations.

For this purpose, the two Governments have agreed to appoint their ambassadors within three months.

The Sino-Indian conversations that followed the border clashes of late 1959 were undertaken partly for the purpose of examining in detail the historical evidence with which both sides supported their border claims. It is always difficult, however, to use historical evidence to bolster claims to areas which have for centuries been removed from the main stream of human existence. The Aksai Chin, in the extreme north-east of Ladakh, upon which much of the negotiations centred, is such a region; a bleak uninhabited highland which in the past was visited only by the inhabitants of adjacent territories in quest of salt and by occasional hunters. In 1717, however, the Aksai Chin was traversed by the Tsungar invaders of Tibet and 233 years later it was used for the same purpose by the Chinese. The success of this second venture led to the construction of a major road link between Sinkiang and Tibet, the existence of which precipitated the hostilities of 1959 and the discussions of 1960.