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.

Some 150 Germans in all served as advisers to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) in the decade between the Guomindang's Northern Expedition against the warlords (1927–28) and the end of the first year of Japan's full-scale invasion. Their importance to a government struggling to survive and modernize in the face of Japanese aggression and the threat of rural-based communism is recognized, and several studies describe the diplomacy and work of the unofficial mission at Nanking. But it is difficult in military as in civil reform to uncover how policies worked in practice. Chinese plans and pronouncements tended to gloss over contemporary realities, of which the most intractable were the persisting habits of warlordism within ex-warlord and even nominally Central armies. A cross-check of German, American, and British assessments with evidence from the Chinese side can indicate how genuine were the reform efforts, how influential the German officers, how intrusive warlord-style habits, and how impressive the results. I shall focus here on the neglected topics of German-directed officer education and troop training, and the much misunderstood German role in Chiang Kai-shek's strategy.

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.

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.

As dynasties have traditionally used historical figures for their own political purposes, so too has the Chinese Communist Party used famous figures for its political purposes. Perhaps, more than any other person in the 20th century, the Party has used the prestige of China's pre-eminent modern writer Lu Xun for a wide variety of political, ideological, and factional purposes. Since his death in October 1936, his life and work have been interpreted in different periods to conform to the latest mutation in party policy. And when the Party became factionalized after the Great Leap Forward, different political factions used Lu Xun to represent their conflicting political positions.

The economy of the People's Republic of China is undergoing a sweeping transformation at the present time. Drastic changes are being made in its objectives, developmental strategies and the basic economic structure. The national objectives are no longer high speed industrialization and socialization at all costs, but an increase in economic efficiency and a rise in the people's standards of living. In terms of strategies, the country is shifting from a policy of unbalanced growth to a more balanced approach, while at the same time it opts for international co-operation instead of isolation. In other words, heavy industry no longer receives an overwhelmingly large share of state investments; now light industry and agriculture are given their fail shares. Besides, instead of emphasizing economic self-sufficiency, it now actively seeks foreign trade and foreign investment in an attempt to modernize the country. Meanwhile, the economic structure is also being fundamentally overhauled. The price mechanism is being allowed to function alongside planning; basic productive units, farmers and enterprises alike, are receiving more autonomy; pecuniary incentives in the form of bonus and profit are being reinstituted; a limited degree of competition is encouraged; and direct, administrative controls are giving way to indirect, economic controls. In sum, the economy is becoming more decentralized, with prices, markets and profits playing important parts. Under these circumstances, it is inevitable that the role of money and banking would be affected. The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in money and banking in China. In the following, I shall first briefly summarize the Chinese money and banking system inherited from the 1950s, then investigate recent changes and developments, and conclude with a generalization about the new role played by money and banking and its prospect.

A large number of statistics on the Chinese economy are generated through complete enumeration. Essentially the entire rural population, for example, is organized into agricultural collectives or state farms, and these units are required to submit standardized reports on a range of economic and social activity. They report on several categories of production, on financial flows, and on matters such as births and deaths. There are, of course, areas of interest to Chinese planners and social scientists, the data for which are not routinely compiled at local levels, e.g. data on family consumption patterns. In China, as elsewhere, sample surveys are used to fill such information gaps. Such surveys are commonly conducted using the technique of “typical example investigation” (dianxing diaocha). While well established in China, this survey technique, which might be characterized as stratified non-random sampling, is increasingly challenged as inadequate to the needs of economic science. One recently published large scale typical example investigation generated some statistics for which are available population parameters derived from complete enumeration. Comparison of the results of the typical example investigation and the complete enumeration reveal a strong bias in the sample. The bias is shown to result from the role of social statistics in China, and provides a clear illustration of the contradictions in that role.

The commercial, cultural and educational agreement between the State of Ohio and Hubei province has become a major element in Hubei's efforts to modernize its industrial and agricultural sectors. At the same time, the agreement also provides evidence of increasing provincial autonomy in China's economic development. This latter fact is seen in the negotiating practices adopted by provincial officials before and after the agreement was reached.

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.