The Wuhan Incident of late July 1967 represents the apex of revolutionary violence in 1967 and a turning-point in the Cultural Revolution. Before mid-July, the Maoist group seemed relatively permissive in allowing, and even instigating, clashes throughout the country between various revolutionary factions, each claiming to be more loyal than the other to Mao and the Party Centre. From mid-July to early August, regional military authorities in Wuhan not only sided with the “conservative” revolutionary rebel faction (in violation of a Central Committee directive instructing them to promote unity among revolutionary forces) but also threw down a direct challenge to Peking. This had some of the markings of warlord politics and Peking had no choice but to deal severely with the regional authorities.

It is clear that the Government of the Chinese People's Republic is very concerned about national defence and possible foreign attack – especially from the United States, but increasingly from the Soviet Union also. Obviously, such concerns are largely relatable to both historical and current political and military realities – such as 100-odd years of western and Japanese encroachments on China, the Vietnam war, American military bases around China, Chinese-Soviet border clashes, and both ideological and practical political conflicts between China and the United States, and China and the Soviet Union. At the same time, however, these practical realities alone cannot provide a full basis for understanding the nature and strength of Chinese concerns about potential invasion. In the first place, such attitudes are both too deep and too wide. Traditionally, from long before the West became powerful in Asia, China has been concerned to keep foreigners out or at least carefully restricted, and long before the bitter attacks by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on “cultural imperialism” this concern extended to economic and cultural as well as direct military or political influence. Second – more generally, but more fundamentally – political behaviour and attitudes are never so neatly and completely rational and compartmentalized as to depend only on the “real” political circumstances. As with anyone else, both what the Chinese perceive as “real” and as “political,” and the significance attributed to these perceptions, depends also on the lenses they use to view the world. And the nature of the lenses used to view international affairs may be shaped by matters that at first seem remote from international relations, and by unconscious and emotional as well as conscious and rational calculations.

1. After the establishment of the Chinese People's Republic in 1949, the Chinese Nationalist Government moved to the island of Taiwan and chose the city of Taipei as its new capital. In the 20 years since then, the Nationalist Government has maintained a state of “national emergency” over the whole area under its control, and administered it under martial law. It is the avowed intention of the Government to perpetuate the present situation until the day of its reconquest of the whole of China, that is, indefinitely.

The Cultural Revolution in China yielded a variety of “charges” and “disclosures” about internal politics that will form the basis of a considerable amount of discussion among China scholars during the coming years. The task of determining which of these revelations can contribute to our knowledge about past events in Communist China and whicl ones may be misleading has already begun. In an attempt to further this work, this article evaluates one group of these charges – that concerning differences between Mao Tse-tung's and Liu Shao-ch'i's conceptions of the urban revolution in China after Liberation, especially as these differences were emphasized during Liu's visit to Tientsin in April–May 1949.

In 1913 the British convoked a conference at Simla; the Tibetans attending willingly, the Chinese under constraint. The purpose of the British Government in this conference was to extend and formalize the de facto independence which Tibet had begun to enjoy in 1912 as a result of the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty, and of the consequent turmoil in China: Tibet would thus be maintained as a buffer state between India and China. This the British hoped to achieve by making the Chinese accept a zonal division of Tibet into “Inner” (from Peking's point of view) and “Outer” regions. (The Russians had obtained China's acquiescence in a similar division of Mongolia in 1913.) The British aim suited Tibetan aspirations, and the British and the Tibetans worked throughout the Conference in closest co-operation, not far short, indeed, of collusion.

In one of my articles published in this journal several years ago, I promised to clarify the mystery of the Sino-Soviet exchange rate system. However, some puzzling points remained unanswerable until the publication of an article by Iu. V. Vladimirov. Now, there seems to be a clearer picture about the most complex exchange rate system that has ever existed between any two national currencies.