Whatever else the nineteen sixties may be remembered for—the proliferation of macroweapons, microstates or miniskirts—historians of the decade might allot a footnote to the more modest, but less disconcerting, proliferation of English language studies of Chinese law. Thirty years ago a survey of then recent research on Chinese law revealed “an increased interest on the part of Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars.” The author noted that, although “[t]he amount of work achieved … constitutes as yet but a slight beginning in what is still a largely unworked field,” it “clearly indicates the potential contributions which further researches can make to our understanding of the evolution of Chinese social, economic and political life and institutions.” No one rose to dispute the author's conclusion that Chinese law offers “a rich source from which to derive a more realistic appraisal of the forces actually at work in Chinese society at different epochs.…” Yet, except in Japan, where all scholars of things Chinese received additional stimulus from the adventitious circumstances of international politics, the cumulative impact of the Sino-Japanese War, World War II, the Chinese Civil War and the triumph of Communism slowed the development of what had been a promising academic field.

In 1951, the Chinese delegate to the United Nations proposed to the General Assembly that the Chinese text of the Genocide Convention be revised. The reason for revision, as stated in the Chinese proposal, was that there existed a number of discrepancies between the Chinese text originally prepared by the United Nations Secretariat and the other official texts. The Chinese delegate included in his proposal a new Chinese text for consideration by the General Assembly. Of the proposed changes the most important one related to the Chinese translation of the term “genocide.” The term had originally been translated by the Secretariat as “wei-hai chung-tsu” (lit., “to cause harm or to destroy racial groups”), while the new Chinese text translated the term as “ts'an-hai jen-ch'ün” (lit., “to cause harm to or to destroy human groups in a ruthless manner”). The new translation is closer to the meaning of the term “genocide” which, as defined in Article 2 of the Convention, encompasses any act “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The Chinese proposal was adopted by the General Assembly on December 21, 1952, by Resolution 691 (VII).

It is no wonder that the world is baffled by Communist China's “cultural Revolution.” Not only do the specialists who are skilled in reading between the lines of Chinese Communist utterances disagree about many aspects of the present upheaval, those whose task it is merely to read the. plain lines themselves also seem unable to agree even on the basic meaning of what they are reading. We are informed, for instance, that “eight Red Guards and a member of the Pioneers … had been killed by ‘class enemies,’ according to a Red Guard announcement.” Later we are told of “doubts about a report that nine youths were killed last week. Chinese-language experts said the characters on a poster reporting the incident could mean also that the nine young Chinese had been injured.” There were more doubts about whether Lo Jui-ch'ing was “taken away” or was “arrested” and still more about whether T'ao Chu was “led” or “dragged” through the streets.

One of the most controversial interpretations of recent Indian history is that the British governed the subcontinent through a strategy of divide and rule which led to Hindu-Muslim conflict and ultimately the 1947 partition. Divide et Impera has often been portrayed in vernacular tracts, Congress publications, and scholarly works as a fundamental cause of communal tension.

The similar assumptions, methodology, and sources upon which these assessments rest, however, have resulted in a clouding of key issues and a misreading of the historical record. The studies generally focus upon twentieth-century developments such as Hindu and Muslim political parties or communal riots and then project their findings backward to earlier periods. Because British attempts to play Hindu and Muslim against one another apparently intensified antagonism following the Morley-Minto reforms, it is argued that similar policies prior to 1900 helped create the initial estrangement between the two communities. Communal activities are admittedly easier to examine once Hindus and Muslims began to organize for elections and legislative proceedings, but preoccupation with formal competition and a concomitant simplistic explanation of the origins of communalism have postponed a much-needed investigation of the formative period in the nineteenth-century when British rule and changes within Indian society set the stage for subsequent communal organization.

Theravāda Buddhism has during the past century been an annoyance to scholars who tried to find a general and crossculturally valid definition of religion. Durkheim refuted Frazer's minimal definition of religion being “the belief in Spiritual Beings” solely on the grounds of the notable exception of Theravāda Buddhism. He based his argument that “the idea of gods is absent, or at least, … plays only a secondary and minor role” mainly on the now classic work of Oldenberg, “Buddha, his Life, his Doctrine, his Community,” published originally in 1881. The same book was also used extensively by Max Weber who asked himself whether a system of “ethics without God” and “with absolute indifference towards the question whether gods do exist or not and how they exist” could be called a “religion.”

The relationship between pragmatism and Chinese Communism is a question important in its consequences but ambiguous in its content. By careful reading of the intellectual history of China during past half-century, certain implications on the intertwined relationships between them can be easily detected. For example, both pragmatism and Marxism were introduced to China during the May Fourth era, a time of unprecedented intellectual ferment. Their common belief in the Western materialist tradition had not only paved the way for a brief united front in the struggle against the dead weight of the Confucian tradition, but their shared emphasis on scientific culture reinforced their common goals and made “science” one of the most worshipped watch-words in contemporary China. Such backgrounds have in fact led many to think that pragmatism represented only a transitional stage on a road that “led naturally and easily to communism as the science of society.” Some claimed that pragmatists not only tended to be tolerant of dialectical materialism and the Communists, but they admired the Communist movement as an integral part of the democratic ideal and helped to prepare the way for the spread of materialism in China in the next few decades. Although the precise relationship between pragmatism and Chinese Communism remains undefined to this day, the pragmatic element in Chinese Communism is a popular theme which has gained wide currency among some recent interpretations.

Students of Chinese society should devote more attention to urban Taiwan, for several reasons. First, whatever the relative significance of Taiwan and Communist China in the world, Taiwanese social life can at least be studied at first hand over a protracted period, and with relatively little interference. The events on the China mainland since 1950 are often described as “the most large scale experiment in social change in world history.” Yet these events cannot be studied in the way social scientists prefer to do their research. Moreover, the most dramatic social events do not necessarily make the most important sociological problems; important breakthroughs in any science often come from the study of very mundane phenomena. Second, Taiwan is now, with Japan, Singapore and Malayasia, the most industrialized and economically developed of Asian countries. Urban Taiwanese are strategically significant in this context. Since Taiwan as a whole is becoming ever more urbanized and industrialized, knowledge of social life in metropolitan Taiwan today may provide the best clues as to the patterns toward which Taiwan as a whole will tend in the future. Third, Japanese sources describe many aspects of social structure in urban Taiwan a half century or more ago, and thereby provide comparative data on change over time in urban Taiwan. Such data have been little utilized thus far.

In his review of Mr. Chiang Yung-ching's Bo-lot'ing yü Wu-Han cheng-ch'üan [Borodin and the Wu-Han Regime], Professor C. Martin Wilbur has said that “the Chung-shun Gunboat Incident of March 20, 1926, is treated hastily and categorically, simply as a plot of the Communists involving Wang Ching-wei. This is, of course, a delicate subject.” Because of the highly controversial nature of the event, as it involved Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists, no serious and scholarly study on the subject has ever been undertaken in either Mainland China or Taiwan. Historians in the West are generally interested in the event because it was pivotal to Chiang's ascendancy, and Chiang's career is a part of modern Chinese history. Except for the study of the Soviet advisers' view on the Incident, a thorough investigation of the various aspects of the event and all the parties concerned is still wanting.

One of the world's four most celebrated natural history museums, Field Museum in Chicago, has only recently completed and opened to the public a new permanent exhibition called “Tibet, High Land of Monk and Nomad.”

Founded in 1893, Field Museum grew from a nest egg of materials from the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago the same year. Almost immediately, founder Marshall Field began sending out expeditions to enrich the Museum's nucleus of display materials. As early as 1908, Dr. Berthold Laufer led the Mrs. T. B. Blackstone Expedition to the remote Himalayan theocracy of Tibet. During the expedition, which went to both China and Tibet between 1908 and 1910, Dr. Laufer collected some 10,000 specimens for Field Museum, principally ethnological in nature. A large number of the Chinese materials were brought together in a special Civilization of China exhibition which opened four years ago.