The Chinese Communist movement stemmed from nationalism and assumed the left wing in the Chinese national revolution. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) was organized in the wake of the May Fourth Movement which had kindled a great fervor of patriotism, particularly among the intellectual youths. Only as nationalists first and Communists second, were the Communists willing to join the KMT (Kuomintang) as individuals in order to take an active part in the national revolution. In a span of five years, the KMT-CCP alliance had contributed to the consolidation of the revolutionary base in Kwangtung and the spread of revolution to the north. In the course of the national revolution, the CCP enjoyed a spectacular growth from a group of about 70 intellectuals in 1921, when the party was founded, to a mass party of over 50,000 members in 1927, when die Pei-fa (Northern Expedition) swept the whole of South China.

This article is an introduction to the type of materials available to the historian of pre-1800 Vietnam, particularly that material produced during the reign of Le Thanh-tong. The rule of this Emperor is significant for the bureaucratization of the government and a consequent growth in paperwork which occurred under him. During the last quarter of the fifteenth century, many of the resulting documents were brought together to form major compilations on various topics, Following a brief description of the historical background and the manner in which this material came to be assembled, the article groups such materials, from both this period and later centuries, into the following categories: histories, geographies, personnel records, official records, belles lettres, and general collections. It then proceeds to enumerate the available material under each category and to analyze the uses to which this material may be put for the study of Vietnamese history. A note follows in the May 1970 issue of the JAS describing the major modern collections of these documents and giving the locations of each work mentioned in the article. Characters and Vietnamese romanization are given for each title, term, and name.

The Kiangsi Soviet period, the second phase of the Chinese Communist movement, began with the establishment of the Chingkangshan base by Mao Tse-tung in late 1927 and ended in the “Long March” in October 1934. The study of this important period had long remained sketchy because of lack of materials. With the release of the Ch'en Ch'eng Collection—a collection of Communist documents, papers, and publications from the Kiangsi Soviet period—in 21 microfilm reels, a comprehensive study of this period is possible for the first time. The bulk of materials of the Collection falls in the years, 1930–1934. The Collection contains over 70 periodicals, six of which were published with regularity and duration. Scattered in several journals, we found 17 articles from the pen of Mao Tsc-tung, which are not included in his Selected Works (Peking, 1965). The materials cover a variety of subjects from the Soviet congresses, the establishment of the Soviet economy, peasantry and labor, the intraparty struggle to the Red Army and its many campaigns against the Chinese Nationalists. Major works in all these areas are briefly introduced here.