In recent years China has initiated economic reform. One objective of this reform is to improve consumer well-being by producing more agricultural and consumer goods. To achieve this objective, economic controls have been relaxed. A free market has been established and more economic incentives are provided for peasants and workers. The obvious questions to ask are: (1) have households increased their level of consumption? (2) Have the patterns or structure of consumption changed? (3) Has the change in price levels affected consumption? (4) To what extent has the establishment of a free market affected the consumption of free market goods versus goods from state stores? These are important policy questions for economists concerned with the Chinese economy.

The educational reform document of May 1985 has set the policy framework for a transformation of the structure and organization of knowledge in the Chinese higher curriculum that may have far-reaching consequences. It has been the tradition in research on Chinese education to interpret educational reform movements in relation to broad political changes, policy debates among factions within the communist leadership and changing economic strategies represented in successive Five-Year Plans. More sociologically oriented studies have focused on issues such as access to higher education and changes in the composition of those who found their way into the upper echelons of the formal educational system in terms of social class background. These approaches have shed considerable light on aspects of China's modern educational development and their conclusions are of primary importance in seeking an understanding of the wide-ranging reforms announced in the document of May 1985.

The Chinese author, Qin Zhaoyang (b. 1916) belongs to the “lost generation” of writers who were silenced as early as 1957, after the Hundred Flowers Movement. Although he is best known for his literary criticism in the famous article “Xianshizhuyi - guangkuo de daolu” (“Realism - the broad path”), published in Renmin wenxue (People's Literature) in September 1956,1 the most important part of his creative work consists of short stories and novels. During the 1940s and 1950s Qin produced some of his finest stories with a humour and personal tone that are unusual for mainland literature of the period.

On 1 October 1949 the People's Republic of China was formally established in Beijing. On 7 December Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), who had earlier moved to Taiwan to secure a final base of resistance in the civil war, ordered the Kuomintang (KMT) regime to withdraw to the island from Chengdu, Sichuan, its last seat on the mainland. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) declared its commitment to the goal of unifying the nation under the People's Republic, and thus called for the “liberation” of Taiwan. Although Taiwan represented the final phase of the still unfinished civil war, it was the strategic significance of the island that became of paramount concern to the CCP, the KMT and the United States.

How does one define the ”national security research bureaucracy” (NSRB) in the Chinese context and are there enough empirical data to sustain an article on this topic? The definition one chooses directly determines the data base one uses and, in turn, answers the question of the viability of the topic.