In the history of the Chinese communist movement, the re-emergence of the term “permanent” or “uninterrupted” revolution is clearly associated with the Great Leap Forward of 1958. It is then that the concept was first put forward once more after an eclipse of 30 years, and though it has since been employed from time to time, the most important articles on the subject were published in 1958 and 1959. The Cultural Revolution, has, however, altered our perception of this as of so many other important matters, both by making available new information and by placing the events of the previous decade, in a new perspective.

In the shadow of the industrialization programme directly carried out by the Central Government of the Chinese People's Republic over the past two decades, there has occurred a less visible effort at industrial development under the auspices of the provincial governments and other local authorities. Widely dispersed throughout China, yet the origin of over half the nation's gross industrial output in the 1950s, local industries must have significantly affected popular understanding of the development process and popular reaction to it. At times they have even been the focus of debate over alternative approaches to the problem of achieving rapid industrialization in Chinese conditions. More intimately associated with the process of industrialization than individual handicrafts, they are capable, because of their relatively simple technology and small scale, of providing a medium for alleviating a number of problems left unsolved by large-scale and technologically advanced industries. Over a period of 20 years, such problems have run the gamut from shortages of high-grade materials required by the technologically demanding large-scale sector, to the inequalities in living standards, cultural levels and life styles created or aggravated by the development of large-scale industries concentrated in urban areas.

One of the crucial problems in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which must still be considered as unsolved is the question of how Mao Tse-tung managed to seize the leadership of the Party. Mao's rise to power has for a long time been linked with the mysterious Enlarged Session of the Politburo which took place in January 1935, and has come to be known as the Tsunyi Conference. Despite the fact that it is shrouded in an aura of secrecy, the Conference is assumed to have been the turning point in Mao's Party career.

Regarding the question of hanging the portraits of our leaders, the Central Authorities made a clear ruling as early as 29 March 1960… “In the organizations for ehe Party, the People's Liberation Army and the people's associations of various kinds, it is permitted to hang the portrait of Mao Tse-tung alone; it is also permitted to hang the portrait of Mao Tse-tung, Liu Shao-ch'i, Chou En-lai, Chu Te, Ch'en Yun, Lin Piao, Teng Hsiao-p'ing, seven persons. The manner of hanging these portraits is: if it is desirable to hang the seven portraits of Mao, Liu, Chou, Chu, Ch'en, Lin, Teng together, the portrait of Mao Tse-tung can be placed in the centre and the others on the two sides. It is also suitable to put the portrait of Mao Tse-tung in the first place and the others in order as indicated, and from left to right. According to our understanding there are now not a few units, especially the primary level units, which have not hung the portraits as described above. We are asking these units to inspect carefully the way in which these instructions have been carried out so that we may have a unified system according to the regulations of the Central Authorities.

As the Chinese People's Republic (CPR) enters its third decade the question of viability as a stable nation-state has become increasingly urgent. Events since the Great Leap Forward seem to indicate an internal crisis of confidence which has slowly led to the present emergence of military power within the Government. If unity and stability can be maintained only by using the People's Liberation Army (PLA), then a situation is arising which closely resembles the Nationalist regime in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s. At that time, the army under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek dominated much of the political life of the state. A sense of impending war (against Japan in the 1930s and against the Soviet Union in 1969 and 1970) also reinforces the tendency of the civilian leadership to rely on military instruments. Of course, Lin Piao is not Chiang, Mao Tse-tung is not a Sun Yat-sen, nor is Liu Shao-ch'i a modern counterpart of Wang Ching-wei. Analogies can be constructed, but the problem is that students and scholars of modern China have not devoted sufficient attention to the Nanking state as a comparative referent for Communist China, with the result that they have largely been unprepared to ask questions which a knowledge of the Kuomintang (KMT) experiment might have raised.

Novels reflect social realities at given times and under given conditions. When the direct survey method cannot be applied to the study of Chinese society, novels constitute one of the available sources from which useful information concerning the structure, order and conditions of society and interpersonal relations may be inferred. However, the difficulty of reconstructing the social conduct of Chinese people from such elusive source materials is enhanced since Communist novels reflect less the realities as they are than the realities as they should be. The theory of the combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism demands that the plots and characters must be “romanticized” to give a picture of the society corresponding to the needs of ideology. Even if this is so, the stories still have to be based on social realities for the readers to appreciate them. A somewhat modified interpretation holds that romanticization is based on the foundation of realism. It is from the discernment of this element of realism in Chinese Communist fiction that we may attempt to reconstruct the nature of Chinese society.