Important and busy people in all societies rely upon aides, assistants, staff associates, factotums, lackeys and personal servants, and it is no different in China. What is distinctive is the diffuse and all-purpose character of the Chinese mishu, literally “secret book” but usually translated as “secretary.” A mishu, however, is actually someone with both far broader and more personally intimate responsibilities and powers than this term suggests. Any Chinese shouzhang (leader or head) of significance will have numerous mishus, personal and/or organizational, in his service. In China's political arena there are around one million people who claim the title of mishu, and who, in shielding, guiding and doing the bidding of their masters, give a distinctive character to the political process. Mishus operate with considerable authority not just at the pinnacles of power, as aides do in most countries, but from top to bottom of both the Party and state hierarchies. Therefore, to understand how political relationships operate, how communications flow and how authority is asserted in the ranks of Chinese officialdom it is necessary to appreciate the ubiquitous role of the mishu.

Few China scholars or Chinese citizens know one of the most basic facts about Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang, Zhu De, Chen Yi, Guo Moruo or many other modern leaders: they are all Hakka. Most popular and official histories, in China and abroad, ignore this basic ethnic bond. The title of this article is used ironically, in deliberate parody of the genuine Secret History of the Mongols. The subtitle points toward an ironic but serious effort to illuminate a major facet of revolutionary history which remains almost entirely unexplored.

The decade from 1978 to 1988 was a period of great social transformation in China. The pragmatic economic policies and comparatively relaxed political approach resulted in a less rigid and dogmatic atmosphere, providing a more liberal setting for cultural and intellectual activities. Chinese intellectuals directly participated in defining and developing the new social intersubjectivity and ideological discourse. In comparison with the first 30 years of the People's Republic, the role and functions of intellectuals between 1978 and 1988 became increasingly complex within a rapidly changing social context. The period also marks the development of a new pattern in the relationship between Chinese intellectuals and the state, which was no longer based on the total submission of the former to the latter.

Over the past decade a highly significant development has attracted little scholarly attention: the steady expansion of Chinese power in the South China Sea. There were several excellent studies of this process through the very early 1980s, but these ended well before China's push from the Paracel Islands to the Spratly Islands in 1988. Indeed, they disagreed about whether China would actually do this. By the early 1990s China had pushed into the Spratlys and built up a relatively strong base there. It is thus time to look anew at China's activities in that region.

The distribution of income in China has been a subject of great interest to economists and others both inside and outside the country. Scholars have wanted to know whether a socialist strategy of development has resulted in an egalitarian society and, more generally, how the distribution of income in China compares with that in other developing countries that have relied more on market forces. Policy-makers have wanted to know, especially after the economic reforms introduced since 1978, whether the institutional transformations and policy interventions ameliorated or aggravated existing inequalities. Unfortunately it was not possible to address these questions systematically because of inadequate statistical information. There were few estimates of the distribution of income in China and those that were available were fragmentary and of uncertain reliability.

From the mid-1950s right through the late 1970s jobs in urban China were largely treated as a welfare benefit; life-time employment was the norm and there was neither a buyer's market nor a seller's market for labour. In the state sector hiring was done on the basis of annual quotas established by national level ministries which in turn allocated openings to subordinate offices and factories within each bureaucratic chain of command. For those entering the labour force for the first time, job seeking was defined as “waiting for an assignment” (dai ye) and placement was usually handled within secondary schools by classroom teachers. For those already employed by a state unit, moving to a new employer was a “transfer” (or diao dong) and required appeals to at least two supervisory levels within the firm, and then approval from the administrative supervisors for both new and old employers. For CCP members there were additional sanctioning bodies in the Party hierarchy.

Many scholars have analysed bargaining between supervisory bureaucracies and Chinese large and medium-sized factories. Walder identified a web of informal, semi-bureaucratic relationships that structures negotiations over revenues, payments and subsidies. Granick and Tidrick pointed out that divided bureaucratic control increases the parties to bargaining, while conflicting interests present opportunities to play supervisors off against each other. Huang found collusive behaviour that occurs when local government agencies and firms rob the state treasury by increasing central subsidies and reducing central exactions in exchange for fees that go directly to local coffers. Numerous authors have noted that the focus of bargaining has shifted from material to financial transfers and have used (or questioned using) Kornai's “soft budget constraint” to explain the persistence of bargaining since the onset of reform.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, Beijing has engaged in foreign arms transfers. Transfers during the early period went almost unnoticed because they were on a very small scale, were almost invariably gratis, and had little or no impact on the world's arms trade. This low profile changed during the 1980s as China became one of the world's major arms dealers. Beijing estimates that income from arms exports is about US$1.34 billion annually, but other sources estimate that it is over US$2 billion. This dramatic increase attracted attention in October 1987 when Chinese Silkworm missiles fired from Iran badly damaged oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, including American-reflagged Kuwaiti tankers. Only then did the international community recognize that China had become a major arms supplier to the Third World.

This article uses the 14 stories from “Strange Tales from Strange Lands” (Yixiang yiwen) by Zheng Wanlong to discuss the problematic relationship between depictions of primitivism and the search for essential Chineseness within what has become known as “root-seeking literature” (xungen wenxue). It shows that the dichotomous relationship between primitivism and Han civilization presented by Zheng reflects an alienated notion of essential Chineseness and human existence. Since Mao's death, Chinese intellectuals have expressed concern about the emergence of a “faith crisis” and described younger people as the “lost generation.” The article reveals that one stream of root-seeking literature, in its attempts to mitigate this crisis, has instead reflected and indeed perpetuated it.

The 14th Party Congress heralded a victory for Deng Xiaoping's programme of rapid economic transformation accompanied by tight political control. His name and policies were lauded in Jiang Zemin's “Work Report” to the Congress and the theory of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” became the cornerstone of the revised Party Constitution. The overhaul of leading personnel has provided a clear Politburo majority in favour of the increasing marketization of China's economy. Thus, the Party has created perhaps one last chance to position itself at the forefront of reform rather than appearing as an antique body engaged in increasingly irrelevant ideological polemics.x Whether it will be able to ride this newly re-released tiger of economic reform will depend on its capacity to deal with the social and political consequences of its strategy, many of which will be unpredictable. In essence, the easy part of reform was completed in the 1980s and the difficult stage will now begin. Citizens will be hit as rents and pricesrise, and the state will have to offer employment or welfare to those who lose their jobs if enterprises are forced to become genuinely efficient. It will take a trustworthy, competent and imaginative leadership to sell this programme to the Chinese people, a task made even harder by the credibility gap that has widened enormously in recent years. The mandate for change is there, but whether it will be exploited effectively remains to be seen. Past experience suggests that despite the commitment to bold changes, the Party will slow down the pace of reform once it senses potential unrest.