Abstract

Recent Books on China Jane L. Price, Cadres, Commanders and Commissars. Folkestone: Dawson, 1976, £12. William Brugger, Democracy & Organisation Or the Chinese hMustrial Enterprise, 1948-53, Cambridge University Press, 1976, £10.50. Delber L. McKee, Chinese Exchtsion versus the Open Door Policy, 1900-06, De troit: Wayne, 1977, $17.95. ttsi-Sheng Ch'i, Warlord Politics in Chh~a, 1916-28, Stanford University Press, 1976, $11.50. Academic writing on China has finally broken out of tile mould set by years of pro- Western scholarship and tile pursuit of the inessential. Younger China scholars still have to write heavy books with too many footnotes in order to earn the economic freedom with which to say things in a more interesting way. But they are less inhibited from addressing tllemselves to tile important questions raised by the Clfinese revolution and posed increasingly by the Chinese themselves. So though no individual reader of the Journal of Contemporary Asia may buy the books by Price, Brugger or McKee at present-day prices, they should not be passed by on the shelf, and institutions should be enc,_~:lraged to buy. Jane Price's book is sub-titled "The training of the Chinese Communist Leader- ship, 1920-45". How were tile men and women who now lead