Passing the Baton in Beijing

By Roderick MacFarquhar on February 18, 1988

Succession has become an omnipresent problem not only in China but throughout Asia. Long-lasting regimes under aging rulers are entering their twilight zone in North Korea, Burma, and Indonesia, and face a period of weakness and uncertainty, for the moment of succession is the midnight of the state; in Taiwan, the midnight hour has just struck. Where a change of leaders is accompanied by a change of system, as in South Korea, violence may pose a threat to otherwise hopeful prospects of continued economic advance.

Born Too Late

By John K. Fairbank on February 18, 1988

The Last Emperor is a spectacular film photographed in brilliant color. It is also a moral drama with controversial political overtones of great ambiguity. It spans sixty years of history, between the Manchu dynasty’s final decrepitude and the disaster of the Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic. It leaves us with a question: Did Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Ch’ing dynasty (1644–1912) and the only emperor of Japan’s puppet state of Manchukuo (1931–1945), really find a new life in Mao’s China? Or was it simply a variation on his life’s theme of puppetry?

China on My Mind

By Jonathan D. Spence on February 18, 1988

Almost forty years have passed since John King Fairbank’s first book, The United States and China, was published in 1948. A careful blending of Chinese institutional history with diplomatic history, the book proved immediately popular among Americans seeking to place their present against the background of China’s past. Over the next six years, as the Communists consolidated their hold over China and the Korean War effectively wrecked US-China relations, Mr.