The importance of the world’s most populous country is such as to create a demand for reference books to explain Chinese affairs to the Western reader. The present volume aims to cover the major political issues (domestic or foreign), events, personalities and organisations of contemporary China. The editors have set themselves two important limits: only subjects significant in strictly political terms are included, and only the People’s Republic is covered. Thus there is an article on Taiwan from Beijing’s point of view, but not vice versa. The 30 well‐qualified contributors live outside China, except for a few in Hong Kong. This means that they are able to take a critical point of view on such controversial matters as Tibet the Great Leap Forward and the events of 4 June 1989.
The dictionary is stated to be directed at non‐specialists. Meeting that criterion myself, I found that the 180 or so articles (usually of one or two pages) covered every heading I could think of, and of course many which I could not. The work is claimed to be up‐to‐date to September 1997, and does appear to be so. Indeed, such is the stability of Chinese politics that the Dictionary was able to foresee that in March 1998, Zhu Rongji would probably replace Li Peng as Premier, and in fact this did occur! Each article is supplied with the usual cross‐references.
The main body of articles is preceded by several longer introductory essays (of about five pages each) on such topics as the history of the People’s Republic, its governmental institutions, its economy and foreign policy, and the peoples of China (who of course are by no means all ethnic Chinese). At the end comes a map of China, a general index, and a selected and annotated bibliography of recent English‐language works, also updated to 1997. The index is not impeccable: for instance, one would not find the heading “Press” there, even though the subject is actually covered in the Dictionary, under the heading of “Media Issues.” Moreover, a librarian would find the order of articles puzzling in places, for instance, the “Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee” is entered under “S”, and the Third Plenum later, under “T”. I detect the influence of the computer here. But these are minor faults in an authoritative work which will be useful to all libraries with an interest in China or in international affairs.
