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The study of Asian societies has not yet had its share of attention within the framework of comparative sociology as a whole. As one step towards remedying this situation, a one-day conference, called by the British Sociological Association, was held in London, England, at the School of Oriental and African Studies on December 2, 1961, to discuss the position of sociology in Asia. Papers dealing with India, China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Indo-China and Burma were presented at the conference. Coverage was thus fairly comprehensive, though certain areas, including the whole of the Middle East, were left out on this occasion. The aim of speakers present at the conference was to assess the present state of knowledge about societies they were considering, with special reference firstly to sociologists of Asian nationality and secondly to the current contribution of British scholarship. Papers that were presented, while they showed wide variation in the state of sociology in different countries, also showed for Asia as a whole a volume of work being done which western sociologists could ill afford to ignore. Some criticism arose in the discussion of the idea of regional research entrees and of inter-disciplinary teams assembled for area studies. There was discussion also of the alleged problem of translating sociological concepts into Chinese or Japanese.

Family Structure is a core social unit and fundamental social change necessarily involves a redefining of such a basic structural element. The leadership of the People's Republic of China, largely through specific attention to mate selection and marital arrangements and rituals, has attempted to strengthen the conjugal bond and weaken the filial bond in the Chinese family. Information gathered from press reports, and more importantly, Chinese families, suggests significant changes have occurred in the area of mate selection. It was found that a marriage between two well-acquainted individuals characterizes one-half of rural marriages and all urban marriages of respondents since 1958. The socially and geographically mobile youth are most likely to many freely because they are beyond parental control, and they have participated in heterosexual peer relationships in school and on the job. Closer examination reveals, however, that changes in the more complex areas of obligations and responsibilities to the household and parents are much slower to manifest. The ultimate form and style of the family relationships will be in large part determined by the balance between the community and peers and the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The divisions of the ceramic `table-ware' industry into different production subgroups and the flow of finished products into various markets are indicated in the chart below. `Body' is here used as the shaped but unpainted piece. The following topics will be treated in this paper. Some problems of finishing manufacturers: Before the war, they were a kind of merchant employer (toiya) and had a predominant power over body manufacturers and painters. This was indicative of the backwardness of Japanese economy. Noritake China has an overwhelmingly predominant position in this industry. The Specialized production (which means the division of production processes among finishing manufacturers, body manufacturers and painters, as expressed in the above chart) still exists even though the merchant-employer system has disappeared; but it seems to have backward characteristics compared to integrated manufacturers. Though there is the problem of overproduction in the background, this industry has been working at full capacity.

Since the change of political regime on the Chinese mainland in 1949, new values and attitudes have been consciously introduced by the Communist Party. The family institution has undergone a rather drastic alteration not only in form but also in composition, structure, roles of its members and especially in values and patterns of mate selection and marital adjustment. According to traditional Chinese social values, one should marry a person of relatively similar social background consistent with the concept of homogamy discussed by Burgess and his associates. This paper is a discussion of the new trend toward political homogamy which often results in the emergence of inter-class marriage. Along with the new freedom in mate selection, there are numerous incidents of romantic love involving individuals of different background and education. Under the reeducation of Party leaders, a new value based on political compatibility in socialist ideology has been stressed with reference to the establishment of a new family. Equality of the sexes through the participation of women in labor will liberate them from the traditional shackle of dependence on men.

Patterns of Chinese family life are changing under Communism. This paper is a descriptive report on the dating and courtship practices, husband-wife adjustment patterns and problems of the working mother in Communist China. Due to the increasing number of women participating in labor, most young people meet through working together under various circumstances, in offices, factories, or on farm cooperatives. Introductions by friends at parties, dances and pre-arranged meetings are not uncommon. In general, the wedding ceremony consists of obtaining a certificate from the local People's Council or registering at the Commune's registration office. According to informants, sometimes "Dutch treat" wedding celebrations are held by friends of the newly-weds, thus keeping the traditional value of rejoicing without putting too much financial burden on the new couple. The Communist leaders find that there is a new trend toward "early" marriage among the Communist youth. One of the relatively crucial problems working wives encounter is the readjustment of relationships between spouses resulting from the drastic change in the wife's roles.

The article focuses on the governmental accounting achievements in China during the Chou Dynasty. The book "Rites of Chou," by an unknown author, provides an early description of how the Chinese government at that time operated. The Chou rulers recognized the importance of using funds to allocate resources for specific purposes, which would be later known as general revenue funds. The government did have a relief fund for needy people that was supplied with surplus from the government's own store of grain. The calendar that was used during the Hsia dynasty differed from that used by the Chous and influenced how the government ordered its spending. The financial management system used by the Chous is compared to that of modern times, particularly how surpluses and taxes were handled.

The article informs that the Russian insistence that scientific research have immediate practical application so that it can aid in economic construction, an insistence that seems to misunderstand the role of pure research in scientific development, is reflected in the report on the work of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Academia Sinica, made by J.S. Lee at the first National Congress of Scientific "Workers in Peiping. The academy has thirteen research institutes covering history, archaeology, physics, chemistry, an observatory, a technological laboratory, and preparatory offies for institutes in the fields of psychology, geography and paleontology. Two additional institutes are planned in the fields of geology and paleontology. The academy set up several periodicals for publishing papers and reporting news of scientific activities and achievements in China and abroad. It is promoting the translation of reference books and textbooks. It has several projects going, one of which, engaging a reported 118 specialists, is at work unifying scientific terms.

The article examines kinship and family structure in Chinese communities. Co-habitation with the husband's family is common among married Chinese couples for the first several years of marriage, thus kinship has a strong impact on Chinese society. Data presented in the article indicate that there are several types of extended kinship ties in family life, including nuclear with vertical extension, nuclear with lateral extension, and nuclear with both lateral and vertical extension. Families with no extended kinship are also examined for comparison purposes.

The article focuses on the situation of commerce, finance and British diplomatic support in China from 1885-1886. China, in the mid-nineteenth century, was a classic illustration; while attempting to preserve their territorial integrity and to control a serious traffic in drugs, the Chinese appeared to close the door in the face of British trade, and thereby to deny the mainstay of Britain's imperial and world position. There were already some indications prior to 1886 that the government was concerned for the future of commercial and financial interests. Despite the early awareness of the difficulties faced by British commerce or financial interests in West Africa, Persia, and Turkey, there were as yet no signs of any relaxation from the rigid principle of non-intervention in the case of China. The most influential source of commercial opinion, however, proved to be the London Chamber of Commerce. Events in Europe necessitated even more fundamental steps for the support of British interests. The political importance which became attached to loans and financial concessions in China after 1895 is, of course, well known, and Foreign Office policy of giving full diplomatic support to the strongest British syndicates in their applications for the most strategically important concessions indicates how closely politics and finance were interwoven in the late 1890's.

The stem family in Japan is seemingly not consonant with the idea of life cycle which has produced important contributions to the study of the conjugal family, but the life cycle pattern of the Japanese family can be described as having three distinct stages which are manifest in the sequence of the role complex unique to it. A similar analysis is attempted with regard to the Chinese joint family. A new set of cycle stages is developed in order to cope with the changing status of the contemporary Japanese family. Thus, extensive applicability of the developmental framework is demonstrated for a cross-cultural study of the family in world revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a statistical study of plant distribution during the colonization and early development of vegetation on clay residues in China. A brief review of the recent literature on the distribution of individuals of a given species suggests that data collected under relatively simple habitat conditions would be of interest. According to the author, virgin areas of white mica, a waste product of China-clay manufacture, form sites for plant colonization, and distribution of the individuals can be plotted. In this article, results are given for a number of plants, and the agreement with Poisson, Neyman and Thomas series is examined. Other significant information relative to the matter is provided.

Before the 1900's and the coming of the Japanese to Taiwan, life on the island was regulated by traditional mainland Chinese socioeconomic patterns. The rural people had only limited contacts with an urban way of life. A high death rate kept the population almost stable. As in southeast China, each local area was dominated generally by a few powerful families, or by the large clans which in many cases controlled the countryside and often were in conflict with one another. Land was plentiful, but in many areas cultivation was not easily feasible. In addition, much of the arable land was not highly productive, since to make it so required vast amounts of labor-primarily because of the necessity for enlarging existing irrigation systems. With the Japanese introduction of effective and efficient centralized government in the early 1900's, the extension of the education system into the rural areas and the improved communications and measures for public health and sanitation life assumed a general orderliness and greater security and there was initiated a process of rapid and continuing socioeconomic change.

The effective functioning of the traditional society of China seemed to hinge upon two conditions: (1) prosperity of the peasant economy, and (2) adjustment between the landowning gentry and the peasantry, about half of the latter group being tenants or part-tenants. The impact of Western culture impaired the already worsening economy and brought disorders to the rural community, and, as a consequence, gentry families moved to cities. This exodus left behind not only agrarian absenteeism but also social anomie, for it deprived the villages of their elite leadership. Furthermore, the gentry, now unmindful of the peasant plight and confronting an ever-increasing outlay due to their tasting of urban luxury and comfort, resorted to raising their demands on the peasants for rent or interest, or both. Thus, agrarian absenteeism may be said to have contributed more than anything else to the breakdown of the traditional structure which opened China to a new phase of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article examines the certain "laws" of migration in the light of some principles of migration applied to American migrants to Shanghai, China. There are some types of migration in which there is no possibility of the approach being a gradual one. The leap from Europe or America to China is a long one. A great seaport of a widely divergent culture presents to alien migrants a situation almost wholly novel to which they are forced to adapt themselves, or return home, or perish. Shanghai has also been the starting point for many groups of Chinese students who have gone abroad to study. The exclusion law of the U.S. is a factor strongly inhibiting a greater countercurrent of migration out of the Oriental seaport, Shanghai in recent years. It has been seen that, the Chinese who have gone from Shanghai to the U.S. have done so because aliens have entered the city and displaced the natives. As for the Americans who migrate to Shanghai and then return to their homeland, there is a selective process going on. It is unlikely that many Americans, turning their backs upon the U.S., go to Shanghai determined to make it their adopted home and China their country.

The article presents a discussion on the United States government policy towards Chinese laborers. In 1943, the U.S. Congress, sensitive to the needs of a war-time alliance, acted to right an old wrong; it set aside that part of the Oriental Exclusion Act of 1924 which pertained to the Republic of China and placed Chinese on the regular immigration quota and admitted them to naturalization. Thus ended a controversial chapter in American economic and social history that had its beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century when several Western states erected discriminatory barriers around Chinese residing within their boundaries. The exclusion question officially mounted the national stage in 1882 when Congress enacted a law banning Chinese laborers from the country. A principal spur to the Act of 1882 had been the negotiation in 1868 of the convention with China commonly known as the Burlingame Treaty, or the Cheap Labor Treaty, for its clause enabling the wholesale importation of Chinese contract labor. This treaty, which followed more than a decade of comparative neglect of China by the U.S., was linked to the post Civil War expansionist policy of Secretary of State William H. Seward. Conceived as a commercial treaty but written with an eye to the labor needs of the Western railroads and of manufacturers, the treaty meant a setback for the organization of labor.

The article focuses on communist China's economic growth. The purpose of this article is to throw light on communist China's asserted economic growth by comparing it with that of the Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Japan. This is not to minimize in any way the Indian development, which has been rapid during the Nineteen Fifties and which has given very encouraging evidence to Asia of what can be accomplished with free institutions. It is merely an attempt to put Communist China's claimed economic progress back into focus. It should be emphasized that this article does not intend to analyze how effective the Chinese communists have been in improving their military potential even though this appears to be a primary aim of their economic policy. Instead this report intends to outline an approach for analyzing the relative effectiveness of the Chinese communist system in promoting economic growth; it is this latter question that appears to be most hotly debated. It appears that many analysts are convinced that just because a regime can hold down consumption, theoretically it should, therefore, be promoting a large volume of sound investment and a huge growth potential.

This article traces the social anthropology of China. Since the 1930s a number of Chinese, British and American anthropologists have tried to study Chinese society. The anthropologists working on Chinese themes since about 1950 have wanted to catch some of the things which a miniaturizing method must let slip. Had China not gone Communist they might still today have been piling up samples of local communities, the ethnographic map of China would have had many more flags in it, but the anthropologists would probably have been no nearer that understanding of Chinese society. The most suitable unit of study is the village, both because most Chinese lived in villages and because it is possible for one or two field workers to make a fairly detailed study in a year or so. The best way to begin the study of Chinese social structure is to select a very small social area, examine it meticulously, compare it with other specimens studied in the same manner, and then proceed to draw generalizations.

Focuses on an incomplete study conducted by the author on the life history of prawns at Fisheries Research Unit of University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China. Parts of the study; Frequency distribution of carapace length of the animal; Determination of sex ratio.

The article focuses on views of Joseph Needham, master of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge, Great Britain, on China. Joseph Needham, now Master of Gonville and Caius College, held for over thirty years the Sir William Dunn Readership in Biochemistry at Cambridge. After the publication of an early magnum opus in science the humanist in him has gradually overwhelmed the scientist. It seems to follow in principle that where there were contacts, direct or indirect, between the Mediterranean region and China before the great opening of the sea trade routes, they were necessarily to the advantage of the former rather than of the latter, and that if a technological innovation or a scientific principle appears earlier in China than it does in Europe, it is because Europe derived it from China. To account further for the one-way flow, Needham seems to speak of the isolation of China as acting in one sense, and he refers to Chinese reluctance to admire anything coming from abroad. If Needham is wholly right in his views, the Chinese civilization was markedly superior in machine-building and the industrial use of machines until the European Renaissance, when the West began to move forward on the basis of its indebtedness to the East.

The article describes the evolution of cotton textile handicraft in China. The supply of cotton steadily expanded from the late Sung and early Yuan periods. In north China cotton first appeared in Shensi and spread gradually to Shantung, while in the south it was transplanted from Hainan Island to the China coast and spread northwards toward the Yangtze Valley region. Government demand for military uniforms encouraged greater cotton cultivation in the north. During the Yuan and Ming periods officials instructed farmers to adopt improved techniques of seed care, planting, and harvesting. Increased taxation in the late Ming period was also a powerful inducement to compel peasants to grow more cotton. Gradual changes in taste, the steady growth of towns, and the extension of money relationships increased demand for cotton cloth. On the supply side technical advances in both rice and cotton farming made for increased cultivation and greater yield. More land could be devoted to cotton because quick-ripening Champa rice seeds became more widely used, thus permitting double cropping and freeing more land for cash crops.