Author's note: The question of how many people there are in China is unanswerable, but this article from 1982 marked the first time that the government officially stated that the…

Author??s note: In the early 1980s, the conservatives led by Deng Liqun were firmly in charge of propaganda and culture. They continued to bash away at maintaining a pure ??socialist??…

Author's note: This article reflects of how isolated and deeply warped the old "socialist" Chinese economic system was, and how far the country has come in consumer economic terms. Back…

The March of Pinyin English By Graham Earnshaw in Peking September 2, 1980 For many people, China's capital is now called Beijing, its former leader Mao Zedong and its largest…

Author's note: China in in 1981 was still to a large extent taking the total thought control approach that survives today in North Korea. But in retrospect, I think I…

Tangshan earthquake survivors in terror or new quake By Graham Earnshaw in Tangshan November 2, 1983 The survivors of the Tangshan earthquake in northeast China in 1976 which killed a…

Sexy Adverts Upset Chinese Workman By Graham Earnshaw in Peking February 26, 1982 An official Chinese newspaper yesterday published a letter from an irate railway worker complaining that too many…

Author's note: The following item very much reflects the feel of the early 1980s, when China was hardly open and relationships between foreigners and Chinese were virtually non-existent. The headline,…

'New China' Girl Gives State 35,000 Pounds By Graham Earnshaw in Peking August 5, 1981 A 23-year-old girl in eastern China who recently inherited more than 35,000 pounds sterling has…

Crowd Attacks Journalist By Graham Earnshaw in Peking November 16, 1981 A foreign correspondent in Peking was roughly man-handled by a crowd yesterday and then detained by the police for…