[
    {
        "id": 205432,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 194,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n187\n\nyears of research on Chinese history and politics a number of profound thoughts on the situation of China which he lays before the reader simply, almost conversationally, without any of the impedimenta of scholarship to restrict his book to the expert. The result is a stimulating book which is effortless to read.\n\nAll these essays were published earlier in magazines, and though this might have meant a rather disorganised book, in fact the aspects of the China problem which he covers in this rather small volume are the crucial ones, except possibly for the gap left by his silence on China's relations with Europe and the Soviet Union. On the whole the book is oriented towards the American reader, but this is justified in the preface in which Fairbank explains that his conception of the China expert is as a middleman, explaining China to his own country as much as studying it in vacuo. He fulfils this function himself beautifully in several pieces which show how China developed her hostility towards the U.S. and other foreigners, and one can hardly escape his conclusion that, if the American imperialists had not existed, Peking would have had to invent them. There are a couple of first-class essays on Taiwan, and, at the end, an assortment which includes a piece on the journalist Edgar Snow and another on the protestant missions in China. Both of them drive home vital aspects of the gap in understanding between China and the U.S.\n\nHong Kong.\n\nCOLINA LUPTON\n\n1.\n\nLOCAL PUBLICATIONS NOTED\n\nMAKING ENDS MEET; Majorie Topley (Ed.) being Vol. 1, Journal of the Hong Kong Institute of Social Research (1965), pp. iv, 117, published in Hong Kong by the South China Morning Post. H.K.$5.\n\nCHILDREN WITH PROBLEMS — CHILD GUIDANCE IN HONG KONG: by Gennie Gen-hwa Lee, Anita King-fun Li and Beryl Robina Wright. Hong Kong, 1966, pp. xii, 88, H.K.$6.00.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
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    {
        "id": 207285,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1975",
        "page_number": 53,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CHINA'S ECONOMIC PLANNING & CHANGING GEOGRAPHY 45\n\nthe present regime is making efforts to convey water from the Yangtze River in the south to the Yellow River in the north. Since 1958, several survey parties in western Szechuan and southern Kansu have studied the possibility of transferring superfluous water to the Yellow River from the Gold Sand River, the Taito River, and other tributaries of the Yangtze.\n\nThere are, of course, many difficulties to be encountered in carrying out this plan. For example, the northwestern region is so sparsely settled that a tremendous number of workers must be brought in to construct the necessary canals and locks. The area has a serious problem of seepage and evaporation, and it experiences violent earthquakes.\n\nIf the plan is successful, however, it will provide ample compensation for the effort required. It will lessen the threat of flood in the southeast part of China, and will prevent drought in the northwest. It will improve the use of the region for pasture land, and increase its agricultural production. It can also develop electric power, which will make up for the shortage of coal in the region. It will modify the dry climate to some extent; this in turn will encourage forest growth. It will form a system of waterways that will facilitate navigation throughout the country.\n\nThe building of Railroads—For the sake of political coherence and the furtherance of economic development, the present government has paid great attention to the building of railroad systems. The length of the main line built since 1949 was 16,000 miles. Of the many completed systems of railroads, three have geopolitical significance. They reflect the determination of the present regime to unify the state and to open up the frontier border by connecting it with the inner areas.\n\n1. Along the east coast, five ports—Yentai, Ningpo, Foochow, Amoy, and Chiankiang—have been linked to the interior by short lines. The military intention of the railroads built in the areas around Foochow and Amoy apparently is that of “liberating” Taiwan.\n\n2. Two long railroads have been built for the purpose of connecting China with the Soviet Union. One, which was built in 1954, runs from Tsining to Ulan Bator in Outer Mongolia, and then to the Soviet Union. With the completion of this railroad, China was joined to the Mongolian People's Republic. The other, which is",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207286,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1975",
        "page_number": 54,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "46\n\nCHIAO-MIN HSIEH\n\n1,400 miles long, runs between Lanchow and Urumchi via Hami in Sinkiang.\n\nThe Communist government obviously feels that the political importance of these railroads is greater than their economic value. Since the great bulk of China's population, markets, and production lies east of Lanchow and south of the Great Wall, many railroads are urgently needed in that part of China. One must wonder whether the two railroads built in the desert for the main purpose of connecting China with the Soviet Union were so necessary and their construction so urgent. Moreover, there is at the moment a sand-dune problem confronting the operation of the railroad in these desert areas. This seems to be insoluble by use of present techniques and makes the value of the whole project even more questionable.\n\n3. In southwest China a railroad was built between Nanning and Pinghsiang in 1955, which is connected with Haiphong and Hanoi. The significance of this new rail link between the Red River delta and the South China province of Kwangsi is that it opens a new major sea outlet for south China.\n\nSince China is an amphibious nation, facing the interior continent in the northwest and the Pacific Ocean in the southeast, one of the most significant geopolitical factors in China's history is her changing relations with the continent and the sea. In ancient times China faced the northwest, where the \"Silk Road\" passed through: the Pacific coast was the back door. The Kansu corridor in the northwest was the main entrance, playing an important role in communications between China and central Asia. In the nineteenth century, Western sea powers acted to open China's coastal ports, China began to turn her face toward the Pacific, which then became the front door, through which came new ideas and knowledge, but also new problems and troubles. Shanghai, Canton, and Tientsin replaced the cities in the northwest as the key cities. This reversal in geographic accessibility has transformed China's isolated condition to one of contact with the world.\n\nThe eastern coastal areas soon became the main part of China, where were located most of the large cities, heavy industries, railroads, and inland water routes, and about 70 per cent of the population. Because of its location, the area is vulnerable to attack by foreign sea powers. During World War II the area was easily",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208582,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1979",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "12\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\nCairo Conference at the end of 1943, Roosevelt offered Chiang Kai-shek, behind Churchill's back, American support in preventing Britain from getting back Hong Kong if Chiang would cooperate with the communists in fighting against Japan and establish a representative government in China. Roosevelt's idea was that on regaining sovereignty over Hong Kong, Chiang should \"make a grand gesture and make it a free port.\"49 At Teheran in November 1943, during a break in the Cairo Conference, Roosevelt raised with Churchill the question of the possible return of Hong Kong to China, and the latter refused even to discuss the question.50\n\nAt his secret meeting with Stalin during the Yalta Conference, on 8 February 1945, Roosevelt again mentioned his hope \"that the British would give back the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China and that it would then become an internationalized free port.\" He added, however, that he knew Churchill \"would have strong objections to this suggestion.” At the conference proper, however, Roosevelt did not raise the question of Britain's return of Hong Kong, although references were made to the colony on several occasions.52 Later, in the spring of 1945, Roosevelt used Bernard Baruch, a financier and a friend of both Roosevelt and Churchill, as a messenger to press the British prime minister on the matter of Hong Kong. Roosevelt was now additionally concerned that the Soviet Union might make use of Britain's presence in Hong Kong as an argument for opening a port of her own in China.53 In April 1945 when General Patrick J. Hurley was sent by Roosevelt to talk with Churchill over the retrocession of Hong Kong to China, among other subjects, the latter replied that the colony would not be yielded \"over [his] dead body.\"54 The truth is that already by 1944 Roosevelt had become increasingly reluctant to offend the sensitivity of Churchill who by then was no longer \"subservient to the friendly strength of the United States\" as he clearly had been in 1941-42.55\n\nBritain was not slow to perceive the American weakness. Moreover, by 1944 American enthusiasm about China and Chiang Kai-shek had somewhat cooled down. Roosevelt, as it has been mentioned, had for some time been troubled by the disunity between the nationalists and the communists, and by growing criticism of the autocracy of the Chiang regime. Discussion and criticism of the Chungking government and its conduct of the war increased remarkably in the United States following the American recall of General Joseph Stilwell under pressure from Chiang Kai-shek,56",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938",
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    },
    {
        "id": 209002,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1980",
        "page_number": 164,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "132 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nIs this mismanagement? It can be called mismanagement by all who are dissatisfied: by ardent Maoists and by the proponents of greater liberalization. Teng Hsiao-p'ing must feel sometimes like a squeezed beancake. He will be criticized by some no matter what he does. \n\nThe reader must be tired of articles that breathlessly give eye-witness accounts of the truth about China. There is no simple truth about China, which is too large and complicated a country. Articles about it often tell more about the observer than the observed; and about those on whom the observer depended for his information. This problem is not unique to China. England is complicated. The United States is more complicated. Russia and China are still more complicated. About Russia it is hard to learn because of the paranoid secrecy emanating from the Kremlin. About China it is hard to learn because of its long history of ups and downs, ins and outs, and the tendency of most Chinese to assume that \"behind the curtain\" much is going on that differs from what is going on in public view... \n\nDuring my whole trip in China I never heard any Chinese bring up Mao Tse-tung. His portrait was still everywhere—though I have heard that it is rarer in Canton. There was a very long line of people waiting to enter his mausoleum in Peking. But no guide—no one at all, in fact—brought up the name of Chairman Mao. I had an interesting experience in Nanking. The local head of the China Travel Service gave our tour-group a banquet in order to make amends for a mix-up about our arrival in his city. At the end of the banquet he proposed a toast to friendship between China and the United States, to future tourism, and so on. Then one of our tour group responded by proposing a toast to Mao Tse-tung. I was watching our host's face. He was at a loss. Then, after a moment's pause, he joined in the toast. If I had been he, I would have responded with a toast to George Washington. \n\nI had very good luck in visiting monasteries and meeting monks when I went to Sian, Loyang, Nanking, Soochow, Shanghai, and Peking. I have described some of what I learned in the Far Eastern Economic Review for August 15, 1980. Let me say here only that my good luck was because China is a free country today in a way that the Soviet Union is not. While my tour group went off in a bus to see the sights, I hired a taxi and visited a monastery. Only on",
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    {
        "id": 209476,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 133,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "111\n\nWork of Lawyers of the People's Republic of China” adopted by the Standing Committee of the NPC in August 1980. Their duties are to give help to government organizations, enterprises and other undertakings, social bodies, people's communes, and ordinary citizens so as to ensure the just implementation of the law, and to defend the interests of the state and the collective and legitimate rights and interests of citizens. As pointed out in an article appearing in the Beijing Review: Lawyers are state legal workers who work in legal advisory offices which provide their leadership and pay their salaries. Unlike lawyers in capitalist countries who work for their clients, lawyers in China proceed from the stand of the people and safeguard the correct implementation of the law and the legitimate rights of litigants.15\n\nOther protections are provided by the Criminal Code and Criminal Code of Procedure: Articles 136 and 137 of the former forbid the use of torture to extract confessions and gathering a crowd for purposes of \"beating, smashing, and looting,\" while article 32 of the latter forbids the extortion of confessions by torture or duress and the collection of evidence by threat, enticement, deceit or other illegal means. Article 35 of the Criminal Code of Procedure goes on to state that in handing down judgments stress shall be laid on the weight of the evidence, and \"when there is only a statement by the accused and no other evidence available, the accused shall not be considered guilty and sentenced.\" The Criminal Code also attempts to deal with two serious problems of the past: Article 9 provides that the law shall not be applied retroactively, and Article 135 prescribes severe punishment for state functionaries who intentionally bring false charges against people. The Criminal Code of Procedure (Articles 43-52) further establishes detailed procedures governing arrest and detention, requiring warrants for arrests, eliminating secret arrests, and setting strict conditions and time limits under which a person may be held without a proper warrant authorized by the procuratorate.\n\nThe Criminal Code is based on drafts prepared in the mid-1950s which in turn appear to have been based on the 1926 Soviet RSFSR Criminal Code. This later Code, replaced in the Soviet Union in 1958, was severely criticised in its day, and it is",
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    {
        "id": 211588,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1989",
        "page_number": 3,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "Page 8\n\n# ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, HONG KONG BRANCH PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1989-90\n\n## Summary\n\nThe past year has seen momentous events in China, and in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Those in China naturally concerned us most. The Council met specially to consider and send a letter of concern to the British Government following the Tienanmen Square massacre.\n\nHere in Hong Kong, the Society continued to arrange as many talks and local tours as possible. We know that there is a great demand for places on local tours, and have therefore done our best to arrange events for which there need be no limitation on numbers. These included large-scale visits to places on Hong Kong Island, and to the site of the replacement airport at Tung Chung. On the latter, well over 200 Members, their families and friends were able to participate.\n\nTwo publications have been received from the printer this year. The book, The Turning of the Tide: Religion in China Today, in association with Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, was published at the end of 1989, and Vol. 27 of the Journal is now in print. Our current Hon. Editor, Dr. Patrick Hase, taking over the work already done by Professor David Faure, has promised the 1988 issue over the Summer. A start on the 1989 volume has also been made.\n\nThe Council continues to work through its committees and office bearers. The Activities Committee is the busiest of those established a few years ago, following the 1987 Symposium on the Future of the Society in Hong Kong, but the others are in being and take action as and when appropriate.\n\nMembership continues to grow, and communication becomes increasingly important. Thanks to Anita Wilson, the Newsletter keeps us all in touch with the programmes and provides other information of interest to Members.\n\n## Membership\n\nMrs. Bruce, our Assistant Secretary, tells me that 119 persons have\n\nPage 9",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212426,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 368,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "345\n\nCollar, Hugh, CAPTIVE IN SHANGHAI: A STORY OF INTERNMENT IN WORLD WAR II, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1990. xvi + 160 pp. Index. Hugh Collar, unofficial head of the British in Shanghai after the Sino-Japanese War became a part of World War II, wrote an account of the international community under Japanese internment. This is a rambling but often interesting account, edited by Pauline Woodroffe.\n\nAN\n\nLiu Binyan, CHINA'S CRISIS: ESSAYS FROM INTELLECTUAL IN EXILE, translated from the Chinese into English by Howard Goldblatt, Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press, 1990. xxv + 50 pp. Index. This volume comprises a series of five lectures given at Harvard in 1988-89 by one of China's most eminent dissidents. Liu, who had suffered for his intellectual principles during the 1950s as well as during the Cultural Revolution a decade later, was expelled from the Communist Party and was banned from publishing. There is a Foreword written by Professor Merle Goldman.\n\nMehrotra, Santosh K., INDIA AND THE SOVIET UNION: TRADE AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, Notes. Bibliography. Index. As the title indicates, this work is about the economic relationship between the Soviet Union and India (an industrialized planned economy and a developing market economy). The period covered is between 1955 and just before the book went to press.\n\nASIAN DEVELOPMENT OUTLOOK 1992, 1992. 313 pp. This study of economic development in the Asian countries containing a large amount of information with useful statistics, was published by the Asian Development Bank and Oxford University Press.\n\nDardess, John W, CONFUCIANISM AND AUTOCRACY: PROFESSIONAL ELITES IN THE FOUNDING OF THE MING DYNASTY, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983. 358 pp. with 1 map. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. Professor Dardess argues that, far from being a 'socially indeterminate category', the body of elitist professional Confucian public servants consciously created a highly centralized state at the beginning of the Ming dynasty, leading to five hundred years of autocracy in China.\n\ndeBary, William Theodore, FIRST ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS: A",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212535,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 89,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "69\n\nIn the period 1949-1972, the political environment in China was similar. The communists felt the United States was their number one antagonist by its insistence on supporting the KMT regime in the civil war of China and its involvement in the Korean civil war. During the Korean War, the image of America as the most aggressive imperialist country became more widespread and this image lasted until late into the 1970s. The hostility between the two countries in the fifties and early sixties left little room for China to develop a flexible policy. As a result, China adopted a domestic policy close to orthodox Stalinism and a foreign policy in harmony with the Soviet Union. As the United States carried out a rather consistent China policy, the Sino-Soviet split did not immediately bring about in China a policy change favourable to the United States, nor its cultural presence in China.\n\nOn the other hand, the arts in China have always been politically dominated. Accordingly, any presentation of foreign culture would carry political significance. Naturally, in their efforts for reconciliations, both governments employed cultural exchanges as a means to that end. The Philadelphia Orchestra's visit to China in 1973 was intended to be more a celebration of the reconciliation than a cultural event.\n\nSince 1979, the politicalization of Sino-American arts exchanges has found a new expression: the conscious creation of an American cultural imagery in China, which was made possible by the drastic increase of exchanges in 1979 and the substantial American cultural events touring China in the following years.\n\nIn at least one respect, the United States government has been double-faced. While denouncing the introduction of politics into art, the United States government has also long been involved in supplying foreign nationals with American cultural products it selected. The United States Information Agency (USIA), is explicit in this by announcing that among its tasks, is “to promote and administer ... cultural exchange programs in the national interest\", i.e. rather than for merely the enrichment of culture.\n\nStimulus\n\nA prelude to the new era\n\nIn the period between 1949 and 1972, China and the United States were isolated from each other. While the governments nurtured a strong negative image of the other country among its own citizens by repeated",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212547,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 101,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "81\n\nrelations with China were employed for the first time by Richard Nixon. Among a number of measures, he lifted restrictions against Americans wanting to travel to China as a gesture for and, therefore, a step to reconciliation. Nixon approved the visit of the American table tennis team to China. At the White House, the president chatted with members of a table tennis team which was the first Chinese sports delegation that ever toured the United States since the founding of the People's Republic. On 13 January, 1973, he interviewed the Shenyang Acrobatic Troupe. Such meetings were conducted as part of the administration's policy of strengthening the U.S.-China general relationship. Even at a time when the administration could only place cultural exchanges low on its priority list, they still enjoyed the attention and support of the president.\n\nAt this stage, Sino-American ties in culture were far from sufficient. This does not mean that either party failed to see the importance of such exchanges. Thus, the Nixon Administration repeatedly expressed its recognition of the importance of cultural relations in the Shanghai Communique and the communique on 22 February, 1973 which actually announced a programme to expand cultural relations. The president's meetings with visiting Chinese artists were also expressions of this concern. However, in the two years after Nixon's visit, the administration could not find the time to handle matters other than strategic concerns. Furthermore, the president was bogged down in the domestic political difficulties which eventually led to his resignation. The Ford Administration, afraid of irritating the Soviet Union and the right wing at home, could only maintain the status quo and even sacrificed arts exchanges with China. By doing so it accelerated a general deterioration in Sino-American relations.\n\nThe Carter Administration made no improvement in either the general relationship or cultural relations with China in its first eighteen months in office. When a new China policy began to take shape in the middle of 1977, the general relationship improved. In May, the State Department prepared a memo for the president which pointed out that unless diplomatic relations were established, the existing cultural and economic relations would possibly stagnate or even be weakened. It also pointed out that Sino-Soviet relations would get closer if the United States failed to have a formal relationship with China. But what played a decisive role in the American efforts to establish diplomatic relations was the soaring influence of the Soviet Union in international affairs, a situation Nixon faced before the Sino-American rapprochement. Clearly",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212557,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 111,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "91\n\nto reconsider its policy of importing non-action movies.\n\nThe relatively stable policies of the CFEIC do not mean they are rigid and lack flexibility. While leaving the basic policy of making everything politically safe intact, the CFEIC modified its policies to suit the development of the movie industry and the needs of the audiences whose level of appreciation is ever rising. During the 1981 film week, there was hardly any movie which reflected contemporary American life. As the situation changed, some movies reflecting contemporary American life began to be introduced. In the film week held in 1985, the United States could present what it considered the best of its movies: On Golden Pond, Kramer vs Kramer, The Turning Point and A Coal Miner's Daughter.\n\nConsequences\n\nThe previous discussion of Sino-American arts exchanges has provided a picture of how such exchanges were overwhelmingly dominated by political considerations by both governments, though sometimes the goals of the governments and the non-governmental-artist sector merged with each other unconsciously. Nonetheless, these exchanges produced unanticipated consequences. As arts exchanges were part of the broader framework of the Sino-American relationship since 1979, when exchanges were institutionalized, and the number dramatically increased, an analysis of the effect of these exchanges on the general relationship between the two countries is necessary. In this context, the frequent travels of performing groups, arts exhibitions and specialists between the two countries did create a feeling of intimacy in the period of 1979 and 1981.\n\nThrough the exchanges, the American government conveyed its intention to have a closer relationship with China. Compared with economic and technological relations, arts exchanges were only secondary in importance to both governments. They were even less important compared with strategic considerations. However, ties in the cultural sphere were something that Chinese and American leaders had to give a thought to, because they were expressions of a sound relationship which political leaders of both countries wanted to claim. Moreover, Chinese and American political leaders also needed cultural exchanges to maintain such a relationship. These exchanges might, too, be intended as a showcase to the Soviet Union in the triangular game of superpower",
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    {
        "id": 212563,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 117,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "97\n\nconcerts in China were never mentioned in the Chinese press. Arts exchanges were treated more in terms of their symbolic significance vis-à-vis bilateral relations than as essentially cultural events. This situation has severely jeopardized the Chinese perception of American artistic achievement and contributed to the preconditioned over-rating of American cultural events. At the same time, it undermined the Chinese understanding of the cultural achievements of other countries.\n\nConclusion\n\nIn the 15 years under discussion, there were two tendencies dominating Sino-American arts exchanges: the artists' involvement in arts exchanges for art's sake and the hand of the state, both China and the United States, which at times pulled them back to serve political objectives except where the two goals were compatible. To political leaders, arts exchanges were means rather than ends. They were means to strengthen a relationship between the two countries and they were occasionally even used to alienate the other party. Arts exchanges were also seen as a channel and sometimes directly used by the American government to export American values and in like manner, they were used by the Chinese government for gaining economic cooperation from the United States. Plainly, arts exchanges were employed to serve foreign policy objectives. But what were the foreign policy goals of China in this period and the latter part of this period in particular?\n\nThough the initial stimuli of Sino-American diplomatic normalization and rapprochement was the need to counter Soviet expansionism, the goals Chinese political leaders persistently pursued were the establishment of a peaceful international environment and the fostering of foreign economic cooperation for her modernization programme. These two goals should, so Chinese political leaders expected, serve as a guarantee to China's stability and development.\n\nIn order to meet these two goals, China greatly strengthened relations with the United States in the first few years since 1978, viewing it as a counterweight to the Soviet Union and, as one of the few suppliers of modern capital and technology which could lead to the success of the modernization programme. Meanwhile, the rapid increase in contacts between the two peoples brought to China values which could not be accommodated in a short time or could not be accommodated at all. On the other hand, as the country which embraced China when China opened",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215805,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 104,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "37\n\nforces to the north would tire themselves out trying to link up with the beachhead. Should the Chinese collapse in the face of a Japanese attack, then an Allied campaign to recapture Hong Kong would be jeopardized.\n\nJapan had an incentive to retain Hong Kong. Besides being a part of Japanese-held China, Hong Kong also lay just outside Japan's Inner Zone. This zone included Japan Proper, Korea, Manchuria, North China, Formosa, the Pescadores, the Ryukyus, and the Japanese half of Sakhalin Island. Well before the war, the British had already gained an appreciation that a Hong Kong in Japanese hands would augment the defence of the Inner Zone. Moreover, Hong Kong helped guard Japan's LoC to points west and her oil supplies in the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese could still afford to trade space for time by forfeiting many other parts of their Pacific empire to the Allies, but they were certain to defend their Inner Zone and the positions that anchored their LoC to and from it with the utmost vigour. If the Japanese lost Hong Kong, this would provide hope to people living under Japanese rule elsewhere, while it would send a message to the Japanese people that the war was proceeding unfavourably for them.\n\nBy late 1943, the Allies had gained the upper hand over the Japanese in the Pacific. It was the Allies who could dictate where the next move would fall. As China was still in the game, Allied planners began to take a closer look at the feasibility of a Hong Kong campaign. One opponent the Allies couldn't overcome, however, was Mother Nature, so heed was paid to Hong Kong's weather and how it could affect an Allied campaign there.\n\nA timeless enemy\n\nNature at its cruellest is a phenomenon that humanity's best efforts still cannot match. Even during a high-technology conflict like World War II, the weather proved to be as indomitable a nemesis as it had been throughout the history of war.\n\nWith World War II being fought over a greater expanse of the planet than any other war in history, its participants had to endure extreme variations in the weather, like the freezing cold of the Arctic and the Soviet Union to the sweltering heat of New Guinea, or the oppressive humidity of the South Pacific to the barren aridity of North",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
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    {
        "id": 215806,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 105,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "38\n\nAfrica. History has shown that the weather, a factor that most folks accept as a part of daily life, has helped decide the outcome of a few military campaigns.\n\nHong Kong's climate was not as extreme as that of the Soviet Union or North Africa, but it could be a potential nuisance or menace to opponents battling for its control. Up to this time (1943), it had not shown itself to be a factor during the two most recent times Hong Kong changed hands in 1841 and 1941. If the Allies returned to reclaim Hong Kong by force, they would likely be deprived of such a walkover.\n\nUsually, the weather favours the defender, because he should have a greater degree of familiarity with his stronghold and probably be more entrenched against the invader and the weather. Although Hong Kong had been British territory for 100 years before the war, Japanese knowledge of Hong Kong was fresher because they were in control of it. Allied knowledge of Hong Kong's weather was an inadequate substitute for actually being in Hong Kong. Things were certain to change in the territory after the British were kicked out, and they did.\n\nFactors to consider\n\nHong Kong's collection of unfavourable weather included rainfall, cloud and fog, temperature, humidity, and winds. All of these factors had already been experienced by the Allies elsewhere. If they considered the control of a specific territory to be crucial, then they would do just about anything to obtain it. Therefore, any objective's weather could be no more than a secondary factor. Simply put, if an objective is chosen, the rationalisation would be that it was chosen regardless of its weather - because the advantages of having it outweighed the potential disadvantages posed by the weather or any other factor. Its weather would be played down, and the attackers would be prepared to suffer the consequences of trying to take it. On the other hand, if an objective is rejected, its weather could be played up (especially if it was potentially violent) as a cause for the rejection.\n\nRainfall\n\nHong Kong received an average annual total of 85 inches (2,159 mm) of precipitation, with the bulk of this amount falling in the middle\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
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    {
        "id": 215810,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 109,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "42\n\nthe year, relatively clear months like July and August might also be problematic since the middle of the year was the rainy season. Air power, one of the Allies' biggest assets, might not realize its full potential over Hong Kong.\n\nAnother factor in which the Allies were much better endowed than their opponents was artillery, including naval gunfire. The latter had been, and would continue to be, invaluable in pulverising land targets before the actual amphibious landings. But naval and land-based artillery were very dependent on aerial and ground observers to achieve accuracy. If these were limited by cloud and fog, enemy targets would be inadequately softened up or even missed, thereby leaving more of the work to the ground forces. Then the role of Hong Kong's ubiquitous mountains would become even more prominent. Even on a good day, artillery cannot completely neutralise an enemy who is well dug into a mountain. But it can still keep the enemy pinned down, making it hard for him to shoot back or launch counterattacks. A deficiency or absence of artillery and aerial support brought about by cloud and fog provides the enemy with a chance to come out and pull off a few surprises, especially an enemy who lives by the sneak attack like the Japanese.\n\nConversely, barrage balloons benefit from low ceilings because they could hide in the overcast sky, with only their thin wires exposed, and wait for unsuspecting enemy aircraft that may be flying low. Barrage balloons could be worthy supplements to the progressively effective Allied combat air patrol (CAP), which was a constant umbrella of aircraft patrolling the skies over any Allied position. When the CAP is limited by cloud and fog, barrage balloons can partially fill the void. The winter months in Hong Kong (the beginning of the year) were generally the best time to employ barrage balloons.\n\nTemperature and humidity\n\nHong Kong's temperatures only go in one extreme - upwards. Even during winter, they almost never approach freezing (32°F/0°C). February, Hong Kong's coldest month, averages a tolerable 59°F (15°C) Certainly Hong Kong would not be mistaken for the Soviet Union or Alaska.\n\nBut the mid-spring to summer months (April to September) would",
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