ABSTRACT
The late 1970s and early 1980s were, quite literally, a time of self discovery in China. From the 1949 liberation onward, China's Communist leaders had striven to secure unchallengeable power to transform the society beneath them, but they had not shown the same steady interest in familiarizing themselves with the problems and needs of the populace whose lives they intended to transform. In China, men who "know too much" can be purged without much ado; it would be a disturbing reflection on the American educational system if Chinese cadres were to learn that they could count on scholars in this country to do their punishing and disgracing for them. Air pollution has also proved to be a serious problem in modern China, and not only from the standpoint of aesthetics. Environmental degradation is hardly unique to China. But it may be more difficult to reverse the process in China than in other less-developed countries.
