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This article describes and analyses changes in the environment and related policy developments in the People's Republic over the past 50 years. When discussing the quality of China's environment it must be remembered that the population of the country has doubled over the past half century and the economy has grown rapidly, particularly over the last two decades. Pessimists argue that the current population of over 1,200 million has exceeded the number which can be supported at a good living standard. Despite such views, there has been some ground for optimism in recent years, with China's greater environmental awareness and increased openness, its realization that the environment can be a tool in international diplomacy, and the increasing importation of environmental protection techniques. Yet overall, China has not done enough to maintain environmental quality and has not chosen to make many environmentally friendly transport investments.

I feel honoured and privileged to participate in this ceremony celebrating The China Quarterly's 50th year. Throughout the years the journal has remained the core source for retrospective information on modern China. It is the journal staff, the editorial board, the readership, and the writers who submit papers that have kept the journal at the top of the field. Over the years this tradition forged by those who went before me, has shaped and greatly facilitated what an editor can do with the journal. It seems that most editors have found it wise to build upon what was already there while attempting to expand coverage and encouraging work in new or somewhat neglected areas, and I was no exception. Since I am the first editor who was not involved in The China Quarterly's 35th anniversary symposium, although I was present at that event, I will concentrate a bit more on details of my editorship.

Topics which are covered are the (non-)development of democracy; the degree of satisfaction of the people with their leaders; mainlandHong Kong relations and Hong Kongs position at the interface between China and the world; the position of labour and the possibility of class struggle; income inequality; social welfare provision for the elderly; failure to plan; the environment; education; housing; transport and health. Given the strong economic bent of the book, it is odd that there is little reference to industry (the paper by Lok Sang Ho protests that it is a myth that Hong Kong has hardly any manufacturing activities, but that is about all he has to say about it); tourism the stock market, shipping, and financial services are apparently deemed to be of little interest either. [...]Lo reinforces previous recommendations for Macaus future. [...]this book presents little that is new in the big picture but is very useful as an update and initial assessment of Macau in the early post-Portuguese years.

The story of the post-1950 Taiwan economic miracle has been told many times. Quite a few authors have also dealt with aspects of the environmental degradation which has accompanied this growth. In general the literature places the blame on Taiwan society as a whole. It is critical of the government's slow evolution of regard for environmental protection, industry's lack of effort to assume its responsibilities and a lack of individual citizen concern prior to the 1980s. It is true that Taiwan's economy has grown rapidly since the 1960s. Unfortunately, this growth was linked to a low environmental consciousness and the lack of political will to regulate land use and pollution abatement. It was rooted in plastics, petrochemicals, leather goods, pesticides and other high polluting industries. These industries were attracted to Taiwan in part because of the environmental consciousness growing in the island's major markets, the United States and Japan. Sectors of the government favoured heavy industry as it would help with any efforts for a counter-attack against the Communists on the mainland. Social awareness of environmental issues and discontent with government and corporate management only began to grow in the 1980s and the government has yet to come to grips fully with the problem of environmental degradation. The purpose of this article is to describe the current state of Taiwan's environment, to trace the development of environmental movements on the island and to assess government's capability to salvage the situation.

KIRK A. DENTON The Cost of Power in China: The Three Gorges Dam and the Yangtze River Valley S T E V E N B E N S O N ( with essays by A. D. Coleman and Dai Qing and an interview by Jens Friis) Lake Orion, MI: After a three paragraph statement of purpose, Zorn gives us a page of facts about the billions of cubic feet and hundreds of tons of stone, concrete and metal used in the project and mentions the estimated two million people who were moved and ``8 millennia of history submerged'' to give the unfamiliar readers some idea of scale. [...]to Benson's book, there are no pictures of the migration while in progress, flood levels signs on walls, nor the dam site per se. Stanford University Press, 2007xxii + 520 pp. $75.00ISBN 978-0-8047-5304-3 doi:10.1017/S0305741007002366 Lillian Li's book on famine in north China has been a quarter century in the making.

[...]a Manchu identity was established but it included people who probably had no blood connections to the original Jurchen groups. The wild location of the She suggests Han settled the area to avoid taxation. [...]the She could have been Han who left the confines of the law and headed for the mountains. Since the She also share a lot with the Hakka, it is hard to say what is distinct about the She. [...]identity in Qing China is in the eye of the beholder.

On 13 April 1987, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of Portugal signed a Joint Declaration on the question of Macau, agreeing that the PRC would resume the exercise of sovereignty over the territory from 20 December 1999. In the Joint Declaration, the PRC promised that the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR) would enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs which are the responsibilities of Beijing, as was to be the case for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The Joint Declaration further stipulated that the government and the legislature of the Macau SAR will be composed of local inhabitants and will be vested with legislative and independent judicial power. This marked the beginning of the transition period for Macau to move from Portuguese to Chinese administration.

While small, Macau is not insignificant in China's future. If anything, its importance grows over time.

As I set out to write this contribution, a series of earthquakes transformed a large part of Taiwan causing me to rethink the project. They reconfirmed that humans are not the only factor determining a landscape – a point sometimes forgotten in an age when our ability to modify the earth seems to be increasing exponentially. The subsequent “earthshaking” election of Chen Shui-bian to president brought to the fore an age-old problem: how much do natural events like earthquakes or floods influence society? Is it merely the governmental response to a “natural” disaster that affects politics? Whatever the speculation, our ability to sort out the “human” from the “natural” landscape remains problematic. As work proceeded, it became clear that it would be difficult to gather comparative data in a fashion which could do justice to a sort of “sequent occupance” study of the Taiwan landscape with five slices of time as I had originally planned: the beginning of the century, around 1925, the middle of the century, around 1975 and the end of the century.