The idea that the Contemporary China Institute might hold a conference on Shanghai first arose in a discussion between Lynn White and myself in Hong Kong in the summer of 1972. It seemed to us then that there were a number of scholars whose work in or close to this field was known to specialists but which, if framed in a collective project, could reach a wider audience and achieve a significance that isolated publication denied it. Proposals for such a conference were subsequently supported by the Institute's Committee and, in July 1977, we finally assembled in the learned and beautiful surroundings of Clare College, Cambridge.

In addition to those reading papers, we had the benefit of a number of discussants: Madame Marianne Bastid-Bruguière, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris; Mr Nigel Crook, School of Oriental and African Studies; Mr Brian G. Hook, University of Leeds; Professor Rhoads Murphey, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Mrs Suzanne Paine, Clare College, Cambridge; Professor Lucian W. Pye, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Professor Stuart R. Schram,School of Oriental and African Studies; Dr Brunhild Staiger, Institut für Asienkunde, Hamburg; and Professor Kenneth R. Walker, School of Oriental and African Studies. Many of the points raised in the discussions have been incorporated in the final papers, and Lucian Pye has kindly written a Foreword that encapsulates our conclusions as succinctly as it is possible for one person to do.