Whenever the writer has asked anyone within the Soviet Union as to the functions of geography, the answer has invariably been “to develop the productive resources of the state.” Geography has proceeded along the lines of Marxian theory with especial emphasis on economic problems. Thus dozens of geographers are employed in the planning commissions of the U.S.S.R. and the constituent republics. Not only should these plans be in harmony with the natural environment, they are also the geographer's instrument for periodically changing this environment. Elsewhere the emphasis is equally on the political-economic side, with especial interest in people and their welfare, working conditions, and past relations to economic feudalism and imperialism. Those aspects of geography which deal with mere description, or with fields such as geomorphology or human ecology, are regarded as intellectual luxuries which must be postponed until some future date.

The year 1964 marked the centenary of the suppression of the Taiping Revolution, China's largest-scale revolution up to that time, and of the death of one of its greatest heroes, the Taiping's Loyal Prince, Li Hsiu-chʻeng. The Taiping movement has ever since been held in respectful esteem by Chinese revolutionaries. Sun Yat-sen considered himself the “spiritual” successor to the leader of the defeated movement. The Communists too maintain a respectful sympathy for die Taipings, whom they regard more or less as important forerunners of their own revolution. This does not mean that Communist historians, when writing from a Marxist-disciplined perspective, fail to point out the revolutionary shortcomings of the Taipings. But, everything considered, the movement and its principal leaders remain objects of considerable historical respect.