Starting on March 4, 1958 and continuing to the present, the People’s Republic of China has published a weekly English-language news magazine originally called “Peking Review”, and beginning with issue #1 in 1979 renamed “Beijing Review” after the Pinyin transliteration system was adopted for foreign-language publications. This archive is a collection of many of the more important articles on politics, philosophy, and political economy that appeared in that magazine, mostly from the Mao era. While some of these articles sound somewhat stylized and doctrinaire today, there is still much of value in them for those who read them carefully.

In addition we now have 1,759 entire issues available in PDF image format. About 30 of these complete issues were prepared by the IRTR Cultural Revolution Archive, which no longer exists. About 60 more of the PDF issues were once posted on the official Beijing Review website in China. And more than 1,500 additional PDF issues have been scanned and posted by us and our friends.

Many of the PDF scans of complete issues have omitted the pages which were left purposely blank on the back of full page photos of Mao and others. A few of the issues we scanned have some small amount of damage to them, usually on the covers. Where any damage affects the readability of the contents of a magazine this is noted in the index list below. In some cases we have two different sized files for individual PDF issues. The smaller files load faster, of course, but the larger files may be easier to read because of clearer print. Those using quite old versions of the Adobe Reader may also need to use these larger file versions in order to display the content correctly. We suggest you try the smaller file versions first, and then switch to the larger files if necessary.

Another friend of this site has made some of what were then the missing issues, especially from 1958, available in the WinDjView format, with the file extension “.djvu”. (All the issues in .djvu format are now also available in PDF format.) A free reader for files in WinDjView format can be obtained at: http://www.windjview.sourceforge.net (Linux users have the capability to read .djvu files integrated into their PDF readers of the major desktops: Okular in KDE, Evince in GNOME.)

All the entire issues for the 33-year period from the beginning of the journal through 1990 are now available here. This includes all the issues from the entire period of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It also includes a great many of the issues from the years after Mao’s death in September 1976, which is the period of transition back to capitalism. We think there are many valuable negative lessons to be learned from this period about how Deng Xiaoping and the other capitalist-roaders lied to the masses about what they were doing, and used phony pseudo-“Marxist” arguments to supposedly justify it. These are the sorts of lies and distortions that people need to learn to see through! And starting in the 1990s the new Chinese capitalist regime began its further development into the full-scale capitalist-imperialist power that it is today. This further negative development is also worthy of serious study, though so far we do not have many issues from this later period.

All the individual articles are complete and unaltered. However, in a few cases non-essential photographs accompanying the articles have been omitted; their reproduction quality is often not high in any case. The articles are unsigned unless otherwise noted. At around the beginning of 1967, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the Chinese editors adopted the practice of putting quotations from Mao, Lenin, Marx, Engels and Stalin in bold type, and this practice continued into the late 1970s. Where this was done in the original we have followed the same convention here.

There are now 660 individual articles in this archive (not counting many thousands more in the PDF entire issues), but we hope to gradually add more articles, especially from the Cultural Revolution period (often dated from 1966-1976). For most years the magazine included two subject indexes, usually in issues #26 and #52, which will help you locate the articles you are interested in. We have also prepared an overall subject index for the individual articles we have already posted. If you know of specific individual articles you would like to see included in this archive soon, or have other suggestions, or if you find scanning errors that should be corrected, please let us know at: webmaster@massline.org

A small red star ( ) next to an issue indicates that all the individual articles from that issue have been posted and are individually listed in the overall indexes. (At present the articles in the whole issues in PDF format are not individually listed in those indexes.)

Many of the PDF articles and issues added after Jan. 1, 2012 are in a searchable PDF image format. To use this feature right-click on the open PDF document and select FIND .

There are a number of issues of Peking Review which we do not have access to. If you are willing to donate, loan, or sell any of the following issues to us, please let us know! (We also have many duplicate issues which we would be happy to trade for the issues we do not have.)

Summary of the Peking Review Issues We Have and Those We Need to Acquire for Posting Year(s) Issues Already

Posted (PDF) Issues We Have,

But Not Yet

Scanned & Posted Issues We Need For

Scanning & Posting 1958 All (in PDF format)

[Plus #2-4, 6-10 and 23 in .djvu format] None None 1959-

1987 All None None 1988 All None None [But our #15-17, 20-28, 30, 31, 35, 37 & 38 are missing covers.] 1989-

1990 All None None 1991 #1-35 None #36-52 1992 #14 None All others 1993 #49, 50 None All others 1994 #39 None All others 1995 #32 None All others 1996 #25 None All others 1997 #29 None All others 1998 #14 None All others 1999 #39 None All others 2000 &

Later A few None Most

Many individual articles from Peking Review during the Mao era, including a few not yet available here, have been transcribed and posted on the WENGEWANG.ORG site. They have especially focusing on the early years of the Cultural Revolution and on some of the more important articles from each year. The index page for the articles available there is at: http://www.wengewang.org/read.php?tid=17284&page=1&toread=1 . With their permission we are gradually copying over the articles to this site, and adjusting them to our format. Our appreciation to WENGEWANG.ORG for all the work they have done!

The Marxist Internet Archive is, with our permission, copying over the articles and entire issues we post here to their site. See: http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/index.htm . (They have slightly changed the appearance of the articles to match their standard, and are usually not including the pictures which accompany the articles.) Most of the articles and issues listed below are now also posted there. In addition they have posted a few individual articles which are not yet available here, including:



“Premier Pham Van Dong Supports Chinese Government Proposal” (Letter to Chou En-lai), from 1963, issue #34.

Chou En-lai: “Speech at the Grand Banquet Celebrating [the] Second Anniversary of Sihanouk’s Coming to China”, from 1972, issue #12.

The English edition of Peking Review/Beijing Review was launched on March 4, 1958. Bi-weekly editions in French and Spanish began in March 1963, and began publishing every week on January 1, 1964. (The Spanish edition was discontinued around 2004.) A Japanese edition began in August 1963 and an Indonesian edition began in January 1964. A weekly German edition (called Peking Rundschau) began on Sept. 22, 1964. In the late 1970s an Arabic edition was added for a few years. A small number of the issues in these other languages are now available at the bottom of this page.