Editorials.

This article presents several socio-political developments in the U.S. and at international level, as of March 17, 1997. It is by now a commonplace to point out that the centrifugal forces in publishing that created the juggernauts depicted, also created opportunities for publishers not in the mainstream. Of course, "independent" publishing is no more independent of the economic and political climate than anything else. Literary houses have frequently become nonprofit and supplicant to outside funding. Another development focuses on the effects of economic transition of China from Maoism to free market. In the countryside, land and water shortages brought on by rapid urbanization have created 100 million "surplus farm workers," an economically desperate army of displaced transient laborers whose numbers are sure to grow as China follows its plan to build 600 new cities in the next fourteen years.