CHINA: Life Line

Isolated from Eastern China by mountains, marshes and the Gobi Desert are the Chinese of the western district of Sinkiang. To get to the Pacific coast the westerners once went circuitously north by way of Mongolia, then through Manchuria on the Chinese Eastern Railway. The new state of Manchukuo has stopped that, left the westerners threatened by annual famine. Last week the Nanking Government coiled a life line to throw across the deserts, through the mountains.

It was a huge project, to send a 2,000-mi. rope of roads and railways clear across China at a cost of $50,000,000 gold. It might start from Peiping, dangerously near the Manchukuo border and greedy Japanese eyes; or it might cut southward through the mountains along the Yellow River basin. It might arrow straight west from Nanking to Shensi Province and thence along the overgrown track of the ancient Great Highway to Sinkiang. It might skirt Mongolia, drive monotonously over the wind-marcelled sands of the Gobi, end in the basin of the Tarim River which drains futilely into a marsh. Part of the project was to use the futile Tarim to irrigate arid Sinkiang Province, end its paralyzing famines. To fix where the life line will fall, Nanking last week appointed famed Swedish Explorer Sven Anders Hedin to be surveyor-in-chief. Stocky, prosaic Surveyor Hedin planned last week to take over his eight-month job Oct. 1.