Red China: Now, Undulation

Red China’s leaders these days no longer talk of the great leap forward, but of the “law of undulating progress.” It means, presumably, that every economic leap is inevitably followed by a backward stagger. Most of China’s hapless millions were wondering when the staggering would stop and the leaps begin.

In Shanghai last week the rice ration again was slashed—from an average 22 Ibs. per month to 17.6 Ibs. Vegetables were rare, and fish was hard to find; no meat has been distributed since the Chinese New Year last February. It has been a harsh, cruel year, and another like it seems in prospect. Best estimates are that grain production this year will reach no more than 180 million tons, 40 million tons short of the target, and actually less than the harvest in 1957 when there were 60 to 70 million fewer mouths to feed.

Peking’s Communist government blames it all on the weather. But in a recent study, Hong Kong University Economist E. Stuart Kirby points out that Hong Kong, Formosa and Red China’s Kwangtung province all get more or less the same weather. And the weather has unquestionably been bad. But while Hong Kong’s crops are off only 8%, and Formosan output is down 13%, Kwangtung’s yield has fallen 30%. His conclusion: Red China’s problem is not just weather, but a wide demoralization of the peasantry.

Fish Underfoot? The shunting of millions of workers out of factories to help on the farms has sharply cut production of light industrial goods. Near Tientsin, a cement works normally employing 6,000 workers limped along with only two of its eight kilns operating, in some months shut down completely, and has now been converted to the production of “substitute food”—a ground-up mixture of hay, grass roots and other plants. Elsewhere, factories in need of spare parts or raw materials are standing idle. Families are now rationed to 2½ ft. of cotton cloth a year—”enough to patch my pants,” growled one refugee who fled to Hong Kong. Faced with a leather shortage, there is a desperate search for new material to make shoes. One Dairen factory is trying to make shoes from fish skins.

Trying to whip the tired, sullen masses into greater production, the Communist regime now allows farmers to have their own small plots of land, raise chickens and pigs privately in addition to their work in the production brigades, and sell their produce in the towns and keep the profits. This has promoted a black market in edibles that flow to special luxury restaurants, where highly paid government officials can dine without ration cards. But the limited “free market” produces its own social problems; it not only encourages conspicuous luxury buying by a privileged few in full view of the hungry masses, but also puts money in the hands of peasants who can find nothing to spend it on.

The Expendables. Despite their domestic hardships, the Red Chinese have kept up their international front. So far this year Peking has committed itself to $400 million in future grants and loans to Burma, North Viet Nam, Albania and Guinea, recently signed a trade agreement to supply Ghana’s Nkrumah with $11 million worth of machinery, chemicals, foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals annually, offered $1,400,000 to Nepal’s King Mahendra. In fact, the Communists seem willing to dole out new promises with the arrival of each new leader from an African or Asian land, apparently figuring that expanding their influence abroad is more important than feeding and clothing their own expendable citizens.