Red China

ATLANTIC

February 1956

on the World today

URGENT economic and political reasons have caused the Chinese Communists to accelerate greatly the process of collectivizing agriculture. From the resultant turmoil, Peiping expects to secure tighter control over the peasantry and more grain for the state.

There are no indications that this situation might get out of hand; in analyzing developments in China today the observer always must come back to the central fact that rigid political control already exists. In spite of this, the stiff new rural policy has provoked a crisis in the villages.

This policy was announced dramatically last July 31 by Mao Tse-tung in his first really important public pronouncement since 1951. This was the now famous speech in which Mao criticized many comrades — including, presumably, a number in high places —for “walking unsteadily, like women with bound feet.”Specifically, he condemned them for slowing down the rate of development of agricultural producers’ coöperatives, the interim stage between land reform and the full collectivization of agriculture.

Mao ordered the pace doubled, choosing to ignore the quite valid reasons for the slowdown. Principal among these was peasant discontent; many peasants who became landowners for the first time through the land reform of 1950-51 viewed the formation of coöperatives as the first step toward state appropriation of their recently acquired holdings.

The peasants’ understandable efforts to make the most out of their new property have been condemned officially as a “ spontaneous tendency toward capitalism.”In his speech Mao said, in effect, that any slowing down of the revolution would be disastrous; the party must again seize the initiative in the countryside.

Mao also chose to ignore the serious shortage of trained party workers in the villages; he directed that the job be pushed through with the means at hand. At Mao’s command party workers at all levels snapped to attention; the newspapers which only the day before had been weightily justifying the slowdown did a complete about-face. Within three months the number of coöperatives jumped from 650,000 to 1,240,000. It now is planned to bring between 75 and 85 per cent of all peasant households into coöperatives by 1958.

This program has great political importance, but the urgency behind Mao’s directive sprang from China’s pressing need for more grain to finance its ambitious industrial program. Already, for lack of finance, a number of industrial projects have been curtailed; and in China grain is the principal source of investment capital.

The state tightens the reins

The organization of the peasant population into coöperatives is intended to increase the state’s share of grain production. As long as the peasants are allowed to raise grain on an individual basis they eat more; consequently the state gets less. The coöperatives will ensure closer control of the peasants; in the future the government, in effect, will measure out each bowl of rice the peasant eats.

While coöperatives were being formed at the old slow rate, the Communists endeavored to boost the state’s share of the crop through quotas, rationing, and a state monopoly of the grain trade. This redueed peasant initiative and was inadequate as a control device. A disgruntled peasant working his own farm can slow down easily enough. But he would find this very difficult as a member of a cooperative of 20 or 25 families, the more so since the state sets every man to spy on his neighbor.

Membership in the cooperatives, in theory, is voluntary. Initially, although the largest dividend will he paid for labor, members will also be paid for land they contribute to the cooperatives. The differential must be carefully adjusted so as to attract both the poorest peasants and those who have a little land to lose.

In the “higher" stage, ownership of land and draft animals becomes collective, and only the dividend for labor will be paid. The regulations for the cooperative drive have set no schedule for this transition; these decisions will be made at lower levels as the process goes on, thus adding to the heavy responsibilities of village political workers.

The crisis in agriculture comes at a most crucial time—midway through the first five-year plan. The Chinese Communists claim they will lay “a firm foundation for the social and technical reform of the national economy" by 1967. This eighteenyear program dates from 1949 and consists of three years of “economic recovery” (1949-1952) followed by three five-year plans.

There was little real planning during the first two years of the current five-year plan. Early proposals for vast projects were followed by revisions and reductions, experimentation, and piecemeal planning on a year-to-year basis. Last August, almost one third of the way through the eighteen-year period, the Communists published for the first time their plans for the earlier stages of economic development. The 1952 industrial production is to be increased 98.3 percent by 1957, and the gross value of both industrial and agricultural production is then to be 51.1 per cent greater than 1952.

These spectacular percentages are misleading, because the Chinese start out with such a small industrial plant. It will be many years before China can become a real industrial power. Nonetheless, if the Chinese reach these goals — and it seems quite possible they will — it will represent significant progress for an economy as backward as China’s.

Accent on bigness

Following the Soviet model, the emphasis is on heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods. By the end of the first five-year plan, steel production is to be tripled, machine-building plants will be expanded two and a half times, electric power capacity will be doubled, and crude oil production will be more than quadrupled. The transportation plan concentrates on improving the double-track existing railways, completing the new rail links with the Soviet Union, and constructing strategic railroads in south China, opposite Formosa.

Everywhere bigness is stressed; the first plan is organized around 156 large projects, designed by Soviet technicians and equipped, to a great extent, bv the Soviet Cnion. Many of the most important projects, including the new steel centers near Hankow and at Paotow, in Inner Mongolia, will not be completed until 1961 or 1962.

There have been changes in the plan even since its publication last summer. Originally there was to be a definite but fairly gradual increase in the number of state-owned and joint state and private enterprises, at the expense of private firms. Last October, however, in his second major specs’ll of the year, Mao Tse-lung called for a speed-up in the liquidation of private enterprise, and this may well affect some of the plan’s production targets.

Getting the intellectuals into line

This quickened tempo in the continuing revolution by no means has been confined to agriculture, and industry. The Communists hold that any pause or any slackening of pressure is dangerous, especially in victory. During 1955, therefore, an attack on so-called counterrevolutionaries (a term that may be applied to anyone) was launched, cultural circles and Christianity were brought under heavv fire, and even greater stress was laid on the need for tighter discipline within the party itself.

The new campaign against counterrevolutionaries was really an intensification of a process which has never stopped. This phase got under way only in the second half of the year. Yet, in July, Shih Liang, the unsmiling lady who is Minister of Justice, revealed that from January, 1954, until May, 1955, no less than 364,604 cases involving counterrevolutionaries or economic saboteurs had been tried by the People’s Courts.

Early in 1955 a pronounced effort was made to frighten intellectuals into unquestioning submission once and for all. Such campaigns need scapegoats, and in this case it was an unfortunate writer and critic named IIu Feng, who, though never a party member, had supported the party from the early years of the revolution. He made the mistake of maintaining that writers and artists should be allowed some individuality, even under Communism; and with that the roof fell in upon him.

Literally millions of words of denunciation were written about Hu Feng. During this intensive campaign, his name became a household word, well known even to peasants who could not have begun to read one of his books.

In September, Peiping began a new persecution of Catholics, obviously designed to eliminate the church’s last remaining influence in China. The Communists continued to maintain the fiction that there is freedom of religion in China even as hundreds of Chinese Catholic priests and thousands of laymen were being rounded up and marched off to prison.

These campaigns, and others like them, invariably were used to emphasize the need for more rigorous discipline in the party itself. Thus the case of Hu Feng served a double purpose. It was a warning to writers, artists, intellectuals, and the public in general; and it alerted party members for what the People’s Daily termed the “stern fight against the degenerates and class undesirables who have slipped into the party.” Throughout 1955, heavy, insistent stress was laid upon the need for party purification. Mao’s comments on party responsibilities in agriculture gave this the authority of gospel — and, incidentally, put an end to speculation that Mao no longer was actively directing affairs in Peiping.

Diplomatic gains

Despite all this domestic turmoil, the Chinese Communists have displayed a confident attitude on the international scene, and in Asia particularly they scored notable domestic gains during 1955. The Bandung Conference, at which Chou En-lai completely overshadowed Nehru, is an example. Chinese intransigence at Geneva reflects the same confidence that Chou displayed at Bandung.

Indeed, in a remarkably short time Communist China has emerged as the most powerful force in Asia. Asiatics, who have great respect for strength, are well aware of this. Peace is a popular theme in Asia today, but a number of neighboring governments subscribe to Chou En-lai’s muchpublicized “five principles” simply because they fear China,

For, while the Chinese Communists talk blandly about peaceful coexistence, they maintain the world’s second largest army. It no longer is a peasant army. It is being modernized on the Soviet pattern, and the recent conscription law is designed to provide technicians for the new army, navy, and air force.

Furthermore, the first five-year plan is geared largely to military requirements, and in every budget more money is allotted for military purposes than for economic development. Communist China is arming with an urgency and a secrecy that contrast strikingly with all the talk of peace.

In their daily claims that China wants peace, Peiping’s propagandists always make it clear that Formosa and the offshore islands are a special case. This inconsistency does not necessarily bother their Asian neighbors: India takes a similar attitude toward Kashmir and Goa, and so does Indonesia toward western New Guinea. Last November, in a move clearly intended to fit in with Indian agitation over Goa, Peiping laid claim to Macao, the tiny Portuguese settlement on the south coast of China.

Meanwhile, much of Communist China’s military effort since the end of the Korean War has been concentrated on transforming the coastal area facing Formosa into a powerful military zone. New airfields are being constructed in the provinces of Chekiang and Fukien, and existing ones enlarged to handle jets; seasoned army units from Korea have replaced less experienced troops; and work is being rushed on a strategic railroad that will link the port of Amoy, directly opposite Formosa, with China’s main rail network.

These preparations would imply that the Communists still intend to invade Formosa. For what it is worth, however, Chou En-lai and other leaders in Peiping have stated recently in private conversations with Western diplomats that they are convinced that Formosa will come into their hands without an invasion. Although Peiping hardly ever mentions Formosa without threatening war, it may well be that this is a diplomatic stratagem rather than a statement of intention.

Peace as a tool

Peace has been the principal topic of Peiping officials who, during 1955, entertained more than 200 visiting foreign delegations. They have also dwelt at great length on the profits to be made in unrestricted trade with China. With the possible exception of the Soviet Union, delegations from Japan have easily outnumbered those from any other country. A threatening economic situation, need for cheaper raw materials, and a long history of trade with China make the Japanese susceptible to the Chinese argument that Japan would be much better off if she would simply disregard international strategic export controls.

Although it is true that Sino-Japanese trade would increase if the embargo were lifted, and equally true that China’s demand for equipment from abroad is very great, the real limitations to trade with China are the overwhelming orientation of Chinese trade toward the Soviet bloc and China’s limited export capacity. Here again the grain problem plays an important part.

Communist China’s all-out effort in 1955 to win non-Communist friends does not mean there has been any substantial change in the Sino-Soviet alliance. The relationship remains a firm one. Dutiful praise of the Soviet Union by now has become a built-in feature of all Chinese Communist propaganda; and last fall the Chinese helped the Russians boost Soviet prestige in Asia by inviting many Asiatics to a Soviet industrial fair in Canton. Clearly Communist China now is a partner rather than a mere satellite.

During the past year non-Communist visitors to China saw much to criticize, even on their carefully circumscribed tours. Most of them were deeply depressed by the drab unsmiling uniformity that has been imposed on a cheerful, highly individual race of people. They were repelled by the cruel, calculated use of fear as the principal weapon of control. But all agreed that a new power has risen in the East, and come to stay.