The Press FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1958. China

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28493, 24 January 1958, Page 10

The Press FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1958. China

Few can believe that Mr P. J. Alley, after his return to Christchurch from a short visit to China, has given us a completely . balanced, objective account of progress in that enigmatic country, particularly as his impressions were published so soon after a report by a Reuter correspondent on the initiation of China’s second five-year plan. Mr Alley laid heavy emphasis on Chinese gains in engineering and science —gains which Western observers are only too ready to recognise; but he omitted even passing mention of China s most pressing problems: population and food. His implied proposition that China, after eight years of Communist rule, is already an Eastern Utopia cannot be accepted. Chinese industrial gains under the first five-year plan are indisputable. Statistics issued in Peking at the official celebrations of the eighth anniversary of the People’s Republic showed that State investment in basic construction during the plan totalled nearly £7OOO million. With an output approaching 120 million tons, China had risen to first place in coal production in Asia, while production of power, steel, and cement had doubled or trebled. Total steel production in the first plan reached Id million tons. Twothirds of the country’s demands in machinery and equipment. Including some precision tools, are now made in China, whereas 80 per cent, was imported in 1938. Half of the 80 large machine-building plants launched in the first five-year plan have been completed and form the backbone of an industry now developing along modern lines and capable of equipping the national economy with home-made machinery. Three thousand different new products are being manufactured. Most of the designing and blueprinting, for the second national plan will be done by Chinese designers who, it is claimed, are now capable of designing metallurgical complexes with an annual capacity of 1,500,000 tons of steel, blast furnaces, thermal and hydroelectric power stations, refineries, machine-tool plants, and ships of 10,000 tons and bigger. All this is highly satisfactory; but it still does not solve the problem of how; China is to feed her enormous population which, at the present rate of growth, will reach the billion mark in 1980. “ The one lesson “learnt from the first five-year “plan ”, says “ The Times ”, “is “’that the- land can no longer “limp along behind the “factories. Flood, and drought “and the pressure of population

“ have knocked the planners’ “figures awry. If China is to “have an exportable surplus “ besides feeding its growing “ millions and supplying industry with its raw material, “then agriculture and mining “will have to be fostered more “ than they have been in the “first five-year plan. It is no “use sweeping peasants into “ collectives and then waiting “ for increased output while the “ best brains of the country “ busy themselves with iron and “ steel complexes. Agriculture “ has got to catch up ”. It appears that China’s leaders recognise the shortcomings of their earlier schemes, and that their proposals for 1958 will be guided by more prudence and modesty. In a forecast by Mr Po Yi-po, head of the State Planning Commission, of the new principles that are to control the country’s economic outlook, there was nothing grandiose: no mention of vast factories or great dams, such as had been customary in earlier pronouncements. There has been an admission that smaller projects can yield quicker returns than huge ones, and can therefore be more beneficial to China in the present state of her economy. The Communists, in their increased preoccupation with agriculture, have already begun weeding out their overgrown bureaucracy, and sending the officials to work »n the countryside, where they may hope to change some of the old inefficient methods and add a better-educated element to the cadres in the villages. Then there is the matter of Russian aid. The Chinese Planning Commission has openly attributed to Soviet help the great progress in China’s technological development and has affirmed its continued need of Soviet co-operation in building new industrial undertakings; In the eight years of the new regime, Russian credits have amounted to about £750 million, of which two-fifths went in the first three years, of recovery, and most of the remainder in . the first five-year plan. Bad harvests, the mounting pressure of population, and heavy expenditure on the first plan exhausted China’s resources and left her badly placed to begin the second five years. Increased demands elsewhere on Russian assistance have not made it easier for the Soviet to help China; and difficulties with Moscow are probably the reason why so few details of the second fiveyear plan have been allowed to emerge. Without further substantial Russian credits, China is likely to encounter serious economic impediments in the next two or three years.