COMPLAINTS IN CHINA

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28800, 22 January 1959, Page 7

COMPLAINTS IN CHINA

“Mass Line Violated” (N-Z- Press Association—Com/rtoMi PEKING, January 20. Some Communist officials in Liaoning Province, north - east China, have been criticised by a local party leader for treating people harshly, even beating and tying them up. This complaint came from the Deputy-Secretary-General of the Liaoning Provincial Communist Party Committee (Mr Shen Lung-ti) in an article in the January issue of the local party magazine, which reached Peking today. The article said it was necessary to uphold the “mass line” in the current rectification drive in the villages of Liaoning Province—a key centre for China’s heavy industry, which also produces cotton, silk, and fruit. It was important completely to wipe out the influence of the former Communist .Governor of the Province r Cfie-heng) who was guilty of “roughlyviolating the party’s mass line,” by always ordering the' masses to do something instead of persuading them to do it voluntarily, the article said.

Te Che-heng was dismissed from his post last year after being named a merhber of the “anti-party clique,” exposed and crushed by the local party. The article said that last year’s work in the province of getting up people’s communes—the new basic social units for communal living—was done unsatisfactorily in some places; resulting in misunderstandings and confusion among the people. Some people began to kill and eat their poultry and pigs, and sell their furniture.