Big Advances By Chinese Scientists Reported In U.S.

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29398, 28 December 1960, Page 9

Big Advances By Chinese Scientists Reported In U.S.

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) NEW YORK, December 27. Communist China was making giant strides in developing her mineral resources and had made important advances in nuclear physics, scientists reported at a two-day symposium on China being held in New York. Intensive geological prospecting in the last decade has disclosed mineral resources extensive enough to make China one of the world’s chief reservoirs of raw materials, according to papers prepared for the symposium.

The symposium, sponsored by the United States Government’s National Science Foundation and by 10 leading scientific societies, forms part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It also was reported that China now has at least one nuclear reactor, at an undisclosed location. Dr. Romert Beyer, disclosing this in presenting data gathered by Dr. Ta You-wu, of the National Research Council, Canada, said that Chinese scientists appeared to be engaged mainly in theoretical work rather than experiments in nuclear physics. But Dr. T. C. Tsao, of New York’s Columbia University, said: “Do not be surprised if the Chinese explode an atomic bomb or launch a rocket soon.” Dr. Edward Chao, of the United States Interior Department, said China was making an intensive search for uranium, but deposits found so far were not big enough for commercial exploitation. China was also engaged in a crash programme for training scientists. Before World War 11, Dr. Chao said, there were fewer than 200 active geologists in China, a fifth of whom had been trained in European and American universities. But now there were 21,000 “geological workers.” Many were not well trained by Western standards, but geology schools were turning out thousands every year. In addition, more than 400

geologists had been brought in. mostly from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Dr. Chao said an unsuspected reserve of 7000 million tons of iron ore had been found in the Shansi area of central .China and another deposit of 3000 million tons was found in Honan province Dr. Pung Ping-wang, of the Department of the Interior in Washington, said Communist China was forging ahead in the production of iron and steel. There was a possibility that China might rank third in world production by 1970 or earlier. He said the Chinese iron and steel industry bad been expanded by 10 million metric tons since 1957 to a capacity of more than 15 million tons a year. Dr. J. Tuzo Wilson, of the University of Toronto, who travelled through China and Formosa two years ago, told the symposium yesterday that the Chinese Communist regime was pouring money into science.

Scientists were fired by a passionate release of nationalistic energy, even though many were probably not sympathetic with communism, he said. Dr. Wilson strongly criticised Formosan science. He said it was not nearly so well supported as science on the mainland.

“The Communists are doing better in science than the little dictatorship we support,” he said. “It is a myth that Chinese science

and scientists are not really in China, but that all the best escaped and are in Formosa.”