FAMINE IN CHINA

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29401, 31 December 1960, Page 13

FAMINE IN CHINA

Disastrous Harvest (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11.45 p.m.) LONDON, December 30. Floods, drought and insect plagues causing great losses to China’s 1960 farm production have led to’an extreme shortage of food, amounting in some districts to famine, "The Times” correspondent in Hong Kong said today. More than half the total cultivated land in China, almost equalling the combined area of France, Belgium and Holland, was hit by the disaster. In some areas the disasters were so overwhelming that no harvests at all were reaped. Quoting the Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper “People’s Daily,” the correspondent said that under Communist Party guidance, the broad masses were carrying on the stubborn struggle against the greatest natural calamities suffered in nearly a century by agricultural production. The newspaper said the largest areas of disaster were in the populous provinces of Hopei, Honan, Shantung . and Shansi, where more than 60 per cent, of tillable land was hit by the long drought as well as by locusts and other insect pests, flood, hail, and frost. The paper said the disasters of 1960 had come at the end of a decade in which China—for all the efforts of the Government over flood control —had suffered greater natural calamities than in any other decade this century. There was a year of bumper harvest in 1958, but 1959 was a year of fairly severe calamities, none of them spectacular but obviously widespread, and the increase in food production for that year was smaller than hoped for. “Sympathy for China in such a predicament has no political barrier. The question is how great the effects may be. The Government’s claim that it can save the day may prove true,” the newsnaper added.

Five Children Die In Fire CLEVELAND (Ohio), Dec. 30 Five children, ranging in age from five months to four years, died in a fire in a Cleveland apartment building last night. The mother, Mrs Arotha Hawkins, aged 23, who is separated from her husband, told firemen she was asleep on a day bed when the fire broke out. She was not injured. The dead children were aged four, three, two. one. and five months.