Doubtful Gains In North China

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30809, 22 July 1965, Page 3

Doubtful Gains In North China

The Communist state had undoubtedly achieved remarkable development in China but also it had been guilty of “economic exploitation” by using the resources of many districts for the benefit of the state, rather than for the inhabitants, said Professor Harold Wiens, of Yale University, in Christchurch last evening.

Professor Wiens has specialised on the historical, economic, and political geography of China for many years and has written many books on these topics. He said his present research concerned the northern Chinese-Turkestan province of Sinkiang and land use and water resources in the large desert basin. Of the six million people in the area about 30 per cent, were Chinese and about 60 per cent Uighur, who were sedentary agriculturalists, and Kazakh, who were nomadic sheep herders on the mountain slopes. The Chinese were mostly city dwellers and the others tended still to live the life of peasants. However, 10 per cent of Chinese tractors were

on State farms in the area, said Professor Wiens. Cotton growing in the Manass river valley was one important development and another in the last five or six years was China’s large petroleum resources with associated refineries. Urumchi now had a population of 700,000, compared with about 60,000 when the Communists took over. Other industries were also expanding remarkably. All this was very good, said Professor Wiens, but it was a pity that the Government took almost everything for the State. There was discontent about “Chinese colonialism,” “economic imperialism,” and “economic exploitation.” He said the peasant groups who complained of oppression had probably benefitted from better educational, health, and irrigation facilities, but they felt they were not getting a fair deal. Professor Wiens Is visiting universities in Christchurch, Dunedin, Wellington and Palmerston North while travelling home from Kuala Lumpur, where he has been a Fulbright professor. At the University of Canterbury he will speak to geography classes and also to the American studies class.