China ‘Free From Hunger’

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32359, 27 July 1970, Page 13

China ‘Free From Hunger’

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter— Copyright)

PARIS, July 26.

A French minister has given a first-hand picture of China as a country free from hunger, where factories were being put up on a wide scale and peasants worked with remarkable efficiency.

Mr Andre Bettencourt, the French Planning Minister, who returned to Paris last Wednesday after a two-week

official visit to China, added in a radio interview that Peking was very anxious to buy imports from France, and to resume cultural relations. Mr Bettencourt, who had talks with Chairman Mao Tsetung and other Chinese leaders, and travelled outside Peking said: “China wishes to resume its links with the world.

“After an epoch of withdrawal, I think we are back in an epoch of opening up.” He said that his talks with Chinese leaders had been frank and had enabled the two sides to discover points of view which they held in common.

China was back at work after the Cultural Revolution, he added in the interview with the French State Radio. “Factories are being built (across the country,” Mr Bettencourt said. “In the countryside the peasants continue ‘ to work with courage and re- ' markable efficiency to nourish 750 million Chinese who 'do not suffer from hunger today. “All this work, all this I energy draw their inspiration from a psychological mobilisation which goes on all the time and which rests on the thought, on the writings of Chairman Mao Tse-tung—par-ticularly on the little red book that all the Chinese carry with them,” he added. “The Chinese live, which was not always the case in the past. Famine is defeated," Mr Bettencourt said. He noted the slow development of French-Chinese trade in the six years since Paris recognised Peking.

But he said that things were improving. though France had an immense trade

effort to make which would succeed if French prices were competitive. When he returned to Paris Mr Bettencourt spoke of a pos. sible visit to France by the Chinese Prime Minister (Mr Chou En-lai) or another major figure in the Chinese Government.