MORE AID FROM CHINA

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32801, 29 December 1971, Page 13

MORE AID FROM CHINA

(NJ.PJL.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Dec. 28. China, seeking a greater international role, has become the biggest Communist provider of nun-military aid, far outstripping the Soviet Union, according to a State Department study published yesterday. But the Soviet Union remained the major Communist supplier of weapons and military equipment, it added. China pledged more than SUS7OO million in foreign

aid last year while the Soviet Union pledged just over SUS2OO million, its smallest annual commitment in nine years according to the State Department.

The report by the department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said the Communist economic activity in developing countries showed renewed strength “primarily because the. People’s Republic of China, emerging from the Cultural Revolution, resumed its bid for a great role as an international power.” Foreign aid. pledged by China last year had almost matched the total furnished by the Chinese since 1956. More than SUS4OO million of the aid was earmarked for

two African countries, Tanzania and Zambia, to build the Tanzam railway, Pakistan was the other leading recipient China’s contribution represented 65 per cent of all pledges of economic aid made last year by Communist countries, according to the survey. Less than half of all economic assistance pledged by Communist countries had been delivered, the report added. In the Soviet case, unless deliveries were substantially increased, in the next few years, the net aid would decline as repayment obligations rose. “For several countries, net

aid in fact could drop to zero and result in a back-flow to the Soviet Union as repayments exceed deliveries,” the report sajd. The Soviet Union was by far the largest supplier of arms, supplying SUSBOO million in military assistance, the report said. Egypt continued to be the largest single receiver of Russian military help. Total trade of the Communist countries with nonCommunist developing nations rose by 12 per cent to SUSS4OO million in 1969 the last year for which figures are available, the State Department survey concluded.