Peking puts the people first

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33739, 11 January 1975, Page 10

Peking puts the people first

(By

MARGARET JONES)

PEKING. In the past 20 years China’s population has increased nearly 60 per cent from 500 million to 800 million. But in the same period grain output has more than doubled, rising from 110 million tons to 250 million tons a year.

At present China is maintaining a steady population increase of 2 per cent (though even that means an additional 16 million mouths a year to feed). Some urban areas report a birthrate of under 15 per thousand and an annual increase of less than 1.7 per cent.

However, in remote minority areas, population increases are being actively encouraged. The population of Uighurs in Sinkiang Province is said to have risen 42 per cent in 25 years and the number of Kazakh minority people to have trebled. China is advancing all these facts in support of her present policy on the population explosion, which is that every nation has the right to formulate its own methods of population planning and to set its own targets without outside interference.

China is opposing the view of the more developed nations that population pressures in underdeveloped countries are a hazard to world security. Recent official statements show that vigorous Chinese championing of Third World causes has extended into the field of population control.

At the recent United Nations world population conference in Bucharest, China and the Vatican seemed to be taking strikingly similar stands. The Chinese position as defined by its delegation was:

“Of all things in the world, people are the most precious. Once the people take their destiny into their own hands, they will be able to perform miracles.”

On several recent occasions China has claimed to have disproved Malthusian prophecies about the dangers of overpopulation. Malthus had said (China reminds the world) that even with the best directed efforts of human industry China could hardly hope to

double its produce in any number of years. In fact, since the war China has increased its products many fold, Mr Huang Sliu-tse, leader of the Chinese delegation to the United Nations conference, supported Third World stands. He pointed out that the Third World now had a population of nearly 3000 million people which is more than 70 per cent of the world population.