Evening star., 1962-04-20
Red China in Trouble

Although the outside world must
view with reserve all news released by
the Chinese Communists, there is ample
reason to believe the substance Of their
summary of what Premier Chou En-lai
has reported to the National Peoples
Congress. There is ample reason, too,
to believe that the basic meaning of this
summary, despite the deletions and
euphemiSmS, is that the masses of Red
China have long been suffering acutely
for want of food, clothing and other
basic necessities Of life.
Thus the Peoples Congress-
makebelieve Parliament that has Just
completed a highly secret three-week
meeting in Peiping-has been told by
Mr.. Chou that the Mao Tze-tung re-
gime'S loudly publicized great leap for
ward" in agricultural and industrial
development has involved a lot of
stumbling and retrogresSion. He has
blamed this primarily on the natural
calamities" s"-Such as drought and pest
infeStations-that have plagued China
continuously since 1859. Combined with
Red bureaucratic incompetence and the
failure of MaoS monStrouS anthill "com-
muneS," these scourgeS have played
havoc with the economy, in cities and
on farms alike, and they undoubt-
edly have intensified political unrest
throughout the country's vast expanse.
The most terrible aspect of this
situation seems to have been, and still
seems to be, an agricultural failure of
enormously grave proportions. At any
rate, Mr.. Chou's guarded but altogether
Somber remarks on the subject lend
strong support to persistent rumorS
that starvation, literally and on an
appalling scale, has been having a deci-
mating effect since 1859 on Chinas
population of more than $50 million.
Presumably that is why Mr.. Chou, in
his address to the Peiping Congress, has
placed major stress on the need to in
crease farm production for food and to
reduce industrial operations that COM
pete with such output in way that
could further intensity mass unrest.
In other words, Red Peiping ap-
parently has decided, because Of wide
spread famine and a lack Of cotton to
make clothes, that its dream of great
leap forward" in industry must be
Shelved for the time being, or at least
modified sufficiently to enable the Chi
neSe people to keep body and soul to-
gether in terms of eating and all the
other basic requirements Of existence.
1t is for this reason that Mr.. Chou has
proclaimed that China will do the fol-
lowing, among other things: Reduce
the urban population and the number
of workers and functionaries to an ap-
propriate extent by persuading, first of
all, those workers who came from rural
areas to return to rural productive work
and strengthen the agricultural front"
These are words that leave little
room for doubt that Peiping, wholly
apart from its obscure and tremendously
dull theological dispute with the Soviet
Union, is troubled with internal stresses
and strains Of the first magnitude. This
does not mean, of course, that Chang
Kai-Shek can now feel eager or con-
fident about the possibility Of striking
from Formosa to liberate China from
the Communists. Nevertheless Gen.
eraliSSimo Mao and Premier Chou must
surely feel bit uneasy as they survey
their troubled domain and all its grimly
unhappy inhabitants.