CHINESE COMMUNIST ECONOMIC PROPAGANDA MATERIAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 179
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 11, 2003
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: August 13, 1952
• Content Type: REPORT

MAY 1949
51.61
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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: REPORT NO.
INFORMATION REPORT
_
'1>
0'
0.c.4
'COUNTRY China
SUBJECT
PLACE
ACQUIRED
DATE
ACQUIRED
Chinese Communist Economic
Propaganda Material
25X1
CD NO.
25X1
DATE DISTR. 13 August 1952
NO. OF PAGES 1
NO. OF ENCLS. 3
(LISTED BELOW)
SUPPLEMENT TO
REPORT NO.
ITHIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS INFORMATION AFFECTING THE NATIONAL DEFENSE
OF THE UNITED STATES WITHIN THE MEANING OF THE ESPIONAGE ACT SO
U. S. C.. 31 AND 32. AS AMENDED. ITS TRANSMISSION OR THE REVELATiON
OF ITS CONTENTS IN ANY MANNER TO AN UNAUTHORIZED PERSON iS PRO-
HIBITED BY LAW. REPRODUCTION OF THIS FORM IS PROHIBITED.
-4Jucumencury
THIS IS UNEVALUATED INFORMATION
25X1
25X1
1. Attached are copies of "China Reconstructs" No. 1, January - February
25X1 and No. 2, March - April, 1952 and National Economic Conference,
Commemorative HanAbook, 1952. These publications are for your retention.
-----------------
25X1 2. A duplicate of the Handbook has been forwarded so that trans-
lation of it or parts of it can conveniently be made should your office
request any.
STATE
ARMY
NAVY
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F.
F.
Jan.-Feb., 1952
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
FRONT COVER: Peasants who
have received farm imple-
ments as well as land in the
division of estates under
China's great land reform
return home happily with
their new possessions. Up to
the end of 1951, the land
reform had benefitted 310
million of China's rural
population.
BACK COVER: Rehabilitation
of the Anshan Iron and Steel
Works. (A woodcut by Ku
Yuan.)
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE PUBLISHED BY THE
CHINA WELFARE INSTITUTE
INTRODUCING "CHINA RECONSTRUCTS" 1
WELFARE WORK AND WORLD PEACE?
Soong Ching Ling 2
ENDING THE FLOOD MENACE ?Fu Tso-yi 4
Cotton for the Nation
11
HEALTH FOR ALL THE PEOPLE?Li Teh-chuan???
14
NEW RISE OF INDUSTRY?Chen Han-seng
21
How Workers Move Industry Forward
24
Airforce Vs. Locusts
26
URBAN RELIEF AND REHABILITATION ?
Chao Pu-chu
28
Holiday in Peking ?Pictorial
32
Women Drive Trams in Peking
34
THE CHILDREN'S OWN THEATRE ?Jen Teh-yao???
35
Town and Country Trade
38
Freedom to Marry
40
East China Fisheries Revive
42
Prosperity in Private Enterprise
44
The People's Relief Administration of China
47
The China Welfare Institute
49
News of C. W. I.
51
EDITORIAL BOARD
CHING CHUNG-HWA, Chairman CHEN HAN-SENG, Vice-Chairman
CHIEN TUAN-SHENG LI TEH-CHUAN LIU ONG-SHENG
WU YAO-TSUNG WU Yl-FANG
EDITORIAL OFFICE :
=
113 TA TS'AO CH.ANG. PEKING. CHINA
CABLES: -CHIPECON" PEKING
BUSINESS OFFICE:
157 CHANGSHU LU. SHANGHAI. CHINA
CABLES: "CHIRECON" SHANGHAI
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USE THIS SUP TO SUBSCRIBE
International Co-operative Trading Society, Ltd.
1, Lower Albert Road
Hongkong
Please enter my subscription to CHINA RECONSTRUCTS for
one year
for whi cheque
years mney order
ch I enclose in the amount of
two o
(Please make all cheques or money orders payable to International Co - operative
Trading Society, Ltd.)
Name
(Please PRINT, stating. whether Mr., Mrs. or Misg)
Address
(For information concerning subscription rates in your country, please see inside back
cover of the magazine.)
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INTRODUCING
"CHINA RECONSTRUCTS"
Wherever you live, we wish you and your country a happy and peaceful year in 1952.
As our New Year gift, we send you the first issue of *CHINA RECONSTRUCTS. The
purpose of CHINA RECONSTRUCTS is to present the work and achievements of the Chinese
people to people abroad who believe that all nations should cooperate for peace and mutual benefit.
The magazine will appear every two months?six issues a year. As its name indicates, it will
concentrate on reporting reconstruction and new construction in our country and the changes that have
come into the lives of our citizens. It will give up-to-date information on what China is doing to solve
social, economic and cultural problems?both old and new. It will describe the nature and work of
our educational and welfare services?and our relief activities based on self-help, so long as the need
for relief continues.
As practically everybody now knows and even the ill-disposed can no longer deny in the face
of mounting facts, China has moved ahead tremendously in the two years since our People's Govern-
ment was established.
Weak and divided for many decades, our country has become united from the borders of Siberia
to the borders of Burma and Viet-Nam, from the Pacific shoreline to the middle of Asia.
Long racked by malignant inflation which brought ruin to agriculture and urban occupations alike,
China now has a stable price level and a nationwide economy that serves all the people. Our fac-
tories, both publicly and privately owned, are busy supplying tools and consumer goods to the peasants,
80 per cent of our population. Our villages, in their turn, are sending ample food to the cities. For
the first time in 73 years, we have a favourable balance of foreign trade.
Up to two years ago, China had to import food, yet many people were hungry. Now, with
the land reform, with constantly increasing production, and improved communications speeding up
distribution, our people are eating well. We have even been able to ship rice to fill the needs of
our neighbour, India.
Moreover, events have proved that China is now a strong country. She is strong enough to
defend what has already been done and to ensure further progress along the lines that have already
yielded such fruits. She is strong enough to repel all attempts to turn back the clock.
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS will chronicle the life of the Chinese people in authoritative
articles, vivid features, representative photographs, drawings and charts. It will relate how difficulties
are overcome and problems are solved. It will report on our resurgent art, literature, music, drama and
cinema--on works that embody our best national traditions and our new experiences.
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS will introduce you to some of the people who are helping to
build the nation, the rank-and-file men and women who are the makers and motive power of our
progress. It will report how old and young, workers, peasants, scholars, scientists and professionals,
industrialists and businessmen, people of various religious beliefs and no religion, of various political
parties and of no party, are cooperating in tasks that benefit all.
In placing this first issue in your hands, we want you, the reader, to feel that CHINA
RECONSTRUCTS exists to serve your needs. lf you have questions, write us about them. If you
have criticisms or suggestions, let us know. We welcome praise too?but most of all we want to know
how we may help fill gaps in your knowledge of the fields we cover. That is the way we hope to
bring closer the peoples of China and the countries where our readers reside.
Once again, we wish you a year of advance toward peace.
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
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WELFARE WORK AND WORLD PEACE
There is a direct correlation
between world peace and welfare
work. They run parallel to one
another, prosper under the same
conditions and deteriorate from
the same causes. Build peace and
you enhance welfare. Destroy
peace and you eliminate welfare.
It follows, therefore, that the
attitude of a government towards
war and peace determines the
welfare programme it plans and
operates for its people.
The unprecedented progress of
well work in the new China
this past year reflects our ardent
desire for peace. For example,
labour insurance has become the
law of our land for the first time.
Its many benefits are gradually
spreading, reaching millions of
workers and their families. In
other sectors of our national life,
giant and fundamental solutions
have been undertaken for age-
old problems, such as the floods
with which the Huai river has
plagued our people for thirty cen-
SOONG CHING LING
tunes. Child care, medical ser-
vices, workers' housing and mo-
dern facilities for workers' dis-
tricts, rural services of many
varieties?all are growing and
raising the living standards of the
people right before our eyes.
Such progress can only result
from a policy which prizes peace
and pursues the aim of peaceful
relations among all nations.
We have such a policy. It
arises directly from the needs of
the Chinese people and the pro-
gress that it has brought is the
result of their strength. The new
welfare programme of our country
emphasizes the use of the people's
might to overcome all problems,
a basic approach clearly formu-
lated at last year's All-China Peo-
ple's Relief Conference by Vice-
Premier Tung Pi-wu. In his de-
tailed speech on that occasion,
Vice-Premier Tung described how
welfare work is now in the hands
of the people, how it has become
part of a tremendous overall re-
construction effort and how it is
founded on the principle of self-
reliance.
Such policies, principles and
progress are possible only in na-
tions that are truly independent
?nations that allow no infractions
of their own right of self-deter-
mination while at the same time
seeking cooperation with all who
respect that right. In fact, the
effort a government puts into peo-
ple's welfare is not only an ac-
curate measure of its devotion? to
peace; it is also a reflection of its
status among the nations of the
world.
We know that in countries
which are still in colonial or semi-
colonial bondage, welfare work
for the people is either nil or ex-
ists merely as a deceptive show-
case, serving only a tiny percent-
age of those who need it. Vivid
confirmation of this may be found
even in the reports submitted by
the colony-owning powers them-
selves to economic and trusteeship
organs of the United Nations, al-
though these obviously put the
best possible face on a situation
that is actually much worse than
they admit.
History has shown too that
when the rulers of any country
seek to perpetuate colonial slavery
or to dominate the entire world
by force, their own people are
among the first sufferers, as ex-
ploitation rises and welfare pro-
grammes disappear to make way
for arms budgets. Published facts
on "wage-freezes," skyrocketing
prices, speeding up of workers,
material shortages and falling
educational and health expendi-
tures in the United States, Britain
Four of the 106 youngsters from Shang-
hai workers' families who got a mouth's
Nummer vacation from the China Welfare
institute as a reward for good school work.
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CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
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and western Europe, provide
many illustrations of this axiom
right now.
On the other hand, rising living
standards and welfare provisions
are evident in every country
where the people rule, where
state power serves the majority
instead of small minorities, either
domestic or. foreign. Whether we
look at China, or the Soviet Union,
or central and eastern Europe,
we find that the damage of war
has been repaired, new industries
are growing, wages have risen and
prices fallen in the last few years.
Welfare and educational facilities,
both in terms of total budget out-
lays and in terms of tangible im-
provements in the lives of work-
ing people, are increasing steadily
and very fast. At the same time,
mutual aid among these countries
helps each one to accelerate its
gains. All these facts are not
only recorded in their own reports
but admitted in serious studies by
persons and groups who are not
at all well-disposed towards them.
Here again the economic publica-
tions of the United Nations can
be c ited.
That China is on the side of
peace, yet at the same time able
both to defend herself and help
her neighbours, is of special inter-
est to the other peoples of Asia.
They have seen how our peasants
are now the masters of their own
fields, how our workers have be-
come masters in some of our fac-
tories and equal partners in
others. They have seen how this
has released the creative and pro-
ductive forces of our people so
that the output of material wealth
in China grows both generally and
in terms of each worker. They
know that, in two years, we have
not only solved our food problem
but begun to export grain, some-
thing unheard-of in the past.
They have witnessed how our
welfare work has grown to be an
integral part of the nation's life,
developing in the healthy atmo-
sphere of a country that controls
its own destiny.
Such is the status of welfare
work in the People's Republic of
China, which is one of the staun-
chest bulwarks of world peace.
N.-FEB. 1952
Soong Ching Ling (Mme. Sun Yat-sen) renowned fighter for peace
and democracy in China and the world, is Chairman of the China
Welfare Institute and the People's Relief Administration of China.
She was awarded the Stalin International Peace Prize in 1951.
Our people have absolutely no-
thing to gain from war. Only
peace is in our interest, so that
we may further develop our ser-
vices to the people and enlarge
our contribution to the welfare of
the world.
It should be clear too that the
progress we have made is precious
to us. Any aggressor will find
that we will defend it with every
ounce of our strength and cour-
age. We will neither allow our-
selves to be oppressed nor deny
aid to others who suffer oppres-
sion. We stand for a peace among
equals, with each people deter-
mining its own life.
We desire friendship and co-
operation with all countries and
peoples who are willing to live
at peace and to trade for mutual
benefit, regardless of what their
form of government may be or
what views they may hold.
This outlook, uniting a country
of 475,000,000 people, helps as
never before to guarantee that
peace will conquer war all over
the world. It menaces no other
nation and no honest person any-
where. It helps all who are work-
ing and fighting to make man-
kind's dearest dreams of peace
and well-being come true in our
own day.
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ENDING THE FLOOD MENACE
The greatest water control ef-
fort in Chinese history is now
underway in the valley of the
Huai river, which contains over
50 million peasants and covers one
seventh of all China's cultivated
land.
The work was begun in
November 1950. Eight and a half
months later, in July 1951, its
first phase had been successfully
completed. This result was
achieved thanks to the planning
and leadership of the Chinese
Communist Party and the Central
People's Government. It was
brought about by the organized
energy of 2,200,000 peasants who
did the excavation work, of
thousands of Chinese workers and
technicians whose labour and in-
genuity supplied machinery and
installations which previously al-
ways had to be imported, and of
hundreds of conservancy engi-
neers applying advanced but at the
same time economical methods
developed in the Soviet Union.
The primary aim of the project
is to put an end to the constant
flood menace in the Huai valley.
Already, as a result of the first
phase, the population is safer from
floods than ever before. When
the whole scheme is completed,
within three to five years, floods
will be banished altogether.
Hundreds of miles of waterways
will become navigable. Millions
of acres of farmland will be
secured against drought by irriga-
tion. The waters of the Huai and
its tributaries will begin to gen-
erate large amounts of electric
power for the people.
4
FU TSO-Yl
The accomplishments to date
include the creation of 1,120 miles
of earth dykes, the dredging of
170 miles of river beds and the
building of 56 concrete locks and
other installations. Over 16 mil-
lion cubic yards of earth have
already been moved. Work has
begun on 16 major reservoirs,
several large dams and a great
network of irrigation ditches,
culverts and other drainage facili-
ties throughout the area.
What has been done in these
months testifies to the tremendous
energies awakened by our revolu-
tion. Already it exceeds, in
volume and effectiveness, all the
work done in the Huai valley in
hundreds of years of past history.
The Huai and Its Histery
The Huai is one of the big rivers
of China. Rising in the Tung Po
mountains, it runs for 683 miles
through the three important pro-
vinces of Honan, Anhwei and
Kiangsu. In the north the Huai
valley connects with that of the
uncontrolled Yellow River. In
the south it connects with the
Yangtze valley. In the east, the
Huai river flows into the Yellow
Sea.
Passing through Honan and
northern Anhwei, the river is fed
by ten large tributaries and many
smaller ones. Some of them,
flowing down steep mountains,
are extremely rapid and tur-
bulent. The Huai itself by con-
trast is wide and deep, calm and
navigable for most of the year.
But in the rainy months of July
and August the inflow from the
tributaries frequently causes it to
flood great areas. This tendency
is aggravated by four "bottle-
necks" along the river's course.
When in flood, the "young maid-
en," as the Huai has been called
in tribute to its usually serene dis-
position, has often turned into a
bearer of death and destruction.
Another cause of floods on the
Huai river, and much more seri-
ous ones than the almost annual
inundations of the tributaries has
been its northern neighbour, the
great Yellow River. There are
no mountain ridges to divide the
Yellow River from the Huai. The
plateau that separates them is 100
to 150 feet higher in the north
than in the south. When the Yel-
low River overflows, its waters
often come down the slope to try
and usurp the bed of the Huai,
filling it up with silt. This has
often caused the Huai, in its turn,
to burst south into the Yangtze.
For 661 years of Chinese his-
tory, between 1194 A.D. and 1855
A.D., the Yellow River emptied
into the sea through the Huai and
had no other outlet. During these
centuries, it filled the Huai with
sediment, raised the water-level
in many of the lakes connected
with it, and generally slowed its
course. It also wrecked the whole
lake system between the Huai
and the Yangtze and created a
constant threat of flood to 10 mil-
lion mow (about 1.7 million acres)
of rice fields along the Grand
Canal.
In 1855, when the Yellow River
abandoned its southern course and
began to flow into the sea north
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CHINA RECONSTRUCT5
of the Shantung peninsula along
its present bed, the Huai river
also changed its habits complete-
ly. Its old mouth became com-
pletely blocked with silt. Instead
of reaching the sea, the Huai be-
gan to flow into the Yangtze.
The situation remained more or
less constant until the reactionary
Kuomintang government, caring
nothing for the people, broke the
Yellow River dykes at Huayuan-
kow in Honan for what it consid-
ered to be a temporary military
advantage. As a result, tremen-
dous areas were flooded. The
?Yellow River once more invaded
the Huai, and flowed to the sea
through the Huai for nine years,
until 1947. The whole drainage
system of the Huai valley was
destroyed. The mouths of many
of its tributaries were stopped
with mud. Much of the network
of irrigation ditches in the Huai
valley was completely obliterated.
The bed of the Huai itself filled
up considerably. The flow of
the Huai river at Pengpu fell
from 102,000 cubic feet per second
in 1931 to 99,000 cubic feet per
second in 1950. Nevertheless the
water level rose by about three
feet in the same period. The re-
duced capacity of the Huai result-
ed in a further increase in flood
threats.
A Thousand Floods?And
Nothing Done
What the Chinese people have
suffered from failure to control
the Huai river may be gathered
from one figure. Our historical
records count no less than 979
floods along its course between
246 B.C. and 1948 A.D. In other
words, the Huai has produced a
HUAI RIVEn.
flood every two years for some
seventy generations!
There are three basic conditions
making for floods along the Huai.
They have always been the same
and have been known for cen-
turies. In the headwaters and
along the tributaries of the Huai,
there have not been enough in-
stallations to check and hold
water. Its middle reaches have
lacked storage reservoirs. In its
lower valley, close to the sea and
the Grand Canal, the outlets were
too limited to hold the flow. It
has been known for a long time
that no single one of these condi-
tions could be remedied independ-
ently. The river could be con-
trolled only if all three types of
work were undertaken at once.
Such an overall job of reclama-
tion was precisely what old China,
.; 11111111,"111111iiiio 9'3
Pekingo
?ApLawang_Lake
d .
ShihmantanReservoi
Wu.:sung Lake
Jenhochi Dams
hiaating Lake
Tungpo
Pengpu
Tung Lake
envyangkwan
Nanking
RESERVOIR AND
SLUICE GATE
xxxxxx DYKE RESTORED
WATERWAYS
DREDGED.
1.-FEB. 1952
Map by Mei Wert-huan.
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Cifien Chen-yhig directed the con-
struction of the giant Jenhochl darns.
She Is assistant chief engineer
for the entire Haat river project.
with its predatory special inter-
ests, clashes between regional
groups of exploiters and ultimate
semi-colonial subservience to im-
perialism had neither the motive
nor the capacity to undertake.
On the contrary, the feudal and
dynastic conflicts of the old
society, its long decay and the
disintegration that attended its
death-throes frequently destroyed
even the local attempts at control
in which the people themselves
invested so much labour.
After the Yellow River rushed
into the Huai in 1194, neither the
rulers of the Sung dynasty nor
those of the Yuan (Mongol)
dynasty which succeeded it under-
took any measures at all.
The two subsequent dynasties,
the Ming (1368-1644) and the
Manchu Ching (1644-1911 A.D.)
did allocate great sums of money
for work on the Yellow and Huai
rivers. These sums, wrung in
taxes from the people, were quite
sufficient to return the Yellow
River to its old course and dredge
and adjust the entire Huai. What
happened, however, was that a
part was misappropriated by of-
ficials and the rest was used in a
greedy and short-sighted way.
With the capital established in
Peking, the Ming and Ching em-
perors thought only of the Grand
Canal which carried about 200,000
tons of tax rice to Peking annual-
ly for the needs of the court. In-
stead of getting at the root of the
Huai floods, they piled up ever-
higher dykes and embankments
to keep them away from the canal.
This kind of dyke building mere-
ly aggravated the floods in higher
areas by damming them up. When
the pressure of water proved too
great and the canal dykes were
breached, which happened fre-
quently, the lower valley of the
Huai, in north Kiangsu, also suf-
fered disastrous inundations.
In 1855, when the Yellow Rive'
turned once more to its northern
sea exit, the Manchu empire could
think of nothing but to "let nature
take its course." The warlord
rulers of the early years of the
Republic did no better. After
6
the calamitous floods of 1931, the
Kuomintang regime, which had
by then been in power for four
years, began to speak loudly about
conservancy work on the Huai.
But the reactionary Chen Kuo-fu,
then Chairman of the Kiangsu
Provincial Government, insisted
rhat work be done in his province
alone. The interests of the in-
habitants of the upper valley, and
the correct method of controlling
the Huai, were again ignored for
the interests of local landlords.
Money was squeezed from the
people as usual, some construction
work was begun, but the whole
"plan" and its execution soon dis-
solved in the rackets and corrup-
tion typical of "politics" at the
time.
By breaking the Yellow River
dykes in 1938, and thus deliberate-
ly destroying the Huai river
system no less effectively than the
natural floods of 1194 and 1855
A.D., the Kuomintang reaction-
aries exposed their own complete
bankruptcy and left the people a
heritage of woe.
The Project's Origin and Goals
As a result of past abuses, an-
other serious flood took place in
the Huai valley in 1950, the year
of its liberation. More than 40
million mow (6.6 million acres) of
cultivated land were submerged.
The distress that attended this
flood, however, was much less
than in comparable occurrences in
the past. The People's Govern-
ment undertook immediate reme-
dial measures which saved lives
and property. Flood-stricken
people were rapidly organized for
labour and hundreds of thousands
of tons of rice were brought to
feed them. Clothing was collected
throughout the country and those
who had lost their own effects
were re-equipped. The people
who had never experienced such
care and aid from the government
and the whole country before,
worked with will and hope to
mend dykes and otherwise limit
the spread of the flood. There
was no starvation.
The Iluaiyin lock, on the lower
reaches of the Huai, is one of 56 locks
already completed In the first phase
of the Huai river project In 1951.
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The 1950 flood occurred in July.
In August, the Administration
Council of the Central People's
Government, acting on a directive
from Chairman Mao Tse-tung,
met to consider how to harness
the Huai. In September, it adopt-
ed a resolution to initiate the giant
project now under way. Water
conservancy experts from all
parts of the country, summoned
to Peking, drew up necessary
plans in the short space of two
months. By November, work was
in progress on the actual sites.
Out of consideration for the
people, the time-table for the first
phase was so arranged as to rid
the Huai valley of the threat
of serious floods from 1950
on. Successful meeting of the
July deadline has made this goal
a reality. When the rainy season
arrived last year, the Huai was
protected not only by relatively
advanced works of a permanent
nature but also by temporary
structures to take care of current
emergencies. There was no flood-
ing in 1951.
Longer-range river control plans,
for the first time in history, were
based not on regional claims but
on the needs of the Huai valley
as a whole, the upper reaches as
well as the lower, the battle
against droughts as well as the
battle against floods. The irriga-
tion systems that will arise will
water from six to nine million
mow (one to 1.7 million acres) of
land in the upper reaches of the
river and 35 million mow (6 mil-
lion acres) each in the middle and
lower valley. In navigation, the
controlled river will carry trans-
port where it is most needed, be-
tween points that play an impor-
tant part in the interchange of
commodities between city and
country, producers and markets.
Steamers plying the Grand Canal
will be able to turn westward and
proceed along the Huai to points
in Honan beyond the Peking-
Hankow railway. The Tientsin-
Pukow and Peking-Hankow rail-
ways will be connected by a new
water link.
As for electric power, there are
no natural sites for its production
in the broad, flat Huai valley.
Workers swinging 220-lb. stones to compact earthwork in the
traditional Chinese way. Later there will be machines to do this.
But the new reservoir, dyke and
sluice systems will provide op-
portunities to generate a sizable
supply for the needs of both agri-
culture and industry in the region.
Work Done and to be Done
I would now like to outline in
some detail how the Government
Administration Council analyzed
conditions on the Huai river and
the remedial measures already
taken and to be taken.
Generally speaking, it was
found that the existing drainage
system of the Huai was capable of
holding only half its water load
in cases of flood on the scale of
1931 or 1950. Since the rainfall
in the Huai valley in July, August
and September is out of all pro-
portion greater than that in other
parts of the year, the risk of com-
parable floods would be constant
so long as this situation was not
changed.
At the same time, due to the
uneven distribution of rainfall,
the valley generally suffered from
droughts in the spring, when the
peasants were most in need of
water for their fields. The prob-
lem with regard to the Huai was
therefore not merely to speed up
the flow to the sea, but to store
the water where it would be re-
quired for irrigation purposes in
the dry season.
To prevent the river from be-
coming unduly swollen by rains, it
was decided to dredge the entire
drainage system of the Huai of
the Yellow River silt that blocks
it. To store water where it is
needed, dams and reservoirs were
planned at suitable places.
In the mountainous upper reaches
of the Huai, trees are being planted
and small basins, tanks and dams
constructed to slow the flow of
water and prevent soil from being
washed off the hills by torrential
downpours. The sixteen big arti-
ficial reservoirs comprising the
system, with a total capacity of
109 billion cubic feet, are to be in-
stalled along the upper tributaries
?the Hung, Hsi, Kuan, Pu and
Ying rivers. One, the Shihman-
tan reservoir at the headwaters of
_N.-FEB. 1952 7
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Approved For Release
the Hung, has already been com-
pleted. Two others will be in
operation by the end of 1951.
Drainage of excess water from the
slopes is to be accomplished by
local ditches dug by the organized
effort of the people.
The new reservoirs are being
supplemented by work on the Lo-
wang, Chiaoting, Tung and Wu-
sung lakes in Honan province.
These "lakes" were formerly no
more than low-lying marshes con-
nected with the course of the
river, too frequently flooded to
serve as cropland yet not storing
enough water at the right times.
The job of converting them for
storage purposes is to be finished
in 1951. With their help, the total
storage capacity in the upper
reaches of the Huai will be
brought to 60 billion cubic feet,
helping greatly to secure the
region against flood while the
new reservoir system is still in-
complete. Moreover, since water
will be allowed to flow into them
only when flood conditions require
it, the lake beds will be cultivated
to produce at least one crop a
year. This will greatly benefit
the entire area and its people.
Lower down, in north Anhwei
province, there are other marshy
lakes on either side of the Huai.
Excluding the big Hungtse lake,
they have an area of 741,320 acres.
Their capacity will be brought to
254 billion cubic feet by the end of
8
This view of the tranquil Huai
explains why it Is known as the
"Malden River"?when it Is not in flood.
Approved For Relea
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1951. In this way the flow of the
Huai in its middle reaches will be
brought under effective control.
The main control installation in
the middle reaches, located at
Jenhochi in northern Anhwei pro-
vince, has already been built. It
consists of three parts. The first
is a fixed deep channel 255 feet
wide. The second is a long mov-
able dam 984 feet wide, with
eight sluice gates?five of 147 feet
each, one of 69 feet and three of
48 feet?across the broadened
river bed. The third is a 585-foot
fixed dam at the entrance with
two sluice gates of 147 feet each
and two of 69 feet.
Work at Jenhochi was begun in
April and finished in July 1951.
To achieve it over 200,000 tons of
industrial material, mainly cement
and steel, were brought to the
Fu Tao-yi conversing with the
local peasants while inspecting the
work of the Huai river project.
site. The 1,300 tons of steel sluice
gates and machinery, of a type
China always imported in the
past, were successfully made in
Shanghai in the space of two
months and installed by techni-
cians and workers from that city
who came to Jenhochi. Concrete
mixers on the dam sites were also
of Chinese manufacture. The
fulfilment of this project was an
impressive demonstration of the
organizational and industrial
capacities already present in our
country but never previously
used.
The Shihmantan reservoir, the
Jenhochi installations and the
dyke construction elsewhere have
already considerably mitigated
the danger of flood in the part of
the Huai valley that lies in Honan
province, secured northern An-
hwei against dyke breaches and
guaranteed the wheat crops in
that area against flood damage.
The work in the lower reaches,
directed mainly at strengthening
dykes along the Grand Canal and
renovating local waterways lead-
ing into the Huai, will do the same
thing for north Kiangsu.
The removal of the perennial
causes of floods along the Huai is
thus already considerably advanc-
ed. With the completion of the
entire project, the scourge of
thousands of years will cease to
exist.
Approved For R
How Our People Are Working
I myself travelled along the en-
tire course of the Huai river ear-
lier this year, inspecting the pro-
gress of the work over a distance
of more than six hundred miles.
What impressed me most of all
on this trip was the change in the
outlook of our peasants following
the land reform, which for the
first time has given them land of
their own, free of both rents and
debt. This change is decisive for
the harnessing of the Huai, be-
cause the peasants engaged on the
project know they are toiling for
themselves. They work with an
enthusiasm inconceivable in the
water conservancy undertakings
of the past, when they were em-
ployed or driven by landlord in-
terests which reaped the full
benefit of any improvements
achieved. It is their own land,
their own crops that they are now
protecting?and they know it.
Needless to say this proud con-
sciousness has also improved the
relations between the workers and
the leading and technical person-
nel. With all ranks now working
for the same goal instead of one
exploiting the other, mutual con-
fidence and appreciation have re-
placed the former hostility and
compulsion. One has only to see
these millions of people working
in a harmonious and organized
manner, in the full knowledge of
what they are doing and why, to
realize that our country has at
last really risen to its feet. With
the titanic force this has generated
one feels there is nothing we
cannot accomplish!
Another strong impression is
the closeness of the people to the
Communist party and the govern-
ment?their party and their gov-
ernment. In giving the people
land and power over their own
destinies, the party and govern-
ment sank deep roots in every
village and hamlet. In the 1950
(Top)
Steelwork on a reinforced concrete dam.
(Middle)
To feed the workers, thousands of tons
of rice were brought to Huai river
building sites.
(Bottom)
Rails were laid for the transport of
broken atone and other materials.
iN.-FEE. 1952
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AINORMISSOX
rtiotwr,
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The beat of drums and clash of cym.bals can be heard all along the Huai during
rein periods and at night. as groups of workers relax with dancing and music.
flood, tens of thousands of party
and government personnel moved
into the afflicted areas, sharing
the dangers and privations of the
peasants, leading them in the fight
for food, helping them in the au-
tumn planting of devastated
fields, organizing mutual aid
groups and subsidiary occupations
such as mat-weaving, hemp pro-
cessing and fishing?in a word,
saving their lives. This experi-
ence, unheard of in the old China,
has created a unity and intimacy
as strong and close as that of flesh
and bone. Now the government
has only to call and millions of
peasants respond.
In responding to the mobiliza-
tion to free their valley of floods
altogether, the people of the Huai
river have seen trains, steamships,
motor-driven junks, wooden boats
10
and long lines of trucks come un-
endingly from all parts of the
country bringing needed ma-
terials, administrators, technical
men, doctors, nurses, teachers, and
lecturers, actors and mobile mov-
ing picture teams. They have
convinced themselves once more
that they have only to work for
their own interest to receive all
the aid and comfort that all of
China can give. They understand
that they are no longer isolated,
no longer ignored or oppressed
but great, strong and self-reliant.
The viewpoint of the peasants
themselves is no longer local.
They know that it was Chairman
Mao Tse-tung who decided to tame
the Huai river and avert new
calamities without delay, without
being deterred by the other grave
and urgent problems that face the
country. They know that the
People's Government has cut
through all the old regional
selfishness to lay strong hands on
the Huai and turn it from a tyrant
into a servant of the people. They
know that water conservancy, and
the Huai river work in particular,
has been assigned a high percent-
age of the national budget.
The unprecedented Huai river
project both benefits our agricul-
ture and helps prepare for great
new steps in our industrialization.
It is changing the face of a large
section of the country. While
howls for war are heard through-
out the imperialist world, China is
engaged in a gigantic peaceful ef-
fort that once more demonstrates
not only the constructive ability
of our people but their will and
their strength for peace.
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CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
Approved For Release 2004/02/19:
Winer ,v0001?,,,,, voir ? "'Qin
COTTON
for the
NATION

?"'Nkk,?,,vs.-? ..ifsugate,124"zorwrowsjok,so?
109-For
Villages in in China's cotton-grow-
ing areas were festive during the
sale season in 1951. The buyer
was the People's Government.
Prices were good. Carts and pack-
mules loaded with huge bags of
cotton were colourfully decoratdd
with red and green flags read-
ing, "Join the Sell-Cotton-to-the-
Government Patriotic Contest."
Peasants accompanied the carts
and mule trains beating on drums
and cymbals and dancing ?the
popular yangko (harvest dance).
In each district, peasants com-
peted to be the first to sell stocks
to the government. Many growers
also wrote letters to textile work-
ers in Shanghai, Tientsin and
Tsingtao, pledging to keep the
mills supplied. Village challenged
village to bring more cotton to
market. Buyers sent by the
National Cotton & Yarn Corpora-
tion stayed up late into the night
working on their accounts.
Problem Last Year
At one period during the spring
of 1951, textile mills in Chinese
.T.-FEB. 1952
cities found themselves in dif-
ficulties. Land reform and gov-
ernment assistance to cotton-
growers had made 1950 a good
year for the peasants. Thy had
plenty of cash in their pockets
after selling only a portion of the
cotton crop in the fall, and were
therefore not particularly inter-
ested in further sales in the spring.
The peasants stored their cotton
as city people save money. Some
hoarded against a coming wed-
ding. Others wanted to keep the
cotton "for the women to spin."
One peasant simply said: "It does
my heart good to see it there, all
white and puffy, when I come in
from the fields. Besides, I don't
need cash right away."
The Government Calls
On June 1, 1951 the People's
Government published a directive,
frankly describing the seriousness
of the situation. It called upon
the peasants to sell their cotton
stocks at once. The price offered
was a fair one. Peasants who did
not wish th sell immediately were
urged to deposit their cotton in
A peasant takes his cotton to market. China's
1951 cotton crop is the biggest in her history.
government warehouses, to be
paid for at the current price any
time they wished. "This will be
considered a patriotic action, an
important contribution from the
peasants to the nation," the direc-
tive said.
In villages in every cotton-
growing area, along the Yangtze
and Yellow rivers, in the north-
eastern provinces and the vast
plains of the Northwest, peasants
gathered to discuss the directive.
None of them had realized up to
then that it made much difference
whether they sold their cotton or
held it until they needed more
money.
Discussion in the Villages
The assembled peasants recalled
the past. They related how, be-
fore liberation, they used to sell
all their cotton and still not have
enough to pay rent and taxes. The
crop had hardly been picked when
the Kuomintang paochia chang
(constable) would appear with de
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11
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mands for money. Most families
could not keep enough cotton to
make padded winter garments,
and had to shiver through the
cold weather in thin rags. The
spring often found them with
no rice. Many was the year when
whole villages lived on weeds and
tree bark till the next harvest.
By contrast, the peasants could
now point to all the new property
that they had been able to buy
after the People's Government
relieved them of the load of sup-
porting landlords and corrupt
officials in luxury. The general
sentiment was well expressed by
peasant Shen Ping, who declared
at one village meeting: "We
mustn't forget past pain just be-
cause our wounds have healed. To
protect our present good life, let's
help the government which has
helped us."
Husbands and Wives
As a result of similar meetings
conducted by the Democratic
Women's Federations, the peasant
women soon came to vie with
their husbands in offering cotton
for sale to the government.
Peasant Wang Tien-tai of Hoting
had made a pledge to sell 1,100
lbs. to the cooperative in his
village. He found a little trouble
in explaining just why he had
done it to his wife at home. To
his surprise, when the women held
their own meeting, his wife got
up to speak, mentioned the amount
of cotton in the house, and offered
it herself "to make our good life
last."
Another woman, Wang Ching-
chih, stood up and said: "If the
men can be patriotic, I don't see
why we can't. I went through
enough hell when the Japanese
devils were here. I'm not going
to go through the same thing with
the Americans. I have some
ginned cotton stored up, and I'm
going to sell it to the government."
In a cotton village, in Chengan
district, each family met separate-
d'For Release 2004/02/19:
ly to decide what to do. Peasant
Liu Ching-kwei, for example,
asked the women in his house:
"Do you want to wear flower-print
dresses?" When the women said
they did, Liu clinched the argu-
ment: "Then we must sell our
cotton to the government, which
will send it to the mills to have fine
cloth woven and printed for you."
There were no further objections
and Liu delivered 1,100 pounds.
Why Peasants Responded
Why did such simple discussions
suffice to bring cotton to the sale
stations? Because the People's
Government had already won the
loyalty and confidence of the
growers, not by words but by
real proofs of concern for their
interests.
The government had been res-
ponsible for keeping the ratio of
cotton to grain prices at a con-
stantly fair rate, enabling pro-
ducers to eat well at all times. It
had protected them from loss due
to their own actions. In the sum-
mer of 1950, when many had
dumped stocks fearing that the
Korean war would spread to
Chinese cities and mills would no
longer buy, the government had
kept speculators from pushing
prices down.
The government had also helped
cotton growers to improve their
work with technical advice, pro-
viding them with equipment and
services. When cotton was being
planted last April, it sent special-
ists to the countryside to help the
cotton growers conquer drought.
It extended loans to sink thou-
sands of new wells, and dig
irrigation ditches. It mobilized
six million peasants in Hopei pro-
vince to spray 1,480 tons of insecti-
cide, which saved 2,000,000 acres of
the cotton crop.
The government had sold soy-
bean cake, a high-grade fertilizer,
to growers at low prices and on
easy credit terms. Finally it had
helped cotton-growing villages in
every problem of livelihood, seeing
that they were supplied at all
times with food, cloth, salt and
other daily needs. It had also sold
Peasant seller Wills grade and price
with a buyer for the cooperatives.
012400130001-8
CHINA RECONSTRUC
Approved For
them cheap fuel for cooking and
winter heating, a constant problem
to Chinese cotton farmers who
have no stubble and straw to burn
like grain-growers.
Since liberation, large amounts
of coal have been brought to the
villages. In the past, only city
people in China had coal to burn.
More Abundant Life
As a result of this varied aid,
production increased and the
livelihood of the farmerswimproved
beyond recognition. In 1950, even
though the growers did not
sell their whole crop, their pur-
chasing power outstripped the
goods within reach.
An investigation in Ha ntan,
Hopei province, showed that
peasants were eating fine flour and
polished rice instead of the coarse
foods of the past. During January
1951, no less than 1,170,000 feet of
cloth were sold in the district; a
third more than in January 1950
when there was an inflationary
buying spree. Peasant women
had new flowered dresses and
bedspreads. Children's clothes
were fresh and gay.
Weddings increased, with con-
sequent good business for the silk
merchants in Kiangsu and Che-
kiang provinces. New houses had
tile floors instead of oiled paper
in the windows. Flashlights and
bicycles were in big demand. In
Weihsi village, after the 1950
Their cotton sold, peasants at this cooperative market collect their money.
harvest, every one of the 400
families bought a new electric
torch and one out of every four
families acquired a bicycle.
The peasants themselves can't
stop talking about their new
prosperity. They tell each other:
"There used not to be a bicycle in.
the whole village; and now look!"
Stockings, rubbers, sweaters, knit-
ted underwear, thermos bottles
are becoming necessities to people
who used none of these things in
their whole previous lives. Many
village girls now buy high-grade
face towels, hair lotions and cold
cream of Shanghai manufacture.
A pedlar has only to push his cart
into a cotton-growing village to
find his needles, combs, hairpins
and other goods disappear and
himself the possessor of a thou-
sand or so pounds of cotton.
The technical equipment of
cotton farms is also growing
rapidly. Hundreds of new carts, as
well as used auto tires, to replace
the previous iron wheel-rims, have
been sold in Hantan district since
the harvest. In Hunghsiang alone,
hardware merchants sold 631/2 tons
of metal farm implements in one
month. Not long ago, cotton
growers of Hsiaoho village sent
delegates to Peking to have a look
at some tractors.
More and More Cotton
The area under cotton in 1951
was 30.2 per cent greater than
in 1950. It was more than 17
per cent greater than the highest
acreage recorded in pre-war years.
Owing to the working enthu-
siasm and improved technique of
the peasants, the average yield
per acre was also higher, by 33
per cent, than the best pre-war
figure.
Textile mills, which used to import cot-
ton, now get ample domestic supplies.
''EB. 1952 13
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Health For All The People
Anyone familiar with the so-
called medical services and medical
work in old China would be ex-
tremely surprised to see what
great strides in public health have
been made in the two brief years
since the formation of the People's
Republic of China. Even a super-
ficial survey, or merely a quick
trip through some part of the
country, would reveal intensive
health work going on in the
cities and countryside, in mills,
mines and factories, on trains
and in village schools. Today
hardly any corner of our vast
country has been left untouched
by the broadly conceived and
efficiently executed public health
programme, which draws in all
medical workers and is directed
toward the whole population.
On all the main railways, as for
example the Peking-Hankow line,
special cars are reserved for
mothers and children. A medical
attendant is available at all times
on the train. In the course of any
long journey several organized
talks are given to the mothers on
child and maternal health care?
covering such subjects as child
feeding, children's infectious
diseases and their prevention,
child clothing, what to do in
various emergencies, what to do
during a pregnancy and so on.
Over the general loudspeaker
system, providing music, enter-
tainment and news for the pas-
sengers, there are additional talks
on health topics such as diet, pre-
vention of intestinal diseases like
diarrhoea and typhoid, or preven-
tion of respiratory diseases. Other
health talks relate to regional
endemic diseases and their pre-
vention (such as malaria in the
south or typhus in the north).
LI TEH-CHUAN
Li Teh-chttan, Chairman of
the Chinese Red Cross.
Personal hygiene and the exposure
of old superstitious practices are
also favourite themes. The trains
themselves are clean and regularly
disinfected.
If you went into a local primary
school and visited the "Health
Room" between 8 and 9 a.m. you
would ordinarily find either a
doctor making routine physical
examinations of the pupils or a
local public health nurse or
school nurse (in larger schools)
giving eye treatments for tra-
choma and conjunctivitis, dressing
some small finger or treating some
skin disease. Looking into a class-
room you would see that a great
majority of the children now seem
well-nourished and healthy. Sup-
plementary feeding with soy-bean
milk at the schools is partly
responsible for this, coupled with
the general improvement of food
conditions.
Almost every factory having
over a hundred workers possesses
a busy medical clinic. First aid
stations and kits are set up in
the shops. Prominently placed
posters advise how to prevent
accidents. Many varieties of safety
devices and machine-guards are in
use?often suggested and built by
the workers themselves with the
aid of the factory management.
Our Labour Insurance Act, already
in operation, includes, among
many other things, health pro-
tection and medical treatment,
free of charge, for both the worker
and his dependents. No deduction
for this is made from the worker's
wage. Insurance funds are han-
dled and controlled by his labour
union. The average factory may
not have a hospital of its own, but
it has a part share in the local
Workers Hospital set up jointly
with a number of other factories
in that district.
Cleaning Up the Cities
Urban sanitation has been im-
proved by enlisting large numbers
of people in the work. If you
happened to live in Peking and
you were visited on the 15th or
30th of the month by a delegation
of four old men with venerable
beards and long gowns whom in
the past you might have associated
with carrying a favourite bird
in a cage, or spending the morning
feeding their gold fish, you would
be surprised to learn that they are
now the local street health com-
mittee. And if you had been a
little lax in cleaning out your gar-
bage, or if your share of the street
or alley or yard was not swept
regularly, you would receive a
very firm and detailed lecture on
14 CHINA RECONSTF
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sanitation and a request for im-
provement before their next re-
gular visit.
Incidentally, Peking at the
time of liberation had 201,638
tons of garbage and refuse piled
up in the city, which took
the efforts of 73,537 volunteers and
sanitary workers, using 35,407
carts and over 800 trucks, to clean
up. At Tangshan, in Hopei pro-
vince, exposed garbage and refuse
dating from twenty years back
has been successfully removed.
Well-functioning garbage disposal
systems now operate in these two
cities and scores of others which
never had them before.
In nearly all the major cities of
China sewers are being cleaned
out and repaired. Water pipes
are being laid to bring fresh, clean
piped water to workers homes and
districts.
In Peking, for example, the in-
famous "Dragon Beard Ditch"
once wound its filthy way for
several miles behind the famous
Temple of Heaven, through
a quarter where only working
people lived. It was a public
health menace of the first order.
Dating back 300 years, it was
stagnant, filled with garbage, rot-
ting matter, dead dogs, dead cats
and worms. In summer it was a
breeding place for flies and mos-
quitoes and was responsible, in
large measure, for many of the
epidemics that raged among the
400,000 people that it "serviced."
Under the old regime nothing was
done about this. The People's
Government, in five months from
May to September 1950, eliminat-
ed the ditch and laid five miles
of concrete conduits instead.
Piped water was brought into
the area for the first time. An
old man living on the bank of
the ditch said afterwards: "I
have been here for 72 years but
this is the first year I have lived
in a clean place, with no flies, mos-
quitoes or worms to bother me."
Other Urban Services
The tremendous amount of
public health work going on in our
cities cannot even be outlined in a
short article. There is now a vast
network of creches and nurseries
caring for more children, and
Housewives turn out to clean a Peking street. Dirt and
garbage have disappeared from public thoroughfares since
householders were organized for regular clean-ups of this kind.
caring for them better, than ever
before. Countless mothers are
active in the peace campaign as
the most concrete expression of
child protection; because both
mothers and medical workers
realize that no matter how healthy
a child is, or anyone else for that
matter, there can be no safety of
life or limb unless war is pre-
vented.
Other health changes in the
cities include physical culture
activities on an unprecedented
mass scale; special measures for
the protection of women in in-
dustry; the increase and expansion
of hospitals, clinics and dispen-
saries; institution of isolation hos-
pitals and public health labora-
tories; establishment of chemical
and medical equipment factories
and a greater number of medical
universities and colleges. These
vast developments cannot even be
treated in the present article.
Fighting Rural Epidemics
But 80 per cent of China's
population is rural. What about
the countryside? What public
health and medical work is going
on in the hsien (counties) and
farm villages?
Let us visit a hsien in what was
previously a plague epidemic
region in northeast China. In the
county-seat there is the county
public, health department with
three major sections under it?
epidemic prevention and sanita-
tion, protection of mother and
child health, and medical adminis-
tration. In this particular hsien,
in addition to sanitation, public
clinics and permanent work along
preventive lines against smallpox
and measles, the main task is the
prevention of plague. Through-
out the county there are plague
prevention stations where a con-
stant watch is kept for any signs
of infection in humans, rats or
fleas. Posters, lectures and plays
for the population in this area
center on plague. Around each
village there is a newly-dug cir-
cular ditch with sharp, steep-cut
sides. Patrolling the ditch are
members of the Young Pioneers
organization with red kerchiefs
and long red-tasseled spears. They
are on the lookout for rats in
the ditch, which serves to pre-
vent rats from coming into the
village or escaping from it. Often
one may see the children spearing
a rat.
' Although in the past 3,000 cases
, of plague might occur in a single
' year, there were only a few
sporadic cases and no epidemics
from 1950 on. The mobilized
people in the endemic regions
caught and killed 20,916,389 rats in
1950 alone, by an actual count of
rat tails turned in to stations in
AN.-FEB. 1952 15
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New culverts and sewer pipes (left) arc replacing filthy open ditches (right) in the workers' districts of Chinese cities.
northeast China. In addition to
rat eradication and house-to-house
sanitation, 5,933,700 inoculations
against plague were given in 1950.
In Shantung province in East
China, county health services are
organized along the same lines, but
here the main task is centered
around the kala-azar eradication
campaign. Shantung now has
many kala-azar treatment stations
and several mobile teams with
doctors, laboratory equipment and
trained injectors. In heavily in-
fested regions prevention teams
work on control of the sand-fly.
Treatment is free of charge and,
according to incomplete statistics,
more than 60,000 cases of kala-
azar were treated in 1950. Even
so, the battle against this disease
is only beginning.
Further south, in Kiangsu and
Chekiang provinces, district health
departments fight against schisto-
somiasis, which has the snail as its
intermediary host and reservoir of
infection. Methods are being
worked out to control and eradi-
cate these snails, which unfor-
tunately are not as susceptible to
copper sulfate as is the Egyptian
variety, which transmits schisto-
somiasis in that country. Control
of faeces (a source of infection) is
being carried on with cooperation
from the mobilized peasantry.
The peasantry, after having had
explained to them the danger
from raw human faeces being used
as fertilizer and in this way trans-
mitting the disease, have organized
a "three tank system" for treating
them. Only faeces that have been
stored for a month or more (and
thus made harmless from the point
of view of schistosomiasis trans-
mission) are used in the fields.
The peasants and the whole
population are now well aware of
the danger from snails and there
are constant snail-picking cam-
paigns during the winter slack
season. In winter the snails climb
up on the banks of the streams and
rivers. They are picked up with
bamboo forceps. A recent cham-
pion snail picker collected 400 in
a single hour. Eradication of
snails would wipe out the disease.
Suggested new methods to do this
in a quicker and less laborious
manner are now under study.
Along the Kiangsu-Chekiang
provincial border in 1950, more
than 30,000 cases were treated in-
volving more than a half-million
intravenous injections and 444,459
stool examinations. All medicines
used in the treatment are now
manufactured in China whereas
previously there was complete de-
pendence on imported drugs, even
for the few cases treated. The
cost was prohibitive, and those
most in need of treatment could
least afford it. Now all treatment
is free of charge.
Health on National Construction
Projects
In some hsien, health protect-
tion of the peasants working on
water conservancy is the main
concern. This is true along the
Huai river, the middle course of
the Yangtze and Han rivers, the
middle and lower reaches of the
Yellow River, the Pearl River and
waterways in North China. In the
spring and early summer of 1951,
nearly 5,000,000 peasants were at
work on water conservancy and
flood control projects. The health
protection of these workers is of
prime importance for the com-
pletion of the urgent tasks of
raising production and preventing
floods. The Ministry of Health
and other Area and Provincial
Health departments have organized
Epidemic Prevention Corps to
supplement the efforts of the hsien
health departments in this respect.
There are 88 such corps through-
out the country and a large num-
ber are assigned to this work.
What has already been accom-
plished by these epidemic pre-
vention corps? The following are
some sample answers.
A detachment of the Third
Epidemic Prevention Corps pro-
vided health protection for 340,000
peasants of 10 hsien working on
flood control. A total of 169,440
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smallpox vaccinations were ad-
ministered. Complete delousing
was carried out and 1,236 cases of
relapsing fever were treated, with
the result that the spread of this
disease was stopped. Latrines and
faeces-disposal were organized.
Water purification by chemicals
was carried out on all work sites.
Regular talks on hygiene were
given to the workers.
When the flood control job was
completed ahead of time, the team
divided into two sections?one for
kala-azar work, one for mother
and child health training. The
kala-azar section operating in nine
hsien of the Huaiyin region treated
9,669 cases, trained 464 injectors
locally, mobilized local medical
personnel and, together with the
county medical department, set up
a permanent apparatus to clean
out kala-azar from the region.
The mother and child health
section organized a three-months
course in midwifery and child care
for women cadres from the h,sien
women's organizations and other
women workers, training 243 per-
sons. In addition 69 old-style
midwives were re-trained. Since
the area in which both sections
were operating was also a typhoid
endemic region, hygienic measures
were instituted and special areas
for using river water to wash
vegetables and clothes organized.
The teams gave typhoid-cholera
inoculations to 58,807 people,
cleaned and purified wells and
built new sanitary privies.
Nurseries were organized in the
rural areas of central Hopei pro-
vince in the busy June-July agri-
cultural season. In Tali village,
for example, a seasonal temporary
nursery was set up on the basis of
mutual exchange of labour. Four
women, one of whom is a public
health worker, are in charge of
51 children, in exchange for which
their farm work is done by the
women whose children they are
minding. The mothers also pre-
pare midday meals for the nursery-
workers' husbands. The nursery
is housed in the Yuehwang Tem-
ple which also houses the primary
Vaccination against smallpox in
the rural areas.
IN.-FEB. 1952
school. This method of seasonal
nurseries was adopted from the
Soviet Union dfrnd is proving a great
success.
Rural Medical Cooperatives
Many rural areas now have self-
supporting medical cooperatives.
This is an extremely important
development. I would like to
describe a typical and successful
example which serves Hsuwu and
Taiwang, in Pingyuan province in
North China.
When this area was liberated in
1948, medical attention was con-
fined to the well-to-do and drugs
were available only at two old-
style Chinese pharmacies, which
sold them at prohibitively high
prices. In February 1949, the local
People's Government and its
medical department called a meet-
ing, attended by fourteen doctors,
to consider how to improve the
situation. The proposal to form a
medical cooperative was made
and, after thorough discussion.
adopted. Sixty shares were issued
and distributed among a total of
31 doctors, both Chinese-style and
modern, who paid for them in
services, millet, equipment or
medicines. A modern-trained doc-
tor was named to head the medical
staff of six and two clerks were
hired. The co-op clinic began
work in premises donated free of
charge by the local government.
Peasants began to flock to the
cooperative at once. They were
given medicines and treatment on
credit (it is the local custom to
pay all bills after the harvest.)
As a result, both supplies and
funds were quickly exhausted. A
crisis meeting was urgently called,
and decided to issue more shares
to be sold to peasants as well as
doctors. These shares were quick-
ly bought up by the eleven sur-
rounding villages. Treatment was
still available to everyone, but
member-patients received a 10
per cent discount. There were no
profits the first year but, as a result
of the co-op's operations, the local
price of medicines dropped 50
per cent.
The co-op has since expanded
greatly. In addition to giving am-
bulatory treatment and dispensing
medicines, it now buys up locally
grown medicinal herbs and sells
them to other regions. This pro-
vides additional earnings for many
peasants as well as for the co-
operative itself. With the extra
income, new services have been
started: free treatment for families
of People's Liberation Army sol-
diers, free smallpox vaccinations,
health education and anti-epidemic
campaigns undertaken jointly with
the county health department.
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The cooperative is now a going
concern and the pride of the Tai-
wang and Hsuwu peasantry, who
regard it as their own.
Rural health cooperatives are
spreading. Numbers of them al-
ready exist even in such formerly
backward provinces as Jehol.
Citizens' Voluntary Health
Work
In addition to the work of
county health departments, epide-
mic prevention corps and medical
cooperatives, great masses of peo-
ple participate in public health
activity through the Chinese Red
Cross, the local Joint Medical
Associations, labour unions, wo-
men's, youth and peasant associa-
tions and educational circles. A
few instances will be enough to
show the nature and scope of such
voluntary action, the change in
the people themselves and the
great reserves of popular energy
available in our new China.
In Linhsien, Pingyuan province,
the county Joint Medical Associa-
tion is now headed by Ko Hsu-
hsien, an old-style Chinese doctor
62 years of age. Dr. Ko is a
fervent advocate of preventive
medicine and has been able to
pass on his enthusiasm to others.
He has mobilized over eighty
doctors in his area into six groups
which supplement the work of the
County Health Department in no
less than 52 villages. These vol-
unteer medical men have in turn
organized 1,074 village block health
committees (each covering an area
inhabited by ten families). The
committees are active in public
health propaganda, sanitary in-
spection, getting people to be vac-
cinated, reporting the occurrence
of disease and registering births
and deaths. Not a single one of
these services existed in the
countryside under the old regime,
or indeed at any time in China's
past history. Nor could they have
begun now if we did not have a
government based on the people.
In Linhsien, too, Dr. Ko or-
ganized, on his own initiative,
what is known as the "Three
Clean Movement": 1. Clean homes,
streets and yards; 2. Clean food,
water and cooking utensils;
3. Clean beds, bedding and clothes.
The "Three Clean" movement has
now become a regular feature of
county health work. Dr. Ko has
also brought local doctors together
for common study and exchange
of experience, mobilized primary
school teachers to teach hygiene
and led in forming three emer-
gency epidemic-prevention corps
which have been successful in
halting outbreaks of diphtheria,
measles and diarrhoea.
When the smallpox vaccination
campaign in Linhsien county
threatened to bog down owing to
the conservatism of the peasants,
Dr. Ko called a meeting in his own
village. After explaining the
reasons and benefits of vaccination,
18
he brought his own children and
grandchildren on the platform and
vaccinated them in full view of
the people. After this the cam-
paign met with no further difficul-
ties.
The result of leadership given
by this energetic and public-
spirited practitioner, who had no
modern medical training or ideas
in the past, may be seen from
Linhsien's health statistics. In the
year before the Joint Medical As-
sociation was formed, the county
reported over 6,700 cases of disease
and 296 deaths. After the As-
sociation had been active for a
year, and with a more thorough
reporting system, there were 3,599
cases of illness and only 144 deaths.
The example set by Dr. Ko is
being publicized and imitated
throughout our country.
Schoolteachers and Health
Schoolteachers are among those
most responsible for changing the
entire public health picture in our
country.
In Chiahsiang county, Pingyuan
province, the people elected Miss
Mi Pao-yin "Model Health Worker
for 1951." Miss Mi with no pre-
vious medical education has done
more for the people's health than
many a doctor. At the County
Primary School Teachers' Con-
ference she led in mobilizing
teachers to fight smallpox. When
she returned to her own school,
she not only taught the children
why vaccination was necessary
but organized them to agitate for
it among their families. Later,
with her pupils, she went from
house to house, vaccinating the
people.
Difficulties did not deter Miss
Mi. She used every possible
avenue of popular education, in-
cluding a play she wrote and
staged herself, with the children
as actors. In a month's time she
had personally vaccinated the
entire school (226 pupils) and 3.202
peasants. By the time she had
completed work in her own coun-
try town, the school yard was
filled each day with people from
Anti-epidemic team exterminating
fleas In Chapel, Shanghai.
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The number of nurses in China is increasing. No less than 85,000 middle-grade
medical workers, including nurses, are to be trained in the next five years.
nearby villages, who came and
lined up to await their turn.
Subsequently, when the County
Health Department sent its own
teams to carry out inoculations
for typhoid, they found the ground
already prepared. Again with
Miss Mi's active help, they in-
oculated 5,222 people. In the
course of one year, Miss Mi, who
teaches music, composed 34 songs
on health topics. The songs ex-
posed harmful local superstitions,
described the symptoms and
dangers of various common
diseases in easily remembered
terms, pointed out the evils of old-
style midwifery and so on.
In all China in 1950, the number
of persons vaccinated for smallpox
reached the unprecedented figure
of 57,325,417. Typhoid and cholera
inoculations exceeded 13 million.
These results would never have
been achieved without the energy
and devotion of thousands of
leaders like Dr. Ko and Miss Mi.
Saving the Newborn
No one can count the hund-
reds of millions of babies and
rAN.-FEB. 1952
mothers who perished in old
China due to the insanitary prac-
tices of the traditional-style mid-
wife. Now these women are re-
training themselves and becoming
fighters for public health instead
of a danger to it.
Midwife Wang Chi-ying of Lin-
hsien, Pingyuan province, is a tall,
thin woman of 43 who still has
bound feet. She is the daughter,
granddaughter and great-grand-
daughter of midwives and has
practised her profession for two
decades. Up to a couple of years
ago she regularly Lost more than
half her deliveries from "con-
vulsions" (tetanus). This pro-
portion was regarded as "inevi-
table."
When the local People's Govern-
ment began a course to re-train
old midwives, Wang Chi-ying
joined with hesitation. But soon
she became one of the best stu-
dents and asked regularly in the
classes: "Why did no one tell us
these things before." A kind and
conscientious woman, she often ex-
claimed with deep feeling: "How
many children have died from my
ignorance!"
Since she completed the course,
Wang Chi-ying has delivered 43
babies, including seven difficult
cases, without losing a single one.
She has taught the new way per-
sonally to three other old mid-
wives in her village and organized
a Midwives' Association covering
several villages. Many midwives,
stimulated by her example, have
gone to training schools. She is
recognized as a local health leader,
inspects the work of other mid-
wives and is called as a consultant
in difficult deliveries. Wang Chi-
ying is now attending a night
school for adults, to learn to read
and write.
In 1950, alone, more than 46,371
old-style midwives throughout the
country were re-educated with
special emphasis on sterilization
and asepsis, of which many of
them had never heard before. As
a result, sample figures from many
counties already show a half to
two-thirds decrease of infant
deaths from tetanus. Every one
of the 1,491 rural County Health
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This worker,' sanatorium close to the sea in Dairen is an example of
how the best buildings are now being used for the health of the people.
Departments already fully estab-
lished in China is charged with
re-training these women, on whom
the majority of Chinese mothers
must necessarily depend until
huge numbers of new personnel
are graduated.
Medical Education
The effort being put into train-
ing new personnel may be gather-
ed from one figure. Graduates
from medical schools in the year
1950 exceeded by six times the
highest number in any year
under the reactionary Kuomintang
regime.
In 1951, the chief emphasis was
on the training of middle-grade
medical and public health work-
ers, a classification that did not
exist in old China at all. Twenty
institutions to train such person-
nel have already been set up. A
number of special schools where
old-style Chinese doctors can re-
ceive supplementary training have
also been started in different parts
of the country. Many research
20
centres now study the value of the
traditional Chinese drugs.
All health and medical per-
sonnel, old and new, have been
imbued with the spirit of serving
the people. The result of their
selfless efforts may now be seen in
China's rapidly improving public
health. The emphasis on pre-
ventive medicine, born of the
government's concern for the
people is already producing
results. The absence of epidemics
formerly considered "normal"
helps to increase both agricultural
and industrial production, and
improve standards of living.
Medical workers are responsible
citizens and are therefore promi-
ment in every nationwide effort
and campaign.They are volun-
teering in thousands to take part
in the movement to resist U.S. im-
perialist aggression and to aid
Korea, at present a major feature
of our national life. Surgical,
medical and epidemic prevention
teams from different areas of China
are now working on the Korean
front where medical teams of the
Chinese Red Cross are also active
among both troops and people.
Achievements in 1951
In the meantime. the pro-
gramme for 1951 has been carried
out. Not all the figures are as yet
available, but those announced
for the first ten months of the year
are most impressive
Two hundred million people
were vaccinated against smallpox
as compared to 57 million in 1950.
By November 1951, health de-
partments had been established in
1,865 counties-85 per cent of all
the counties in China.
Several national conferences
had been held on various aspects
of public health and medicine to
undertake further planning and
organization.
China's medical workers are
confident that, with the aid of the
mobilized people and the leader-
ship of the People's Government,
our new China will be healthy as
well as happy and free.
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
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New Rise Of Industry
China has a mixed and com-
posite economy. It includes no
less than five types of enterprises.
The most widespread form is
still individual small-scale eco-
nomy, which includes family
farms and all handicrafts.
The second type is private cap-
italist enterprise which still forms
more than 80 per cent of the trade
capital in China.
The third is state capitalist en-
terprise, representing at present a
combination of state and private
capital.
Cooperative enterprise, which is
of a semi-socialist character, is the
fourth type. China now has more
than 46,000 cooperatives of various
categories, with a total of over
30,000,000 members.
Fifth, and most important of all,
there are the new nationalized
enterprises, socialist in nature,
which now account for half of
China's modern industrial produc-
tion. In heavy industry, the na-
tionalized sector is about 80 per
cent of the whole. In light indus-
try it is over 30 per cent.
The nationalized enterprises,
operated by the state, represent
the leading force in the new Chi-
nese economy. They are advanc-
ing rapidly, but not at the expense
of productive activity by the other
forms listed. On the contrary,
the strengthening of state industry
in the present period ensures bet-
ter tools, supplies and markets for
the individual small producer. It
stimulates private capital to en-
gage in production necessary to
the country and people by provid-
ing it with secure conditions and
profitable orders. It curbs specu-
lation, and, by purchasing raw
materials and guaranteeing an
even flow of necessary goods to the
countryside, enlarges the scope of
cooperative as well as private
trade.
Task of Coordination
To manage and coordinate all
these types of productive enter-
JAN.-FEB. 1952
CHEN HAN-SENG
prise is obviously the first step to-
ward industrialization. For this
purpose the People's Government
has set up four ministries in Pe-
king: Heavy Industry, Fuel In-
dustry, Textile Industry, and
Light Industry (including the food
industry). In the past two years
numerous national conferences,
attended by delegates from all
over the country, had. been held to
discuss administrative and, tech-
nical problems.
There have been conferences for
the iron, steel, electrical, mechan-
ical, chemical and non-ferrous
metallurgical industries. There
have also been coal mining,
electric! power, petroleum, and
hydraulic engineering conferences,
as well as conferences dealing
with the manufacture of paper,
matches, medicine, rubber and
leather. These conferences have
tackled problems of raw material
supply, production costs, trans-
port, and marketing, standardiza-
tion of products, factory budgets
and administration. They have
also been instrumental in adjusting
the relations between private and
state capital in the various cate-
gories.
The guiding principle in this co-
ordinating activity has been to
organize the advance of all indus-
try under the leadership of the
state-operated enterprises. Private
industry has been directed toward
activity useful to the people and
helped to avoid unplanned pro-
duction and competition resulting
from overcrowding of individual
fields.
Problems Encountered
There is no doubt that the in-
dustrial world in China faces
many problems, some of which are
unprecedented.
First and foremost is the gen-
eral impoverishment of the coun-
try, intensified by the 22-year rule
of Chiang Kai-shek (1927-1949)
and of his imperialist supporters.
During the eight years of war
against Japanese aggression, be-
tween 1937 and 1945, China lost
about 10 million people and sus-
tained property losses amounting
to no less than 621/2 billion Ameri-
can dollars. Wild inflation during
the three and half years of civil
war (1946-1949) greatly accelerated
the decline in trade and industry.
Former Pattern of Industry
As a result of imperialist domi-
nation of the country, modern in-
dustry in China was scarcely de-
veloped at all. Even in 1937, on
the eve of the war with Japan, the
total number of working lathes in
the whole country was about
90,000.
Iron and steel production was
about 700,000 tons.
Total electric power output was
less than 2,000,000 kilowatts.
In the textile industry, spindles
numbered not more than 5,000,000.
In a word China was predomi-
nantly a nation of handicraft in-
dustry. Her modern industry was
extremely modest. Her heavy in-
dustry was feeblest of all.
As is typical for semi-colonial
economics, whatever modern in-
dustry was developed in China
was more or less dependent on
foreign capital.
There was a time when the im-
port of American motor vehicles
into China totalled 10,000 a year.
For the repair of these, no less
than 100 fairly large machine
shops were maintained, but their
3,000 workers laboured mainly for
the benefit of Henry Ford and
other American manufacturers.
In the chemical industry, the
manufacture of cosmetics flourish-
ed. But manufacture of soda and
sulphuric acid was very minor.
Even in the light industry,
manufacture catered almost ex-
clusively to the urban market and
not for rural inhabitants who com-
prise 80 per cent of the Chinese
people.
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Successes in Reconstruction
When the Central People's Gov-
ernment was inaugurated in 1949
it faced a two-fold industrial prob-
lem: to restore industrial produc-
tion and at the same time to cor-
rect all the defects derived from
China's past status, so as to launch
a new path for industrialization.
This was by no means an easy
task.
The iron and steel industry, for
instance, was 90 per cent destroy-
ed between 1937 and 1949. Electric
power capacity was 50 per cent
destroyed during the same period.
Moreover, the Japanese surrender
practically denuded China's North-
east?where most of industry is
located?of technicians. This was
because it had been the policy of
the Japanese, who occupied the
area from 1931 to 1945, to confine
such work to their own nationals.
As a result, when the industrial
plants in the Northeast were re-
stored by the Regional People's
Government, many technicians
and skilled workers had to be
recruited from east and south
China.
Nevertheless the task was suc-
cessfully carried out. In the past
two years the Northeast has achiev-
ed speedy industrial recovery, and
factories in other administrative
regions have also been resuscitat-
ed.
The cement factories at Lan-
chow in the Northwest, and in
Chungking in the Southwest; the
iron mines in south Chahar and
in the Northeast; the paper fac-
tories in Szechuan and Kwang-
tung; the manufacture of steel
rails in an important steel works
in the Southwest: these are all
examples of successful restoration.
As early as October 1950, 82.4
per cent of all textile spindles and
e4.2 per cent of all power looms
in the country had been put to
work.
Basically the restoration of mod-
emn industrial production in
China has been guaranteed by the
advance of political democracy for
the people. It has been achieved
by the united efforts of workers,
peasants, the middle class, and the
patriotic industrialists, led by the
People's Government.
Modernization and industrializa-
tion have been the common aim,
as modernization and industrial-
ization are the basis for improving
people's livelihood. It has been a
constant aim of our economic
policy to guarantee that the pro-
gress of industry and the improve-
ment of the workers' livelihood go
hand in hand.
Better Life for Labour
Statistics from the Northeast
show that average wages in that
region increased by 27 per cent in
1949, by 12.5 per cent in 1950, and
by an estimated 10 per cent in
1951. There has been a more or
less similar rise in other admini-
strative regions.
The People's Government in
1950 promulgated a safety and
health law for factories and install-
ed a system of factory inspection.
As a result, sickness and deaths in
textile factories in Tientsin, for
instance, decreased by 62 per cent
in 1950.
The Labour Insurance Law was
published in 1951. Since last
May, all factories employing 100
or more workers have taken
out labour insurance. In other
words, some 2,300,000 industrial
workers and staff people, or about
10,000,000 people if the families
are included, are protected by
this law. In the nationalized
textile mills, workers' insurance is
equivalent to 12 to 15 per cent of
the total wage.
Many sanatoria and homes have
been set up for disabled, old and
retired workers. More than 1,700
factories have organized workers'
clubs. Workers' living quarters
have already been greatly improv-
ed in many places.
Workers have made great ad-
vances in their culture. An esti-
mated 1,300,000 have joined study
classes of one kind or another.
The Chinese worker is no longer
a slave of the machine. He now
feels a new zest for life. He
knows that he is a master of the
country. In the factory, he has
practical experience of the fact
that every step in increasing pro-
duction is a step forward in his
earnings and general welfare. In-
stead of being docile and passive,
he now exhibits initiative.
The productive enthusiasm of
labour, its support of the policy of
rapid restoration and industrial-
ization, is the main moving force
in the new rise of Chinese eco-
nomy. This enthusiasm and this
support find organized form?
through the trade unions?in two
great movements, the rationaliza-
tion movement and production
emulation (work competitions).
Workers Raise Productivity
In textile and other factories,
during 1950 alone, no less than
Chinese textile industry is more pro-
ductive, and its workers are better
paid, than at any time in the past
(MINA RECONSTRUCTS
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24,000 proposals for administrative
and technical improvements were
made by the workers and adopted
by management. Competition
groups have been organized and
involve over 2,220,000 workers in
all.
Thanks to the enthusiasm of
labour, backed by improved plan-
ning and administration, factories
in many different industries,
especially in iron and steel, pro-
duce from four to eight new re-
cords during one month. In the
large Ta Chang silk filature in
Wusih, the .1951 production was
the highest in fourteen years in
both quantity and quality. In
1950 all textile factories in the
country taken together exceeded
their highest production records
of the past. Total yarn produc-
tion in 1950 was 0.28 per cent
higher than in 1930, the previous
all-time high. In cloth produc-
tion it was 7.8 per cent higher
than 1936, the previous peak in
this branch.
Private Industry Aided
This situation applies to? both
state and private industry. Under
the leadership and with the sup-
port of the former, the latter is
enjoying prosperity.
In 1950 the Ministry of Heavy
Industry placed orders with many
private factories. Two-thirds of
the orders for steel manufacturers
and one-third of those for electric
appliances went to privately own-
ed plants. State textile mills also
passed on semi-finished goods to
private mills for further proces-
sing.
Compared with 1949, yarn pro-
duction increased 39.39 per cent in
1950; while power loom production
increased 59.11 per cent in the
same year. Printing and dyeing
In private factories increased 33
per cent. Privately - controlled
gunny-sack production increased
by 76.08 per cent in the same year.
Private industry has been great-
ly benefitted by the new flood
control projects. In 1951, more
than 200 private workshops, in-
cluding some 70 steel and machine
shops in Shanghai, filled orders
for implements and material used
on the great Huai river project.
.N.-FEB. 1952
Girls, who never did this kind of work before, repair
machines damaged by the -Japanese and Ituomintang.
These factories employ a total of
30,000 workers.
In both private and state fac-
tories, remarkable progress has
taken place. Waste of materials
has been greatly reduced in the
gunny-sack mills in Tientsin. In
Canton, certain steel processes
which used to require forty days
now take only twenty-eight. In
another steel plant, in the South-
west, 94 per cent of the products
are up to standard, as compared
to only 70 per cent formerly.
Base for New Progress
The average daily coal produc-
tion per miner in the Northeast
was 0.33 tons per day in 1946. It
is now nearly double this figure.
In 1949 the value of industrial
products in the Northeast repre-
sented only 35 per cent of the
total industrial and agricultural
production. By 1950 it had risen
to 43 per cent, and the 1951 target
was to increase it to 47 per cent.
Statistics for the entire country
show that coal production increas-
ed nearly one and a half times be-
tween 1949 and 1950, production
of machinery three times, cement
nearly four times, steel more than
seven times, and pig iron eleven
and a half times. The textile plan
for 1951 was to increase the num-
ber of spindles by 162,000; and to
manufacture 2,000 machine looms.
This is the outline of the new
rise of industry in China. To the
casual observer it may appear to
be merely "restoration." But a
true understanding of the nature
of the present democratic trans-
formation of China, and of the
actual industrial progress made
so far, reveals, that during this
process of restoration, many of
the former defects have been cor-
rected. It shows that China is al-
ready well on the way towards a
genuine process of industrializa-
tion that will pave the way for
prosperous livelihood for her peo-
ple and contribute to world peace.
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28
00415R012400130001-8
The impact of liberation on Ma
Heng-chang was also typical. He
has written about this too, in a
frank, open worker's way. "After
liberation our new factory director
told us, 'We rely on the workers.'
To tell you the truth, we didn't
believe him at first. All the fac-
tory directors we'd ever known
had been rotten. Why should the
Communists be different? Then
I called on the director just to see
how he lived. I found that his
wife and children dressed and ate
.just like us. What was more, he
accepted any reasonable sugges-
tions we made." Thus Ma Heng-
chang's cautious skepticism gra-
dually faded away.
As a result, Ma began to stir up
everyone in his shop to work
better. During lunch periods, he
and his mates would sit around
over a blueprint of the job on
hand and think how to use their
lathes to greater effect. Soon Ma
Hung-ju, a milling machine opera-
tor, came up with a way of com-
pleting in 15 minutes a part that
had formerly taken two hours to
machine. The whole group de-
vised a new method of dividing
up another job so as to finish it in
half their previous time.
All agreed to make full prepara-
tions before starting their ma-
chines, to care for them better than
they had in the past, to wipe and
oil them and put away all tools
and parts before leaving. They
also undertook to explain all un-
finished work fully to the next
shift. Without "speed-up" or
additional physical strain, simply
as a result of more rational or-
ganization, the team's output went
up and up. So did the wages of
its members.
Ma and his friends concerned
themselves not only with quantity
but also with quality. Each week
they held a careful review of the
reasons why any job had been re-
jected by the inspectors. When
the cause was discovered, they set
out to remedy it and to warn
other workers against similar
mistakes.
Ma lieng-ctuult and his team discuss production plan. The banners
behind them were won in nationwide work competitions.
How Workers Move
Industry Forward
One of the prime factors in the
speedy restoration of Chinese
economy from the effects of long
years of war is the initiative and
inventiveness of the workers. An
illustration of this is the signifi-
cant rise in national industrial
output started by the 47-year-old
lathe operator Ma Heng-chang and
nine of his shop mates at the
government-owned Fifth Machine
Building Plant in Mukden, North-
east China.
What did Ma Heng-chang and
his friends do? Inspired by the
new situation in which Chinese
workers work for themselves and
the only limit on their prosperity
is the undeveloped state of
national industry, they discussed
for ten months how to improve
their work. They kept trying out
every likely answer on the job
until they finally came up with
the real one.
How did this small event be-
come a great one and affect the
24
whole of China's heavy industry?
The answer is simple. Since the
People's Government, the people's
press and the whole body of
Chinese labour are eager to in-
crease and improve production,
the experience of Ma Heng-chang's
little group was publicized in de-
tail throughout China. Today
more than 6,000 production teams
are applying and developing the
example they set.
Ma Heng-chang had been a
worker for 27 years. His past had
been like that of millions of other
Chinese workers. "Under the
warlords, the Japanese and the
Kuomintang, I did not have
enough to eat or wear," he wrote
recently in a Peking trade union
newspaper. "If there was any-
thing wrong with our work we
were either beaten up or sacked.
Once when a Japanese superviser
told me to pick up a ruler and I
didn't catch what he meant, he
came up and smashed my face."
In addition older workers began
patiently to explain to each
apprentice the nature of the
machine to which he was assigned,
sometimes staying after working
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
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hours to do it. In this way,
apprentices could begin to work
independently after three months
instead of after several years as
formerly. In contrast to the past,
the apprentices were encouraged
to ask any questions that came to
their minds. The age-old system
under which worker-teachers pur-
posely slowed down the training of
apprentices in order to put off the
day when they would become
masters was abandoned. So was
the feudal abuse of making the
apprentices sweat while the older
men smoked, chatted or walked
around. These things could only
take place, of course, in an
atmosphere in which no one
feared for his job or his old age.
After ten months, eight of the
workers in Ma Heng-chang's team
had achieved a record of no re-
jected work whatsoever. Seven
of them broke production records.
The team as a whole improved 18
tools on which its members were
working. In a work competition
that took place during this period,
it accomplished two months' work
in 28 days.
Advancing constantly in skill
and cooperation, Ma Heng-chang's
team began to issue emulation
challenges to others, first in its
own plant, then throughout the
country. Last May Day it an-
nounced that it had saved 22 days
and seven hours on a four-month
job during which 33 individual re-
cords were broken and the quality
rating of the whole team's output
was 99.81 per cent.
In July 1951, the Ma Heng-chang
team achieved the high targets it
had set itself one day ahead of
schedule. Its products were 99.3
per cent up to standard. Four
new records were established,
raising productivity from two to
61/2 times.
In August the brigade was
challenged to increase its produc-
tion by a value equivalent to 44
tons of grain by the end of the
year. On October 25 it announced
that it had already over-fulfilled
this target by 47 per cent, having
One reason for the successes of
Ma Heng-chang's team is the atten-
tion it pays to training apprentices.
AN.-FEB. 1952
Approved For R
produced an extra value equal to
65 tons of grain.
These advances in productivity
were a result of the team's study
and mastery of high-speed metal-
cutting techniques developed in
the USSR and of the Kovalev
method, in which workers showing
high efficiency in various phases
of an operation are studied and a
procedure combining the best
achievements of each becomes the
general standard. During the
month, the team did a day's
extra voluntary work for the
campaign to aid Chinese vol-
unteers in Korea, donating its
earnings for the purchase of arms.
Ma Heng-chang and his work-
team could not have existed in the
old China but only in the new.
To give birth to such people and
such work, certain conditions are
necessary. There must be no con-
flict but a community of interest
between the authorities and the
workers. The workers must know
for a fact that they benefit per-
sonally from every productive ad-
vance. The government must so
respect ordinary working people
and their experience that it looks
to them, not only to books and
learned engineers, for solutions to
economic problems.
Fear of unemployment and de-
pression must be so effectively
wiped out that neither individual
workers nor individual factories
hang on to "trade secrets," but on
the contrary share them willing-
ly, without fear of loss to them-
selves.
These conditions now exist in
China. That is why Ma Heng-
chang's story is there to tell.
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Flowers from peasant children to air force pilots taking
part in the war against locusts in Hopei province.
As the planes spray insecticide, peasants beat
locusts into the middle of a ring and kill them.
AIR FORCE
Locusts have long been one of
the great plagues of the Chinese
countryside. Many was the year
when a fine crop ripened, heavy-
eared after ample rainfall and
sunlight?only to be eaten by
these insects. The locusts swept
down on the fields in dark clouds,
leaving whole regions stripped of
grain and foliage, dooming hun-
dreds of thousands of people to
hunger. They chewed the win-
dow-paper out of the houses and
even bit the faces and noses of
farmers' children. The peasants
fought them, by hand and with
flails, but often failed to control
them.
Last July, locusts were again
spotted in nine provinces in China:
along the coast, among the reeds
round the lakes in the central part
of the country and in the grass
plains of the Northwest. The
threat in Hopei, Shantung and
northern Anhwei provinces was
the worst in a generation. But in
contrast to other years, the swarms
did not get the crop. Something
new and unprecedented happened.
The people triumphed over the
locusts.
The victory, which ushers in a
new period in Chinese farm his-
tory, was won with the help of
the air force. Hearing of the dan-
ger to crops in three provinces,
the government equipped planes
with sprayers and sent them to the
areas of greatest concentration of
the locusts?Hwanghua and Ssu-
hung counties. The planes made
214 flights in two weeks and suc-
ceeded in destroying the swarms.
What the planes did not finish off
the peasants on the ground did,
with hand-sprayers and insecti-
cides that kept pouring in from
Peking and Tientsin by trucks
which traveled day and night.
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
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LOCUSTS
Some time later, when another
locust swarm threatened some
10,000 acres of ripe crops in Tien-
men and Hanchwan counties,
Hupeh province, the air force set
out again. The aid of planes was
especially necessary in this area
because the locusts were breeding
in soggy marshland, difficult to
reach by other means.
The appearance of the air force
created great excitement among
the peasants. They could not
stop talking about how a few
planes had killed more locusts
than 10,000 men could destroy in
three days. They made up many
sayings about how the People's
Air Force fights all aggressors
against the Chinese people, be they
humans or insects. Toilworn
farmers jumped with joy when
they saw the planes shuttling
over the affected areas. When
the planes landed, they ran to the
pilots and presented them with
delicacies: eggs, salt fish and
almonds.
At a welcoming celebration in
Hwanghua county, peasant Ni
Peng-shan made a speech in
which he said: "We used to have
four enemies. The People's Gov-
ernment has already wiped out
three: bandits, tyrannical land-
lords and floods. Now Chairman
Mao has sent planes to wipe out
our last enemy?the locusts."
To the farmers of the affected
districts, "Chairman Mao's Anti-
Locust Air Force" is added evi-
dence that the government has no
interests apart from those of the
people.
The government issues sprayers and
"666" to peasants for use where
grass and reeds are too thick for
aerial spraying to be effective.
N.-FEB. 1952
Planes make it possible to clear 150 acres of locusts in a single hour.
The trench method. Locusts which fall into these ditches
are killed with "666," the Chinese-made equivalent of DDT.
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27
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Urban Relief and Rehabilitation
One great change is obvious to
every eye in the cities of China
today, two years after liberation.
The victims of the old society
are no longer to be seen. The
homeless children and old people,
the destitute families starving un-
der the open sky that used to meet
one at every step?all these heart-
breaking scenes have disappeared.
Our city streets have also been
entirely freed from the scum of
the old society?the loafers, pick-
pockets and professional beggars
that infested them for centuries.
No longer do predatory rascals
and gangsters of all kinds sidle
up to likely -prospects," or pick
quarrels with passers-by to gain
some profit by swindling or
intimidation. These things too
have sunk into the past.
Such is the unmistakable evi-
dence that we now have a govern-
ment of the people and that a new
society is already in the making
in China. Behind it is the even
more striking fact that the form-
erly starving urban poor have
CHAO PU-CHU
been provided with food, shelter,
work and in many cases land; and
that former city riff-raff are being
reformed through useful labour.
China Helps Herself
These developments provide
positive proof that the Chinese
people, under their own People's
Government, can both take care of
the victims of the old order and
remove the cancers that it bred.
They have kicked the last props
from under the moth-eaten slan-
der that China has not the re-
sources, the will or the skill to
move ahead without imperialist
"advice" or "philanthropy."
Not even the enemies of China
can now deny that two years of
liberation have produced results
which could not even be dreamed
of after the previous hundred or
so years of vaunted "model"
municipal administration under
imperialist rule in such cities as
Shanghai. No one can overlook
the fact that in this brief period
we have done more in relief work
than was achieved by the outside
relief activities of a hundred
years. There can be no better de-
monstration that full freedom
from exploitation and control by
foreign profit-seekers, not invest-
ments that aim to dominate and
the Point Four type of poisoned
"gifts," are what every nation in
Asia needs in order to make
similar progress in as short a time.
Why Relief After Liberation?
Generally speaking, the com-
plete change in the aspect of our
cities is one fruit of the emer-
gence of China from a semi-colo-
nial and semi-feudal condition.
It could not otherwise have occur-
' ed at all.
Specifically, however, this
change was due to the effective-
ness of the new type of urban re-
lief and rehabilitation work. Even
after our liberation, this relief
activity was called upon to over-
come difficulties of an extremely
grave and unprecedentedly wide-
spread character.
Why did we then, and why do
we still need relief work, since our
revolution has already destroyed
the root cause of the worst social
evils of the past? The answer to
this question lies in the conditions
which we inherited.
As a general legacy from long
years of misrule and merciless ex-
ploitation under previous govern-
ments, of which the Kuomintang
regime was the last and worst,
widespread poverty and depres-
sion permeated our whole society.
In addition, the relentless civil
war, waged by the reactionaries
Unemployed In Shanghai gel
work on road repair Jobs.
012400130001-8
CHINA ItECONSTRUM
Approved For
against the People's Liberation
Army, afflicted the people with
calamities even worse than those
of the Japanese invasion which
had preceded it. Not only did the
people lose their sons through
conscription and their livelihood
through taxes and requisitions.
They were often unable, as a re-
sult of the war, to continue nor-
mal agricultural activity and such
work as the repair of dykes. The
crop-failures and floods that re-
sulted cost the lives of millions
and turned other millions into
homeless refugees. Besides the
refugees, the cities swarmed with
hundreds of thousands of dis-
banded Kuomintang army men,
many of them completely demor-
alized.
Following liberation, finally,
our coastal cities were subjected
to naval blockade and wanton air-
raids by the brigand Chiang Kai-
shek and his U.S. backers. This
resulted in .more loss of life, de-
struction of houses and temporary
dislocation of trade and industry.
As a consequence, our cities
were full of unemployed, whose
number was 'constantly augment-
ed by refugees from the country-
side. Every morning produced
thousands of castaway infants,
whom their parents had aban-
doned in desperation. Old people
and cripples wandered, hungry
and without ,aim, waiting only for
death. Prostitution assumed mons-
trous proportions. Tuberculosis,
venereal infections and various
epidemic diseases reached un-
heard-of heights.
In Shanghai alone, over 800,000
persons were without any means
of support and were classified as
completely, destitute.
The Evil Heritage
Cities like Shanghai had been
strongholds of imperialist, feudal
and bureaucratic-capitalist rule.
They had developed as centres of
commerce and ruling-class con-
sumption rather than of healthy
national industry. Their existing
industries were largely geared to
export markets most of which had
become unavailable, and to the
cheap-labour processing of im-
ported raw materials which
had stopped coming in. Even at
their most- "prosperous," they had
'AN.-FEB. 1952
An unemployed worker is deeply touched as he gets a
sack of grain collected by workers in the factories.
been factors in the exploitation of
the country instead of its healthy
development. The problem in
such cities, therefore, was not
merely to get the wheels of in-
dustry turning but to reorient
their whole economy.
Deep-rooted conditions of this
kind clearly call for relief. Just
as clearly, they cannot be solved
by relief alone. They can only be
successfully tackled by relief, re-
habilitation and basic economic
reconstruction bound into one in-
dissoluble whole under a common
plan.
The First Steps
Self-help and mutual aid in the
cities themselves, and mutual aid
between the afflicted cities and all
other parts of the country, were
the key to the relief effort after
liberation.
In the first period, rural areas
were called upon to help the city.
On a rough estimate, more than
1,000,000 unemployed and im-
mediately unemployable persons
in eight main cities?Shanghai,
Peking, Tientsin, Nanking, Wu-
chang-Hankow, Canton, Sian and
Tsingtao?were dispersed among
the villages and accommodated in
agricultural production.. From
Nanking alone, 280,000 out of a
total of 400,000 unemployed were
decentralized in this way. They
in turn helped the villages to in-
crease productivity with their
energies and skills.
Persons re-settled from the
cities were received with warm
kindness and assistance by the
village people. On the other
hand, people remaining in the
cities raised large sums of money
to help rural refugees from
famine-stricken areas, who were
gradually re-equipped and re-
patriated. Winter clothing cam-
paigns to help flood and drought
victims in Anhwei, Kiangsu, Hopei
and Honan provinces, regions
devastated by flood, brought in
6,800,000 warm garments from the
cities.
Kuomintang army men strand-
ed in the cities were also success-
fully resettled. In the Central
South Region alone, 699,418 were
shifted to the country in the short
space of six months, at a cost of
more than 9 billion yuan.
The cities were made safe and
social order restored through the
removal of thieves, professional
pan-handlers and loafers, who
were put to work on various pro-
jects. A "New Man Village" for
10,000 such persons from Shang-
hai was set up in the nearby
Kwanyuan reclamation area, in
north Kiangsu province, where
these former parasites are now
both helping the country and lay-
ing the material basis fora secure,
productive, and prosperous life for
themselves,
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29
Prostitution is ceasing to exist
in our cities. Leading the nation,
Peking has been entirely cleansed
of this social evil. The "special
quarters" infamous for hundreds
of years can no longer be found.
Many of the women, freed from
the grip of procurers and trained
in various skills, have secured
good jobs, married and begun an
altogether new life. A few of
them have begun to work in
various cultural fields.
A common saying in China
nowadays is that the old society
turned human beings into devils,
while the new society turns devils
into human beings!
Fighting Unemployment
In another phase of urban re-
habilitation, assistance has been
given to 789,937 unemployed
workers and intellectuals out of a
total of 1,500,000 throughout the
country. The assistance has taken
many forms: assignment to jobs,
outright financial relief, provision
of temporary work and subsidizing
living expenses while the bene-
ficiaries learn new skills.
Municipal construction projects,
already undertaken on a consider-
able scale, are absorbing large
numbers of the unemployed. If
we assume that each person re-
ceiving such aid has three depend-
ents, we arrive at the figure of
2,000,000 persons supported by
30
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Doruttions to the great winter
clothing relief drive for dood re-
fugees are packed for tran.sport.
these measures of relief and re-
habilitation.
It must be remarked here that
unemployment in our country is a
product of the past and will soon
be a thing of the past. This is
already the case in Northeast
China. Cities like Dairen and Har-
bin, which were liberated before
the rest of the country, have been
thoroughly rehabilitated and are
rapidly acquiring new industries.
In these places, there is no unem-
ployment whatsoever. On the
contrary, there is a sharp shortage
of both industrial and intellectual
workers, despite the fact that
many persons from other parts of
the country have already taken
jobs there.
Improving Health and Welfare
While the problem of food has
been solved and that of work is
on its way to solution in all our
cities, positive measures are
already being taken on a wide
scale to improve health, welfare
and education.
Health centres and creches are
appearing in all working-class
areas, to give free medical assist-
ance and care for the children of
women workers and office em-
ployees. Hospital and maternity
care is now available, free or for a
nominal charge, to a much greater
section of the city people than
could ever hope for it in the past.
In Shanghai and Tsingtao,
"youth villages" and special
primary schools have been set up
for children who a short time ago
were homeless. As financial and
economic conditions improve,
other cities are acquiring similar
institutions.
In Harbin there are public
wedding halls and funeral parlours
which can be used entirely free of
charge.
China is no longer a country
that depends on relief from the
outside. On the contrary, we
have already begun to help others.
Vice-Premier Tung Pi-wu of
the Central People's Government
set this as a definite policy, in it
speech at the All-China People's
Relief Conference in Peking.
He said that relief and welfare
work in our cities is no longer to
be limited to "saving ourselves"
but must henceforth also include
"helping others."
This injunction is being carried
out. Funds and supplies have
been collected in large amounts
for the relief of war sufferers in
Korea and of Chinese refugees
who have returned home from
that country. In response to the
call of the Chinese Red Cross
Society, great numbers of doctors
and nurses in many cities have
formed volunteer medical teams
and gone to the Korean front.
Chinese relief organizations in
all big cities are aiding overseas
? Chinese refugees who have been
compelled to leave their establish-
ments, residences and other pro-
perty in Malaya, Siam and the
Philippines as a result of political
and national persecution. Return-
ing to China they have been
warmly received by the people
wherever they have settled, and
have received financial assistance,
shelter and care.
Eliminating Imperialist Influence
Obviously, none of the new
tasks of relief work in China could
be carried out by organizations
based on the old ruling-class con-
cept of "charity", or by those
operated or influenced by imperi-
alism.
A necessary preliminary, there-
fore, was the ridding of welfare
organizations in our cities of all
traces of imperialist control and
attitudes, particularly those of the
ruling groups of the United States
who have so amply proved their
enmity to the Chinese revolution
both before and since its victory.
The fruits of imperialism in the
relief field have been fully ex-
posed.
In the worst cases, it produced
mass extermination of Chinese
children. This was proved by the
death pits found in a number of
"orphanages" and by their own
statistics, revealing a death-rate
of 99%. Such institutions, need-
less to say, have been reformed,
while the criminals responsible for
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
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Approved For
their abuses have been punished
or deported from China.
In even the "best" cases, how-
ever, the minds of beneficiaries of
imperialist relief were bent into
subservience to the very forces
whose exploitation of China was
responsible for their widespread
poverty. In practically all cases
relief was misused for improper
interference in Chinese political
life. In many, it served as a
cover for foreign intelligence
activities, frequently including re-
cruiting of agents and military
espionage. All such patterns of
"relief" are being effectively up-
rooted at the present time.
Great changes have also come
about in relief and welfare institu-
tions run by Chinese nationals but
largely or wholly dependent on
subsidies from the United States.
These were formerly under the
indirect influence of imperialism.
Now they have been re-oriented
to a new base of support in the
Chinese government and society.
Freed of dependence and divided
loyalties, they now have a single
aim?service to the people.
Such basic policy changes have
been immediately reflected in the
rapid development of self-respect
among the beneficiaries of relief.
They see themselves in a new
light. They learn that, acting col-
lectively, they have the strength
to overcome their difficulties.
Daily they see indications that
their future is secure, that the
new China which is being con-
structed will assure their welfare
and will not long tolerate the con-
ditions that make relief necessary.
Former paupers now recognize
their own responsibility toward
their people and their country. A
concrete example can be found in
the orphanages and other child
welfare institutions of Shanghai.
After these organizations were
taken over and completely re-
novated, a new life began for the
children. This filled them with
the desire to do something in re-
turn for the fortunate turn of
events in their lives. This past
summer, 502 of the teen-agers
volunteered for special medical
training schools and pledged their
future to serving the people. This
is but one example. It has been
duplicated many times over.
IN.-FEB. 1952
These youngsters lived in the streets and had no hope till
they went to "New Man Village."
Relief work in China today is
integrated with our entire pro-
gramme of peaceful national re-
construction. Such coordination
is guaranteed by basic relief
policies laid down by the Central
People's Government and the
main goals it lays down from time
to time. In deciding the actual
programme to be carried out in
any given place, local conditions
and requirements are carefully
studied. There is no undifferen-
tiated, blanket approach.
Principles and Procedures
Relief is not conducted in-
dependently in each locality. It
is recognized that urban and rural
relief are inseparable. Refugees
cannot be resettled from cities to
the land without the aid of the
villages. The villages cannot
lessen the burden on the cities
unless they themselves receive aid
which the cities can give, in tools
and supplies.
Close and friendly contact is
maintained with government
organs. No large-scale medical
work can be done, for example,
without cooperation with Public
Health Bureaux. Big groups of
people cannot be moved without
help from transportation authori-
ties. Loafers and underworld char-
acters cannot be turned to produc-
tion without assistance from the
Public Security Bureaux. Re-
settlement cannot have satisfac-
tory results if responsibilities are
not assumed by the trade. indus-
trial and publicity departments of
local and regional administrations.
Relief and welfare activities can
only be on a puny scale if they do
not involve the masses; they can
accomplish important tasks only
when they themselves are a form
of mass action. In the new China,
labour unions, peasant, youth and
women's associations, the coopera-
tives with their millions of mem-
bers, as well as other public or-
ganizations, have been drawn into
the work. Their great pooled
strength provides a sure base for
a wide and many-sided attack on
every social evil. It was in this
way that the drive for relief funds
for unemployed workers and
winter clothes for the village poor
was successfully carried out all
over the country.
The solid accomplishments of
the past two years prove that the
Chinese people can perfectly well
put their own house in order,
overcoming all difficulties. Mainly
benefitting the working popula-
tion, our relief work not only
heals the deep social wounds of
past oppression, but contributes to
the advances in production and
culture which are building a new,
prosperous China.
In brief, the objectives marked
by Vice-Premier Tung are being
put into practice. Within a very
short space of time, the Chinese
people have not only "saved
themselves" but begun to "help
others" as well.
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31
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HOLIDAY
IIN
PEIKIING
Sunday in Peking is a day for sports
and excursions, particularly in the
summer months, when these photo-
graphs were taken.
After a week of hard work, some
people visit the famous historic spots
of the capital. (Left page, right.)
Others dance in the spacious parks
and squares. (Left page, below.)
Still others picnic informally or swim
in the many fresh, clean lakes. (Right
page.)
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WOMEN DRIVE TRAMS
IN PEKING
An elderly passenger sitting
rext to me on the tram remarked
as he glanced admiringly at the
..?oung woman driver, "Women
:Ire doing everything nowadays.
We already have labour and corn-
hat heroines, women government
leaders and workers, scientists,
ftactor drivers and railway engi-
i]Oers. And now women tram
,irivers in Peking."
The girl in charge of our tram
i.vas 20-year-old Li Yun-hua. She
one of the first six women to do
.;och a job south of the Great
Wall. The story of her personal
e shows the possibilities now
(wetted to hundreds of millions of
Onnese women who Lave shaken
1,lieir feudal shackles and are
iying as free citizens for the first
me in history.
Poverty and starvai ion in her
-?mily drove Li Yun-hua as a
child to work in a clothing factory.
Her wages for a 12-hour day of
i;weated labour were 54 lbs. of rice
per month, hardly enough to keep
:dive. Because she was a woman,
the labour bosses treated her even
worse than they did the men.
"Whenever I thought of the future.
felt a pain in my heart," says Li
Y m-hua.
Then Peking was liberated. Li
Yun-hua was still only eighteen.
hie learned from the films that in
the Soviet Union women were
doing men's jobs, that a girl in
Northeast China named Tien
K wei-ying was driving a train and
hat several girls had already be-
come skilled tram drivers in
Dairen. "If they can do it. so can
she said to herself.
When Li Yun-hua answered the
am way company advertisement
women conductors she added
('-nark, "I hope to become a
driver one day. Why should
Peking, too, have women tram
divers as well as Dairen?"
Sharp-eved, alert?one of
Peking'. girl tram-drivers.
Accepted, Li Yun-hua -began ten
months' work as a conductor.
These ten months were happier
than any previous period of her
life. She worked an eight-hour
day and her wages were five times
what she earned before liberation.
Her family began to eat three
meals a day of good, nourishing
1-,,od_ She attended the company's
:ti?o-time school.
Soon she was elected a brigade
leader, then a model worker of the
whole tramway system and finally
one of the 21 delegates to the
People's Representative Con-
ference of the city of Peking.
"I never thought it possible for a
woman worker to discuss and
supervise the government's work,"
she said.
Li Yun-hua's dream began to
come true in May when she was
chosen as one of six women to be
trained as drivers. The evening
she was told the news, she was
writing an essay for her night
school class. She chose as her
subject: "The same woman--
trash of the old days, but talent of
the new society."
The training was intensive. An
experienced, skilled worker was
assigned to each student. The
girls had to learn electrical theory
and how to do minor repairs.
When Li Yun-hua went to the
driver's platform for her first test
run, the people on the streets
shouted, "Hey look! A woman
driver!"
Peking was surprised and
pleased when women began to
pilot its trams. Photographs of
Li Yun-hua and the other girls
were frontpaged in the news-
papers. Many women wrote con-
gratulating them on their success.
Their parents were proud of them.
"Parents in the old days were
often disappointed when they had
girl babies," Li Yun-hua recalled.
"We and many other women in
China are now destroying this
prejudice by showing there is
nothing that we can't do."
Li Yun-hua's test period ended
in August. Then she was given
one of the new light blue "People's
Specials" to drive all by herself.
The conductors on her tram are
women too. Together, they are
working out plans for maximum
punctuality and good service to
the passengers. Soon they hope
to win the red banner for the best
tram crew in Peking.
CHINA. RECONSTRUCTS
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THE
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liminary training, these boys and
girls began their important job of
bringing the truth, through music,
dance and drama, to the youth of
Shanghai. During the pre-libera-
tion period, they produced in-
numerable short pieces, all closely
linked with the main worries and
demands of the people. When
malignant inflation threatened
most citizens with starvation, they
staged a, dance called "Who Causes
High Prices?" When the Kuo-
mintang began to force masses of
young people into its tottering
armies, the theatre put on its "Re-
sist Conscription."
Two major dramas were also
produced at this time. One, "The
Watch," was adapted from a So-
viet children's play contrasting.
old and new ways of education.
The other, "The Little Circus," was
written by the director of the
Children's Theatre. It portrayed
the exploitation of children and
showed how, through unity, the
children themselves could strug-
gle against oppression.
CHILDREN'S
OWN THEATRE
JEN TEH-YAO
Applause and cheers filled the
Lyceum Theatre in Shanghai.
The curtain had rung down on the
last act of the play "Little Snow-
flake," presented by the Children's
Theatre of the China Welfare In-
stitute. Long after the lights
went up, the clapping continued,
accompanied by the excited chat-
ter of the aroused audience. Many
of the children crowded toward
the dressing rooms, shouting
threats to the villain and wanting
to shake hands with the hero.
Backstage a grey-haired stagehand
stood looking and listening, shak-
ing his head from side to side. He
nudged the younger stagehand be-
side him and said: "Since the
opening of this theatre twenty
years ago, I have never seen an
audience respond like this."
"Little Snowflake" was but one
of the many similar successes of
the Children's Theatre since it
started in the spring of 1947. To-
day, as a result of liberation, the
young audiences of Shanghai have
more than ever come to claim this
troupe of youngsters as their own.
Early Steps
This project was organized by
the Institute to create a theatre
run for and by China's children.
Prior to the liberation, it was com-
pelled to function under the op-
pressive rule of the Kuomintang.
Its history at that time consisted
of overcoming one obstacle after
another. The Kuomintang not
only stifled the existing cultural
activities for children, but also at-
tempted to prevent new ones from
developing. The streets of Shang-
hai were filled with tens of thou-
sands of young folk. There were
not enough schools, and many
were too poor to attend those that
A group of the CWI Children's
Theatre kids on the stage.
N.-FEB. 1952
Approved For
existed. Thousands had no homes
at all. The original members of the
Children's Theatre were recruited
from among the children of the
streets, the homeless and the
poverty-stricken. Its faculty set
itself to moulding these young-
sters who had known oppression
from their earliest clays, who were
born of the masses and had the
inner strength to hate and resist
the causes of China's misery.
During those early days the
Children's Theatre also had to
overcome another obstacle. Many
mothers and fathers, steeped in
feudal ideas, regarded theatre
work as no better than prostitu-
tion. The Kuomintang had en-
couraged this outlook. It had gone
so far as to attempt to make all
Shanghai actors and actresses re-
gister in the same category as
prostitutes. Of course, the theatre
workers bitterly resisted this, but
many parents were influenced and
withdrew their youngsters. They
did this even when the theatre
provided the only possible oppor-
tunity for their sons and daughters
to get an education.
Nonetheless, the Children's
Theatre was able to maintain a
nucleus of members. After pre-
Vitality Proved
In spite of persecution and un-
der the very eyes of the Kuomin-
tang's "cultural policemen," the
children were able to take their
talents, plays and dances into
every corner of Shanghai. Acting
as "little teachers," they per-
formed the dances and songs of
new China long before the libera-
tion.
At times when reactionary con-
trol of the city became too strict,
they would transfer their activi-
Violinist and accompanist of the music
section of the CWI Children's Theatre.
liii'i-oral areas. In August
ihla. for exam ply, thee visited the
TolAaiii farm, a collecting
ia .lucational ccntrii for Shang-
lelinquerat and beggar chit-
A coltural troupe was or-
11
iiarized aniong the youngsters,
r wog their eyes to the fact that,
pe'pl'society. their lives
he Filled with hone and hap-
This was a 'low applica-
ot lilt lia.at re's experience
oreyialoc s immer vaca-
nen us inember-; trained
uo chi idren s hat they
oraarize dramatic' activities
oir 0".?in schools when the
iy as over.
Ti "Boys. Town- work brought
asio: threats from the Kuomin-
'ang, so tile Children's Theatre
inoyed back into Shanghai. More
-days were developed, and per-
nuances in a area: number of
ichoois were lined up. However,
it the last minute. many teachers
reel led the scheduled shows un-
Kuomintan2: pressure. The
theatre countered by establishing
Hose contact with the progressive
Teachers' Union and putting on
olays, with -no preparation and
it publicity.- Under this system.
courageous teachers guaranteed
hat audiences could he present,
mobilizing, their pupils quietly.
110 the Children's Theatre and
the audience %you'd show un un-
"Little Snowflake"?a play of solidarity with the Negro people of the U.S.
announced at a prearranged tune
and place, and the show would go
on. Many schools and thousands
of young people continued to be
served in such woes.
In the last days of reactionary
rule, marked by frantic Kuomin-
tang arrests and executions, the
Children's Theatre split into
,iroups which Nxert. dispersed to
various parts of Shanghai. These
I-el/alined in hiding, rehearsing
itatir plays until the People's
Liberation Army arrived. Then
the Children's Theatre reappeared
in the streets as a publicity team,
pirforming on corners and in the
!ones and terraces. explaining to
the people what the liberation
meant for them.
These efforts endeared the
Theatre to the whole population,
both children and grown-ups.
Under New Conditions
Since the liberation, the Chil-
dren's Theatre has settled down to
become one of the main cultural
influences among the children of
Shanghai and the whole nation.
It is now entrusted with leader-
ship in lifting the level of chil-
dren's dramatics throughout
China. Bearing this responsibi-
lity. the young members and facul-
ty are working seriously and mak-
ing long-range plans. They are
struggling to lift their own techni-
que, to deepen their own under-
standing of the strength of the
new China. In keeping with the
basic policy of the China Welfare
Institute, they have begun to con-
duct their theatre as an experi-
ment, as a model for the rest of
the country.
The present members of the
theatre are boys and girls who
have been especially selected for
talent. As was the case with the
original members, many of whom
have since grown up and entered
the general stream of national cul-
tural advance, they live and study
collectively. Their training is
based on the principle of linking
study with practical work. They
are divided into four sections:
drama, dancing, music and art.
In addition to receiving specialized
technical training, each child
also studies regular school sub-
jects.
On the technical side, the chil-
dren in the dramatic section are
taught how to analyze a play and
to take various parts. They are
encouraged to write their own
plays and have revealed great
creativeness. The youngsters come
hiainly from working families and
Lave themselves known both
poverty and hard struggle for a
Letter life. This brings their
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
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"The Watch," another play presented by the CWI Children's Theatre.
writing especially close to the ac-
tual experience of the vast major-
ity of our people, both the bitter-
ness of the past and the great
energies released now that the
people know they can change all
things by their own efforts.
Children in the art section are
responsible for lighting, scenery,
properties and costumes. Those
in the music section have their
own Chinese orchestra and
another orchestra with European
instruments. The dance section
performs Chinese classical dances,
ballets and modern dance. The
music and dance sections try both
to preserve the old national forms
of China and to make them blend
satisfactorily with forms originat-
ing elsewhere.
People of a New Kind
The relationship among the
youngsters of the Children's
Theatre is healthy and comradely.
Their whole education is aimed
toward developing self-govern-
ment, mutual help and coopera-
tion. Together, they summarize
and draw conclusions from their
work. They are taught to be
open and frank at meetings, to
bring up suggestions and debate
hotly until they find a solu-
tion for the problems discussed.
They have their own blackboard
newspapers and wall bulletins,
filled both with praise and criti-
cism. Most of the theatre's young-
sters have either become members
of the Young Pioneers or the New
Democratic Youth League, or are
preparing to enter these organiza-
tions. One of the girl actors was
among those selected to spend the
summer in a Bulgarian Young
Pioneers camp.
In brief, the members of the
CWI Children's Theatre are good
examples of the new type of Chi-
nese youth, honest in mind and
healthy in body, willing to receive
and ready to give constructive
criticism. Their qualities are the
very ones on which the building
of our new society is based, the
qualities China prizes most high-
ly in her citizens.
Character development of this
kind helps the children in their
chosen profession. Its results ap-
pear whenever the Children's
Theatre performs. One can see
them most vividly every June 1, on
International Children's Day, the
high point of each year's activity.
It was on June 1, 1950, that the
Theatre first presented "Little
Snowflake." The play describes
the persecution of the Negro peo-
ple in the United States and shows
how the struggle against this per-
secution is organized. "Little
Snowflake" went into more than
thirty performances. Its young
audiences followed it with un-
usual concentration. They loudly
sympathized with the Negro hero,
and demanded punishment for the
bigoted villain.
On International Children's Day
in 1951, the theatre presented a
dance pantomime, "Always Be
Prepared." The title itself is the
motto of China's Young Pioneers,
and the pantomime portrayed the
history and present activities of
the organization. Beginning with
scenes of children's life in the old
liberated areas it brought the story
to the Mao Tse-tung era through-
out the nation. Through the me-
dium of dance, it showed why
Chinese children should study
hard, play hard, and develop every
faculty so as to be ready at all
times for the construction and de-
fence of their country. "Always
Be Prepared" played to full houses
and enthusiastic audiences for
three weeks.
No less than 95,000 people wit-
nessed Children's Theatre per-
formances in the first half of 1951.
At present, the members and
faculty of the Children's Theatre
continue to train and prepare.
Their objective is the rapid exten-
sion and development of children's
theatres as part of the tide of cul-
tural growth in China today.
AN.-FEB. 1952 37
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Town and Country Trade
"tnterflow" is a word you will
hear often in China today. It is
tile term applied to the exchange
of goods between town and vil-
lage, farm and factory, workers
and peasants on a nationwide
basis. The reopening of old and
disused channels for such ex-
change and the pioneering of new
4.-ties is now a major concern of
China's state trading enterprises,
which are also leading and assist-
ing private business to participate.
The internal commerce of China
,ieelined catastrophically after
1937. During the years of foreign
nci civil war, all major avenues
of communication were destroyed
or blocked, causing some pro-
inces to lose every economic link
tney had previously had with one
another. Moreover, the peasants,
Fin per cent of the Chinese people,
i:ecame terribly impoverished
hroug,h war and oppression.
Their production fell and they
ceased to buy even the few manu-
f.ictured goods they had used
before. In many places, the people
yen stopped usire? matches,
reverting to flint and steel.
iw the situation 1:las changed
Ht.h.2,et.lier. The country is unified
and at peace. Barely two years
..fica- the end of the destructive
civil war on the mainland, rail-
ways have been fully restored and
are carrying more freight than
in any prewar year. The pea-
sants, masters of their own soil
since the land reform, are produc-
ing with great enthusiasm because
their output belongs to them and
not to landlords. Foreign export
firms and their collaborators no
longer dominate the market for
rural by-products such as skins,
bristles, walnuts, eggs, etc.?whose
prices they used to force down,
leaving the producers in wretch-
edness. Conditions have been
created not only for the restora-
tion of "interflow" trade but for
its manifold increase over the
past. To the extent that the vil-
lages find an outlet for their own
products, they can become a
limitless market for industry.
Home Market Expands
City industry, in its turn, now
looks to the villages not only for
markets but also for raw material.
The unhealthy situation in which
Chinese textile mills, for example,
used to process imported cotton
and export their products, has
come to an end. The growth of
"interflow" has become not only
the most important way to foil
imperialist blockade attempts but
pproved For Release 2
also a prerequisite to the rapid
industrialization of the country.
The economic administration
organs of China have made the
promotion of healthy internal
commerce one of their most im-
portant jobs. They have already
succeeded in driving speculators
and hoarders from the field and
organizing the home market on a
healthy basis. State trading com-
panies purchased 130 per cent
more agricultural goods and 154
per cent more industrial goods
in 1951 than in 1950. Their suc-
cess has stimulated legitimate
private trade to serve the national
economy in the same way.
As a result, producers all over
the country now find a ready mar-
ket. This is one of the major
reasons why the purchasing power
of the population as a whole has
risen by 30 per cent in the past
two years. Region by region, the
increase in purchasing power has
been even more spectacular,
amounting to 60 per cent in South-
west China and 100 per cent in the
Huai river area. The demand for
industrial goods and raw ma-
terials, as well as consumers'
goods, constantly runs in excess of
supply. "Slack seasons" in business
and industry have become a thing
of the past. But, again through
the steadying effect of state trade,
neither the level of prices nor the
balance of benefits to town and
country have been disturbed.
A Merchant's Story
The way the state directs pri-
vate interests toward fruitful "in-
terflow" trade may be illustrated
by the following example.
Li Nien-tung is a merchant
of Tsining. Shantung province.
Straw matting, woven by pea-
sants, piled up at a cooperative
ready for shipment to town.
CHIN RECONSTRUCTS
R012400130001-8
Approved For
Starting with a capital of Y30,000,-
000 People's Currency (US$1,500
or ?535), he did Y2 billion (US
$100,000 or ?35,700) worth of "in-
terflow" business in ten months.
A man of 22 years' commercial
experience, Li had engaged in
inter-provincial trade once before.
The anti-Japanese and civil wars,
however, changed him into a re-
tail shopkeeper. After the libe-
ration, he was encouraged to put
his old knowledge to use once
more by repeated urgings from
the authorities and by the credits
offered by government banks
and transport concerns.
Li began by resuming his busi-
ness connections with other cities
and setting up new ones. When
visiting Tsinan, capital of Shan-
tung, he met a merchant from
Tientsin and learned that Tientsin
people loved to eat black melon
seeds from the Shantung country-
side. In Tientsin, he found people
lining up for diesel oil of which
there happened to be considerable
stocks in Canton. In Hunan, he
found plenty of tung oil which was
badly needed by Shantung fisher-
men for their boats. In Wusih he
found vegetable oil factories short
of soybeans, which were a drug on
the market in his home town, each
October.
Within a few months, Li Nien-
tung's trade network spread over
12 cities in all parts of the coun-
try. He kept up a large corres-
pondence and sent salesmen out
with samples. Last spring he or-
ganized a combine of 15 firms
dealing in sea food. His success
brought him not only profit but
also honour. The Bureau of Indus-
try and Commerce in his native
town of Tsining cited him as an
example of the kind of man "who
can bring benefit both to himself
and to the Chinese people."
That Li Nien-tung and hundreds
like him have done well in inter-
nal trade is of course no accident.
With the carrying out of the land
reform in most parts of China, the
peasants have been working hard
and busily ? because they are
working for themselves. An esti-
mate made by the Committee
on Financial and Economic
Affairs of the Central People's
Government shows that the by-
1N.-FEB. 1952
A peasant woman buys cloth at a well-stocked local co-op.
products our peasants produce for
sale each year, over and above
their main crops, amount to over
Y40 trillion (US $2 billion) a year.
Government trading companies,
cooperatives and private business
men are all coming into the mar-
ket for these, and are bringing in-
dustrial products from the cities
to encourage the peasants to turn
them into cash. Peasant purchas-
ing power is zooming. In some
parts of the country, such as the
Northeast, it went up fivefold in
a single year.
Rediscovering China's Wealth
To promote the interflow of
goods between town and village,
Native Products Exhibitions have
been held in key cities all over the
country. Peasant producers from
hundreds of miles away were able
to send their goods there through
their new co-operative marketing
groups. Visitors came in millions,
and enormous transactions were
closed.
Nomads were helped by the
government to come all the way
from Sinkiang to see the exhibi-
tion in Shanghai and to order tea,
silk and manufactured goods.
Businessmen who had lived
along the coast all their lives were
stimulated by things they heard
and saw to travel thousands of
miles into the interior, where they
ordered furs, leather, sheepskins,
herbs, tung oil, chemicals and raw
materials for industry.
The results are already evident
in the appearance of southern
bamboo manufactures as house-
hold articles in North China, and
of tropical fruits in large quanti-
ties on the markets of Pekrng,
Tientsin and the cities of the
Northeast.
Merchants and industrialists,
especially, found that they had
had no idea previously of the
riches of their own country. Liv-
ing in the coastal ports which im-
perialism had tied to its own
economy, they had formed the
mental habit of relying on im-
ported goods for existence, and had
really come to believe that China
was poor in natural resources.
One former importer exclaimed
after returning to the north from
an exhibition in Shanghai: "I
had the shock of my life. Here
I'd been importing expensive cork
from abroad when we have tons
of it, good and cheap, in our Shensi
province."
This businessman Is typical of
many who used to consider the
wide oceans no barrier while they
had no idea of what materials
could be found a few hundred
miles inland. Now these men will
start looking inside China for
what they need. And they will
find it, because the resources of
our country are limitless.
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Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
9iteed0111. to Yna44#
"The People's Republic of China shall abolish the feudal system
which holds uornen in bondage. Women shall enjoy equal right!-
with men in political, economic, cultural, educational and social
life. Freedom of marriage for men and women shall be put into
,.ffect "
In spring of 1950, when the
willows were turning green,
Chairman Mao Tse-tung ordered
the promulgation of the Marriage
Law of the People's Republic of
China. When the news reached
Chaoyang village near Hulan
county, Sungkiang province, it
created quite a commotion.
The old people felt it was an
outrage to modesty. Some said,
-The idea! Discarding all the old
laws handed down by our ances-
tors." Others commented, "Every-
thing this government thinks up
is good, but this marriage law..."
and they shook their heads dis-
approvingly.
Hut all the young men and
women were overjoyed. Among
them was a pair of lovers?a
young man named Lai Hsing-ya
and a girl named Chao Shu-cheng
--who were happy from the
bottom of their hearts. They
thought secretly. "At last our
road is open."
The two of them lived in the
same yard. Lai Hsing-ya had a
father and mother and two
younger brothers. Chao Shu-
cheng was the only daughter of an
old widower. Both families had
been poor and oppressed but had
"gotten up from their knees"
since liberation.
Lai Hsing-va with his strong
arms was one of the outstanding
young peasants of the village.
The only reason he was still single
at 23 was that he had been too
poor to marry. This worried his
60-year-old mother more than
anything. Day and night, she
dreamed of holding a grandchild
in her arms.
The girl, 18-year-old Chao Slm-
cheng was also "a good worker."
(Article 6 of the Common Programme or
the Chinese People's Po tical Consultatirc
('ariference).
She was quick and skilful at every
job, both inside and outside the
house. Her mother had died
when she was very young, and her
father treasured her as the apple
of his eye. Many men came to
ask for her hand, but her father
refused every time. He wanted a
son-in-law who would come and
ive with him and take care of him
for the remainder of his life. He
also dreamed of someone rich who
would give him a lot of money so
he would be able to buy a few
things and get himself a new wife
for his old age.
When the peasants worked in
mutual aid teams in the fields,
Hsing-ya often helped Shu-
cheng and her father. Feeling
that she should give something
in return, Shu-cheng would go
over to sew for the Lai family.
When old Mrs. Lai saw Shu-
cheng's fine needlework, she took
the girl to her heart and began to
love her as her own daughter.
Shu-cheng, on her part, felt that
the old woman was kind and
sweet. As for Shu-cheng's father,
who was greatly respected, he
would often say of the diligent
Hsing-ya. "That boy has some-
thing to him."
When they talked together,
which was often, Hsing-ya who
was a member of the Democratic
Youth League would tell Shu-
cheng about many new things.
Shu-cheng who had been to school
for a couple of years would teach
the illiterate Hsing-ya how to read
and write. As time went on, they
fell in love.
During the slack season, the
peasants began to rehearse a play.
When it was presented, the whole
village turned out to see it.
Squeezed in the crowd were
llsing-ya and Shu-cheng.
(AWN k RE( ONSTRI ( TS
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The play was called "Yang
Hsiao-lin." It was about a pea-
sant boy who loved a peasant girl
named Yang Hsiao-lin, and how
they overcame all sorts of feudal
obstacles in their fight for freedom
of choice in marriage. As the
play went on, Hsing-ya and Shu-
cheng got more and more ex-
cited. Hsing-ya felt that "Yang
Hsiao-lin" in the play was just like
Chao Shu-cheng. As for Shu-
cheng, she saw a strong resemb-
lance between the hero of the play
and the sweetheart of her choice.
On their way home, Hsing-ya
plucked up courage and stammered
to Shu-cheng, "Let's be like 'Yang
Hsiao-lin'." Blushing furiously,
Shu-cheng nodded assent.
It did not take long for the
whole village to see through
Hsing-ya and Shu-cheng's "secret."
Tongues began to wag. All the
young people said enviously,
"They are making a free choice."
Admiringly they commented,
"They are opening the road for us,
good for them!"
But people who were less open-
minded said, "How shocking! It
seems that people will do any-
thing, so long as the law allows."
Some even said, "It's because Shu-
cheng had no mother to teach her
manners."
When the talk was carried to
the ears of Shu-cheng's father, he
was simply furious. He felt that
his daughter had brought shame
on his house. Although he had
known that Shu-cheng and Hsing-
ya saw each other very often, he
had thought to himself, "They're
only working together. There's
no harm in that." Also he had
been afraid of saying anything lest
he offend Hsing-ya, in which case
there would be nobody to help
with the heavy work.
Old Chao first wanted to give
his daughter a good scolding, but
on second thought he changed his
mind. He reasoned: "The child
has not had the care of a mother.
She has worked like a boy, and
hasn't had a chance to enjoy her-
self." So he ended by trying to
dissuade Shu-cheng gently with:
"Hsing-ya is a good boy. But his
family is too poor. You will have
a hard time if you marry him."
-N.-FEB. 1952
"Ile is a fine boy, but he is too poor."
To his surprise, his daughter
didn't take kindly to his well-
meant advice. She actually dared
retort: "Hsing-ya may be poor
now, but he's not going to be poor
all his life. I like him because
he's hard working, and I am ready
to share any hardships with him.
Besides the government believes
that men and women should be
allowed to choose their own life-
long partners. Parents should not
interfere."
Old Chao's eyes nearly popped
out of his head. He ordered his
daughter never to enter his house
again. But Shu-cheng remained
firm in her decision.
At Hsing-ya and Shu-cheng's
request, the village leaders went
to have a talk with old man Chao.
They pointed out how many
traditional buy-and-sell marriages
had ended tragically. They quoted
paragraphs from the marriage
law. Finally they said, "Freedom
of choice in marriage is our
national law. No one is allowed
to go against it." The old man
still dissented in his heart but had
nothing more to say.
The bumper harvest of 1950 was
something that had not been seen
in over a dozen years. Every
family in the village rejoiced,
especially the Lai family, which
had a wedding to celebrate as well.
But they banged no drums and
cymbals, and killed no pigs or
sheep, as was the custom. All
that happened was this. At sun-
set, Shu-cheng and Hsing-ya put
on new clothes, and came back
from the marriage registration
office, smiles all over their faces.
Afterward, there was a simple
wedding ceremony. As was the
old custom, the village leaders and
young people went into the
newlyweds' bedroom, teased them
and made them tell the story of
their love. The sound of their
laughter greatly irritated old man
Chao who lived next door. Sigh-
ing and snorting, he drank one
glass of wine after another.
All eyes in the village were
glued on the Lai family after this
"strange" wedding ceremony.
What everybody saw was that the
very next day after the wedding,
the bride and bridegroom went
out to work on the harvest. The
young couple showed even more
zest than before in work and
study. The Lais lived in harmony.
The news spread to the villages
around. Other young people
followed Shu-cheng and Hsing-
ya's example, choosing their own
partners.
The old people were astonished.
For her wedding, Shu-cheng had
not conformed to any of the old
superstitions. She had not stop-
ped to consider whether the day
was lucky for weddings. The
young couple had not bowed to
heaven and earth for blessings.
Still their married life seemed
perfect. Said old Mrs. Lai, "This
'freedom of choice' is really a good
thing. The ceremony is simple
and economical, and we old folks
don't have to fuss over anything."
Old man Chao stayed angry for
some time. But he was gradually
brought around by the behaviour
of the Lai family. None of its
members turned a cold shoulder
on him for having tried to stop the
marriage. On the contrary, they
treated him even more kindly, and
the young couple often came to
see him and tell him the news.
Besides, there was no more sar-
castic gossip around the village.
Instead, some of the former
gossips were heard to say: "Those
young people did the right thing."
Giving him a reading lesson.
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Approved For Relea
East China
Fisheries
Revive
Like every other phase of
national production, China's fisher-
ies are undergoing reconstruction
and expansion.
When the Kuomintang forces
were driven off the east coast and
out of the Chousan archipelago 17
months ago. they left the fishing
fleets depleted through neglect,
extortion and deliberate sabotage.
In 1934. East China had 68,807
sea-going junks, 288 steam vessels
and several tens of thousands of
fresh water fishing boats. The
average annual catch was 700,000
tons of marine products. At the
time of liberation, only 31,509 sea-
going fishing junks and 125 steam
vessels were left. Most of these
were damaged and unfit for ser-
vice. The fishing industry of the
(7housan archipelago, in particular,
had been almost completely put
out of commission.
Restoration Begins
Since the People's Government
was founded, it has extended
fwery type of aid to the fishing
people. Administrative organs at
various levels were set up and
fishermen's producer cooperatives
were organized on a democratic
basis. Government loans to the
cooperatives amounted to Y199
billion People's Currency (US
'19,950.000 or ?3,553,500) in cash
and 837 tons of salt to preserve
their catch.
Today. 58.404 fishing boats,
56,080 sea-going junks and 131
motor vessels are engaged in fish-
ing along the East China coast.
They are equipped with 337,786
nets of various kinds. The num-
ber of fishing boats which put out
to sea from January to June last
:::ear showed an increase of 71 per
vent compared with the corres-
ponding period of 1950. More
19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
(Inc of East China's fishing fleets ready to sail.
boats are being launched as dock-
yards are put back into com-
mission.
The 1951 target was a catch of
300,000 tons. Preliminary figures
showed that it was being met and
might be considerably surpassed.
The East China Marine Pro-
ducts Conference herd last sum-
mer set a 1952 target of 700.000
tons?nearly double the catch of
1950. It also drew up plans to
strengthen the fishermen's own
organizations to enlist their en-
thusiasm and raise production.
Cooperatives and Markets
In the past, East China's fisher-
men were feudally exploited by
so-called fishing companies and
"sales agencies" which collected
arbitrary fees anti were really
little more than "protection
rackets." These parasitic and
gangster practices are now only a
had memory. Fish markets have
been set up in Shanghai, Tsinguio,
Chefoo. Ningpo, Wenchow, Chou-
san and Wusih. More than 300
cooperatives are functioning in
different fishing ports to help
solve problems of production,
marketing and supply, and to
supervise the carrying out of re-
forms in the industry.
The government has set up
state-operated Marine Products
Corporations in Shanghai and
Shantung, and state-operated
Marine Products Marketing Cor-
porations in Shantung, north
Anhwei and Chekiang to unite and
guide private merchants in the
development of the fish industry.
Large loans have been granted to
private merchants to enable them
to resume curing fish for storage
and shipment elsewhere.
Prices Stabilized; Business
Expanded
As a result of the Shanghai
Native Products Exhibition and
the East China Native Products
Conference, contracts for large
quantities of marine products have
been concluded with North, North-
west and Southwest China, re-
viving long lost trade relations
with these areas. During the sea-
son last year, the railway ad-
ministration lowered freight
charges for fish, facilitating trans-
port and the proper fulfilment of
these contracts.
As a result of stability in cur-
rency and prices, and of steps
taken by the government, the price
of fish was maintained on an
even level instead of fluctuating
wildly as before. The surplus
catch was put into cold stor-
age or absorbed from the market
by processing and curing estab-
lishments.
The volume of business in
Shanghai last year ran at double
the rate of 1950. The daily arrival
of fish was often over 1,000 tons,
greatly exceeding the customary
past record. Yet there were no
lulls in the fish market and no
stocks were left to rot as "over-
supply." Last year, the whole-
sale price averaged Y2,000 (about
10 cents U.S. currency or 81/2d.)
per lb., equalling the domestic
price of 1.8 lbs. of rice.
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
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Aid by Government
The People's Government has
helped the fishermen who operate
individually and constitute 90 per
cent of the total. To aid them in
increasing production, they have
been given cash loans totalling
Y79 billion (US $3,950,000 or
?1,415,000) to buy boats, fishing
equipment, food, and fish salt.
Salt has been made available to
them in large quantities at low
cost.
The people's armed forces have
rid the seacoast of pirates, so that
fishermen can put out to sea and
go about their work without fear
or worry. As a result, the num-
ber of fishing vessels active off
the Chekiang coast in 1951
doubled, and that off the Shan-
tung coast trebled as compared
with 1950.
It is natural that under these
circumstances the livelihood of
the fishermen has improved tre-
mendously. At the port of Kiao-
chow in Shantung, many have
earned enough to begin keeping
mules for transport and fattening
pigs for the market.
Conservation
The East China Military and
Administrative Committee on
Marine Production has set up a
special organ to compile data and
do research into the fishing in-
dustry.
The people's governments of
various maritime municipalities
and counties will enforce govern-
ment laws and decrees regarding
the demarcation of prohibited
areas and registration of fishing
rights. The ownership and utiliza-
tion of fresh water fishing areas is
being defined in accordance with
the stipulations in the Agrarian
Reform Law.
Whenever necessary and pos-
sible, fishing port facilities, light-
houses and observation points are
to be rehabilitated for the safety
of the fishing fleet.
Fishing grounds are now pro-
tected by a ban on the use of ex-
plosives and other destructive
activities. It is forbidden either
There is plenty of fresh fish
on sale in all Chinese cities.
This stall is in Peking.
J"1.-FEB. 1952
to use or to manufacture nets
below standard mesh.
Wiping Out the Past
This picture is entirely in con-
trast t o the situation before
liberation. The three state-operated
marine products enterprises taken
over from the Kuomintang were
all notorious for their cor-
ruption and waste. The Ameri-
cans too had set up a "Fisheries
Rehabilitation Administration" to
exploit and enslave our fisheries.
American and Kuomintang secret
service personnel used to occupy
responsible positions in the in-
dustry. Functionaries appointed
by the Americans were retired
navy men posing as experts in
fishery.
American trawler captains drew
salaries of US $900 per month, plus
a bonus of US $0.0275 per pound
of fish caught. Sometimes a boat
load of fish was sold for barely
enough to cover the bonus of the
foreign captain, especially when
the catch consisted of species that
did not bring a good price on the
market.
The "Fisheries Rehabilitation
Administration" maintained 130
fishing boats, whose monthly over-
head expenses amounted to Y5.6
billion if reckoned in present cur-
rency. All the boats together
caught 10,000 tons of fish in four
years, which sold for only about
one ninth of the expenditure
claimed. Enormous sums sup-
posedly collected for improve-
ments went into private pockets
leaving no trace in the account
books. This was what the Ameri-
cans called a project for relief and
rehabilitation, to revive the fish-
eries by "scientific methods."
The "China Marine Products
Company" and the "Yellow Sea
Marine Products Company," which
were merely paper organizations
when taken over, have now been
reorganized into the Shanghai
Marine Products Company and the
Shantung Marine Products Com-
pany. By the united efforts of
their workers, they were purged
of reactionary and corrupt ele-
ments and put into proper order.
The People's Government is
making big investments in ship-
building and processing plants for
the fisheries. Trawlers are busy
at sea. Eight ice and cold storage
plants, two dockyards, two net
factories, two cod liver oil refin-
eries and one cannery are now
serving the fishing grounds of the
East China coast.
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Prosperity in Private Enterprise
\fter a successior of meetings
,;eeri labour and management
in the second half of July 1951, the
Ileneyuan Textile Mill, a
oriioerous enterprise financed by
e capital. announced new
pnniuctior, eoals for the month of
,ust. Dy the end of the month
these ,coa is had been exceeded.
Pt ,dits were also 23 per cent.
.her than had been anticipated.
The experiences of the Hen
-1,`.11-1 mill, which has existed for
years but never did well in the
past, are typical of the whole
private textile industry of China.
;; the good business, and its
,ortidence in its prospects at the
pre:-?mt time.
%%lien the Hengyuan Mill was
ivied a generat ion ago, its
liarehoiders were most iv northern
warlords who quickly turned its
pl,:nagement into a sink of cor-
ruption and bureau 'racy. Every
,_mry official, big or small. made
'.!P;fiey for himself on the side.
For instance, one man who was
re,,ponsible for checking the
weight of coal had a monthly
salary of only 10 Yuan (about US
$5.00 at the time), yet he bought
hirnself twelve houses in Tientsin
at the end of a few years. No
wonder Pien Shih-ching, the
white-haired bespectacled old
director of the mill, says when he
recalls the past: "Hengyuan used
to be riddled with a thousand
holes and covered with a hundred
Aires.
In 1928, when Hengyuan went
bankrupt and closed down, no one
was surprised. A year later, new
bank loans were negotiated and
an effort was made to reopen. In-
efficiency and the competition of
large amounts of Japanese yarn
then being smuggled into Tientsin
quick iy caused its doors to shut
again.
Til 1930. Ifengyuan was re-
ory;anized by a banking group
which rid it of its feudal features
and tried to run it along modern
lines. Business was beginning to
look up when Tientsin was oc-
cupied by the Japanese.
The Japanese were soon trying
to get control of the Hengyuan
mill, offering to "cooperate" with
its owners. When this failed, they
attempted to buy up all the shares.
Failing again, they simply broke
into the mill and robbed it of one-
third of its machinery. Moreover.
through a system of cotton ration-
ing, they starved it of raw
material. By 1942, only 800 of the
M,700 spindles were operating.
Victory over Japan did not help
Hengyuan either. The new mana-
ger who took over under the Kuo-
mintang gave key positions to in-
capable relatives and friends,
whom the workers secretly called
by such names as "The Thirteen
Tyrants" and "The Four Bullies."
'Fhese parasites cared nothing for
the mill but took advantage of the
Kuomintang inflation to make
money on the black market while
the enterprise itself rapidly
heaped up debts.
A New Situation
In January 1949, Tientsin was
liberated by the People's Army.
A new economic policy was laid
down to ensure that both labour
and capital would benefit from a
joint effort to increase production.
lint although the worst elements
in its ranks no longer ruled the
roost, Hengyuan's management
did not at first understand the
policy. Nor did the workers.
The leaders of the labour union
were afraid that if they worked
to increase production they would
appear to be toadying to the cap-
italists and would therefore lose
the confidence of the members
who looked to them for better
living conditions above all else.
Director Pien Shih-ching of the
flengyuan Textile Mill confers
with trade union delegates on
production.
5R012400130001-8
CHIN .A. RECONSTRUCT!
Approved For R
Workers meet to consider how
best to carry out their pledges
at the production conference.
On the other hand, the capital-
ists were filled with apprehension.
They were not sure that they
could make money under the new
conditions. They were timid
about making a real effort to pro-
mote production. They did not
consult the labour union on their
problems, because they thought it
was out for higher wages only,
and had no other concerns. To
show that they were "progressive"
they gave the union anything that
it asked for, but they did it grudg-
ingly.
In May, Liu Shao-chi, vice-
chairman of the government and
a senior leader of China's Com-
munist Party, came to Tientsin
and gave his famous talk on "be-
nefits for both capital and labour."
This greatly clarified the situation.
The mill-workers came to under-
stand that to produce more was
the only way to improve their
standard of living. Industrial
output rose almost at once.
Labour-Capital Conferences
Regular conferences between
labour and the mill-owners to dis-
cuss how to increase production,
began in February, 1950.
At first, the management repre-
sentatives were very dubious and
uneasy about such conferences.
On the one hand they had seen
how workers in state-owned fac-
tories organized themselves to
push production forward and
thought the Hengyuan mill might
derive similar benefits. On the
other hand, they were afraid the
discussions might get "out of
hand." What if a worker got up
at a public meeting and asked
embarrassing questions about
deadwood administrative per-
sonnel who might be holding jobs
not because of any ability but as a
result of ties of friendship or
family with the owners?
To put it briefly, the manage-
ment first thought only of how it
might use the union rather than
cooperate with it for the common
good. It was this outlook which
caused it to make the suggestion
that, instead of joint meetings, two
union delegates might be allowed
to attend meetings of the admini-
stration.
The union turned down this of-
fer, because it felt that it would
reduce the role of its repre-
sentatives from joint leadership
in production to merely answer-
ing questions. To ease the fears
of the owners, the union repeated
once more that the only purpose
of the production conferences
would be to raise output, and that
no decisions would be taken on
which both sides did not agree.
If either management or labour
disagreed on a problem, no deci-
sion would be made. The owners
fully accepted this formula and
the conferences began on a regular
basis.
Why Production Rose
Workers' delegates to the talks
reported regularly to the rank-
and-file, raising their sense of
participation and consequently
their enthusiasm. As a result,
many knotty problems were
solved. Here are some examples.
One of the spinning shops suc-
cessfully increased its yarn out-
put, but the winding shop, which
was next in the production line,
could not keep up with it. As a
result, the unwoun d yarn piled
up in great quantities. Manage-
ment had tried to solve this prob-
lem by getting the winders to
work overtime. This had only
resulted in fatigue and illness
among the workers without im-
proving the situation.
When the question was submit-
ted to the conference, the union
undertook to seek the workers'
advice on how to remove the
bottleneck by improving work-
methods and granting bonuses, in-
stead of overtime or speed-up.
The management was skeptical
saying, "Let's see if you can con-
vince them?" The results fully
justified the union suggestion, and
the lag was successfully elimi-
nated.
In the weaving department, the
owners had tried long and unsuc-
cessfully to get each worker to
mind eight looms instead of four
or six. The union pointed out
that the trouble lay not in techni-
que but in the wage system.
When the workers themselves
were enlisted in working out an
equitable wage scale, the previous-
ly "insoluble" question turned out
to be quite simple.
Hengyuan Becomes a Model
Another spectacular improve-
ment took place in the elimina-
tion of waste. The union mobi-
lized the workers to devise ways
of cutting it down. As a result,
the average daily waste was re-
duced from 500 lbs. to 270 lbs. It
was then that director Pien declar-
ed: "I've been running factories
for scores of years, but I could
never imagine anything like this
before."
Last spring, after a year of
experience, the Conference of
AN.-FEB. 1952 45
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LaLour and Capital Fad acquired
nough confidence to launch a
three-month work competition.
This led to the breakim, of all pre-
production records at the
fengyuan mill. The mill was
--i_ibieouently elected a model in-
-!Litrial enterprise of Tientsin.
In July 1951, a further sten was
ik-en. The liengvuan mill. for
first time in its history, drew
?p a comprehensive production
lot" This plan was thoroughly
iscusseci at production confer-
:flees in each shop. It not onlv
output targets but also a svs-
in Hr rheeking up on quality.
,,rk competitions are now a
feature of itengvuan's
I F,verv one of those already
Hi!! pleied has corrected some
vimical or oranizational fault
lilr,er'.o characteristic of private
ictories in China. More scien-
t i fie procedures have resulted
from each.
Better Work: Better Life
Wage standards have been re-
adjusted. All workers, technicians
ad management personnel are
2H Ay paid according to actual
hinction and ability on the job?
not according to custom or con-
nections.
Personnel-shifts have been
made in accordance with the needs
of productive efficiency.
The mill owners have come to
modify their idea that low wages
irt, die only source of prosperity.
They have learned from facts the
importance of satisfying the work-
ers' demands for a betteer life.
Appropriations from profits have
been used to improve the mill
hospital and to build spare-time
schools for the workers and
creches for their children. The
workers now eat meat and
polished rice instead of rough
grains as before.
The business of the Hengyuan
cotton mill is better than it has
ever been. Profits by the end of
1949 were already sufficient to
pay off all its accumulated debts,
with plenty to spare. Since then
a substantial surplus has been
built up.
No longer menaced by the
causes which made life for Chi-
nese factories so precarious in the
old days of bureaucratic extortion
and unfair imperialist competi-
tion, the owners of the Hengyuan
cotton mill are now buying new
machinery and planning to set up
a mill in west China. They have
also sent out salesmen all over the
country to collect orders for
Hengyuan's constantly growing
output.
, -??????
/ 1,Irlivilff
////1/(-1.-.0/0
,
! HE WORKERS' CULTURAL PALACE
Woodcut By Ku Yuan
111\ HE( OV.,"1 lit (Is
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111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
The People's Relief
Administration of China
L111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
The natural calamities which
afflicted the people of China for
centuries were really largely man-
made. They drew such heavy
toll only because the people had
lost all power to avert disasters
and limit their effects. The cause of
this situation was the long-stand-
ing robbery of the country by im-
perialism, feudalism, and bureau-
cratic monopoly. As a result, the
working people of China lived
under the constant threat of
hunger and death.
Today the Chinese people have
risen from their knees. They are
rapidly rebuilding their economic
life, social relationships and na-
tional defence. Relief and social
welfare work in both town and
country have ceased to be isolated
and become a part of the general
peaceful reconstruction of the
country.
How It was Organized
The People's Relief Administra-
tion of China (PRAC) has the
task of achieving this integration
throughout China. It was set up
after the All-China People's Re-
lief Conference held in Peking
in April 1950. The conference was
called by the Chinese Liberated
Areas Relief Administration
(CLARA) which had previously
operated in the old liberated areas
of China. It was attended by re-
presentatives of the All-China
Federation of Labour, the All-
China Federation of Democratic
Youth, the All-China Student
Federation and the All-China
Federation of Literature and Arts,
relief and welfare organizations,
the Chinese Red Cross and medical
associations, Chinese returned from
abroad, peasants, national minori-
ties, industrialists and business-
men, religious workers, refugees
and local and central government
departments concerned with relief.
At this meeting, the People's Re-
lief Administration of China came
into being.
In a sense, PRAC is the suc-
cessor of CLARA. The older or-
AN.-FEB. 1952
ganization had collected material
on Japanese atrocities and sent
it abroad as proof of its accusa-
tions against the Japanese in-
vaders. It had also reported,
in its Chinese and English lan-
guage publications, on the wide-
spread relief work it was doing in
the liberated areas. This brought
in large contributions of cash and
relief goods from peace-loving and
progressive people in other parts
of China and in many other coun-
tries: CLARA had distributed
these contributions, which came
chiefly through Soong Ching Ling
(Mme. Sun Yat-sen), to refugees
from flood and drought in the
liberated areas and to the Inter-
national Peace Hospitals. It had
also negotiated with UNRRA for
relief goods.
A People's Organization
The People's Relief Administra-
tion of China is not a government
department. It is a people's or-
ganization. Its chairman is Soong
Ching Ling, who had previously
contributed so much to the wel-
fare of the people of the liberated
areas. She is concurrently chair-
man of the China Welfare Institute.
The vice-chairmen of PRAC are
Tung Pi-wu, former chairman of
CLARA; Hsieh Chueh-tsai, a wel-
fare worker with decades of ex-
perience; Li Teh-chuan, (Mme.
Feng Yu-hsiang) vice-chairman of
the All-China Federation of De-
mocratic Women and chairman of
the Chinese Red Cross; and Wu
Yao-tsung, a man long prominent
in religious work and an out-
standing leader of the Chinese
YMCA. Led by this distinguished
group, PRAC has been carrying
on large scale relief and welfare
work by mobilizing society to
help care for those in distress and
by assisting refugees and destitute
people to earn a livelihood through
production.
Productive employment has be-
come the principal method of ad-
ministering relief to the needy in
both urban and rural areas of our
country. All over China, institu-
tions have been set up where re-
fugees and city poor may learn a
craft, enabling them to maintain
themselves. In these places, for-
mer beggars, pickpockets, and
prostitutes are also re-educated
for production.
FRAC executive committee members sign papers governing the take-over of U.S.-
subsidized welfare institutions after serious abuses had been discovered in them.
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In 1949, there were floods in
China, but we succeeded in over-
entn ing them successfully. The
People's Government sent supplies
and money for the victims while
p.,opie all over the country do-
nated winter clothing and other
necessities. Distribution of relief
goods in the affected areas was
entrusted to PRAC. The govern-
ment, through PRAC and local
authorities, helped the flood suf-
ferers to organize and maintain
themselves by fishing, chopping
wood, weaving straw mats, pre-
paring saltpetre, making vege-
ta ble oil, embroidering, spinning
and weaving, so that everybody
ir the countryside was busy and
rn in g something.
The same method was applied
ill administering relief to unem-
ployed city workers. In the year
May 19:50 to May 1951, the number
ni unemployed workers in China
:tecreased by two-thirds.
China is a country of 475,000,000
people with tremendous man-
power, natural and financial re-
-,eurces. Our great potential, even
at the present level of economy,
may be illustrated by one ex-
ample. In the autumn of 1950,
P 11.AC began a campaign for win-
ter clothes for flood refugees in
,1,)rth Anhwei. In three short
inonths, over 6.800,000 winter out-
is been contributed by
,mnnathetic people all over China,
!nore than enough to clothe all the
refugees warmly. This spirit of
helping others in distress is a part
al the Chinese character. Today
it has full opportunity to develop.
China has many private welfare
and relief organizations. Some
[ire international, some are na-
tional, some are nation-wide and
some are local. Some of these
irganizations exist only in name,
and are no longer effective. But
a number of private welfare and
relief institutions have real capa-
i.ity for useful work. Since it was
.At up in 1950, PRAC has been
helping them improve their activi-
ties and apply them in an effective
way.
Helping Others
The work of the People's Relief
Administration of China now ex-
tends to sufferers from disasters
PRAC workers teach public health through dances.
and oppression outside our own
borders. For example, British
colonial authorities have been per-
secuting Chinese living in Malaya,
deporting many to China after the
loss of all their property. To
meet this situation, PRAC and the
Association of Returned Chinese
from Overseas have jointly organ-
ized the Chinese People's Relief
Committee for Refugees from
Malaya. This committee is now
very active.
Since the beginning of the war
in Korea, tens of thousands of
Koreans have lost home and live-
lihood. PRAC is carrying on a
donation campaign to help them
which has already produced large
quantities of foodstuffs, blankets,
cloth, clothing, cotton, shoes,
stockings, medicine and such
household necessities as needles
and thread.
Taking Over U.S. "Charities"
Another job of FRAC has been
to take over charities formerly
subsidized by funds from the
United States. To attain its own
purposes, American imperialism
directly or indirectly carried on
various "charities" in China.
Later, again for its own political
purposes, it suddenly stopped all
subsidies to these charities. Ob-
viously, the aim of such man-
oeuvres was not really to further
the welfare of the Chinese people,
but rather to smooth the road to
U.S. domination over China.
Following liberation, it was dis-
covered that Chinese children had
been subjected to mental and
physical torture in imperialist-run
orphanages. It was proved con-
clusively by material evidence
that tens of thousands of children
had died in these institutions,
some of which showed a death
rate of from 70 to over 90 per cent
in their own registration books.
Children who were so fortunate
as to survive were also found to
be in shocking condition.
Faced with such a situation,
the Government Administration
Council directed that U.S.-sub-
sidized charities be taken over. A
meeting was called in Peking to
discuss procedures, which were
then successfully applied in many
cities. In place of the funds which
stopped coming from America,
PRAC has financed those institu-
tions which have continued to
operate, as well as guided them in
the improvement of their work.
PRAC now has offices in all the
big cities of China. PRAC be-
lieves that, with China's increasing
prosperity, the number of people
in need of relief will gradually
decrease year by year. With this
in mind, PRAC aims to turn
gradually from relief to welfare
work.
( RECONS FRC us
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The China Welfare
Institute
- '4C0"S"I?www4OZIGNT0,-40"
The China Welfare Institute has
a history of 13 years. It was
founded and is still headed by
Soong Ching Ling (Mme. Sun Yat-
sen), one of the greatest person-
alities in China's struggle for free-
dom from oppression and poverty.
Since its inception in 1938, it has
worked to serve the best interests
of the Chinese people.
The organization began its work
during the Sino-Japanese war as
the China Defence League, a name
that became known to friends of
democracy everywhere. Through-
out the war years it served as a
focal point for the distribution of
funds and supplies sent by friends
of China from all parts of the
world to aid the fighters against
Japanese invasion. It helped set
up and support the renowned
International Peace Hospitals,
founded nurseries and orphanages
for the child victims of the war
and gave impetus to the formation
of industrial cooperatives to bol-
ster the war-torn economy and
provide employment, free of ex-
ploitation, for large numbers of
refugees. CDL projects were
located where the fighting was
heaviest and had taken the great-
est toll. Many of them were be-
hind the Japanese lines, in the
guerilla areas.
Battle Against Obstacles
After V-J Day, the CDL chang-
ed its name and the forms of its
work to fit the new circumstances.
As the China Welfare Fund, it ex-
panded its original projects in the
interior regions. At the same
time, it contributed to the overall
rehabilitation of the country by
instituting new projects.
The First International Peace Hos-
pital, housed in caves in Yenan
during the war with Japan.
"AN.-FEB. 1952
The last years of the Kuomin-
tang regime threatened to drown
all ideas of reviving China in in-
flation, corruption and outright
official suppression of everything
new. But despite the obstacles,
and because of the inspired leader-
ship of Chairman Soong, the China
Welfare Fund continued its work.
During the Liberation War, the
Fund led the nationwide demand
that UNRRA and other inter-
national relief and welfare aid be
allocated fairly where the people
needed it most, whether the Kuo-
mintang controlled the areas or
not. It not only demanded such
distribution but set an example of
it in its own activity. Within Kuo-
mintang territory it demanded
that aid go to the famine areas of
South China and shouldered the
task of keeping starving children
off the streets and roads. It de-
manded that help be given to the
city poor, and demonstrated what
could be done by establishing, in
the slums of Shanghai, children's
centres which provided literacy
training, medical care and dis-
tribution of food and clothing on
a mass scale. It also created the
Children's Theatre both to enter-
tain and educate thousands of
workers' children.
The third phase of the organiza-
tion's history began with the
liberation of the Chinese mainland
and the convening of the All-
China People's Relief Conference
in April 1950. It changed its
name once more, becoming the
China Welfare Institute. Then it
embarked on the new develop-
ment for which the people's vic-
tory now provided unparalleled
opportunities.
Present Work
The present task of the CWI is
to set up model projects for
nationwide welfare and cultural
work for the wives and children of
workers, farmers and soldiers.
Since liberation, its staff has
grown tenfold to the present total
of over three hundred. Its field
units have increased from four to
eleven. Instead of the makeshift
and crowded rented quarters of
the past, it is now housed in a
handsome office building of its own
in Shanghai.
Current CWI projects range
from nurseries to the publication
of a children's magazine, from
maternity and child health centres
to a Children's Theatre. It has
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established the first Children's
Cultural Palace in China, opened
formally in October 1951. and
rented a network ot free public
iihrares for the .1-iildren of
tt;LLattliai
iH if these pro cc's are either
Lt'W C WI. Iii I indeed to
China. or renresent an present
win of old proto-ammes which
had to he totally revarrinecl
ineet the lonit-ne!,.:ected needs
people_
example of total.y new work
Children's Cultural Palace.
:tiful spacious ouilding has
reeled to house this work.
..rolect. aims t stimulate
arboal interest in v(,uth cultural
.a.tiyitios and to pioneer similar
kici,!-; tbrou!thout t bo country.
Youth organizers fr on f;ir and
t:ticie are to he hrou,rht to this
ilstit tutor) to see how it works.
-I-hev will on,.?erve how apnrecia-
un tor music, scienco and other
-t-ib)eeTs is stimulated, and what
,-aching methods and materials
are used. They will carry the re-
sults of their observatif ins hack to
t,leir own communitie;
,txainple of old work which
arts been reoranized is the CWI
network of maternity and child
health centres and stations. Such
programmes are not new to China,
but the objectives they now
pursue are. Their present aim is
not to serve a few "cases" but the
largest. numbers of workers. This
requires a changed point of view,
both on the part of the technical
personnel and the women them-
selves. Much education and pub-
licity is being carried on to re-
orient technicians toward work
fur the greater number of people,
:Ind to convince the people to
accept modern methods in child-
birth and sanitation. The respon-
sibility that has fallen on the CWI
is great, since the results it obtains
will be critically studied and used
throughout the land.
Facing the Future
Thus the China Welfare Ins-
ttute now occupies one of the
i'iutemost positions in welfare work
iii China. Its representatives sit
YIGthers brIrg their babies to the CWI centres for regular check-ups.
on the executive committee of the
People's Relief Administration of
China, which is the leading or-
ganization for all relief and wel-
fare nationally. On the opera-
tional level, CWI delegates parti-
cipate in working committees and
attend national and local con-
ferences on welfare, culture and
education. The head of its mater-
nity and child health section, for
instance, is a delegate to the
National Health Conference held
annually in Peking. Regionally.
CWI cultural workers took part in
the East China Conference which
determined the cultural pro-
gramme for an area with a
population of 140 million people.
The CWI has also been represented
internationally. One of its staff
members was a delegate to the
Second World Peace Congress held
in Warsaw.
The advances and accomplish-
ments of the China Welfare Insti-
tute are a manifestation of the
general improvement that has
come about in the lives of the
Chinese people since the founding
of the People's Republic of China.
As the country's economic posi-
tion gradually gains strength,
more funds and facilities will be
made available for welfare work.
The CWI looks forward to the
future. It is preparing itself to
assume new and heavier duties in
the service of our people.
( BF( ONST ( TS
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TILTIEIGIVft of IEWITI
1111111,11:111111111111U1111111L1111.11111111111111111I11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111113111111111.11111111111111111111111111111111111111
CHILDREN'S CULTURAL PALACE .
In the past Shanghai was well known
for the appallingly crowded and in-
sanitary conditions in which thousands of
workers lived, ate, slept and died. Few
children went to school. They never
dreamed that they might have cultural
facilities. Their playgrounds were the
dusty, crowded lanes and streets. But
these conditions are being rapidly
changed.
One step toward the change was made
when the CWI officially opened its
Children's Cultural Palace last July in
the Yulin factory district, where there
are 40,000 youngsters. The Palace will
supplement the education the children
get in schools. It will work to raise the
cultural level of the most promising
children through a variety of activities
including music, dancing, acting, study of
natural history and other subjects A
library with an initial 4,000 books has
been installed and will be built up
further.
CWI IN SHANGHAI WOMAN ANID
CHILD HEALTH COMMITTEE
CWI health workers have accepted a
leading role in the newly-organized
Shanghai Woman and Child Health Com-
mittee. The Committee is composed of
representatives of 17 organizations in-
cluding the Shanghai Trade Union Coun-
cil, the Health Bureau, the Democratic
Women's Association, and the CWI. Its
functions will include planning and
coordinating of all activities in the field;
preparation of plans for woman and child
health work; coordination of work by
private and public health workers; inten-
sification of health education and
publicity, and training of cadres; in-
vestigation and improvement of techniques
and efficiency.
NEW WAYS TO MODERN MEDICINE
One-act playlets portraying childbirth
under old and modern conditions respec-
tively were performed continuously
before audiences totalling 16,000 people
during a seven-day Mother and Child
Health Exhibition organized by the China
Welfare Institute and the District People's
Government of Kiangning, Shanghai in
July 1951. In the month following this
experiment, the number of delivery calls
to the CWI clinic in the district doubled
by actual count. This was a very im-
portant achievement, because one of the
main problems in reducing the infant
mortality rate in China is to convince
women that modern medical care in the
CWI Children's Cultural Palace,
delivery of babies is more reliable than
that of an old-fashioned midwife.
Realism was the secret of the ex-
hibition's success. To see the childbirth
scenes, the audience filed through two
rooms. In the first, the mother (a
dummy) was propped up in the traditional
sitting position in extreme discomfort,
with no arrangements for sterilization
anywhere in sight and only a superstitious
midwife to assist. When it became
apparent the woman was having difficulty
the midwife had no way to "help" except
by lighting candles and praying loudly.
In the second room the woman was
lying comfortably in bed, a number of
shiny instruments were being sterilized
and a doctor in clean overalls and rubber
gloves was helping with the delivery.
Raconteurs described exactly what was
happening in both tableaux. They ex-
plained why one way was bad and the
Model aeroplanes are a favourite hobby at the Chil-
dren's Cultural Palace, where a special construc-
tion room, with materials and teachers, is provided.
7.-FEB. 1952
Modern childbirth methods were demonstrated
at an exhibition, with large dolls as "patients.'
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ither good, and what con.-eciuences might babies delivered by old-fashioned
expected trota Ill itiu-tres '
)(her sections of the exhibition showed
itow to provide cheap, nutritious meals
or children and how best to clothe and
,are for them so that they might he
dealthy and strong.
ill a room devoted to diet, the corn-
,-,aratIve food values of easily obtained
ciods such as cabbage. beans and soybean
were explained and demonstrated,
l'he whole arrproach was different from
..hat too often adopted in previous "show
.eindow" exhibits which blandly advised
Tieople to eat plenty of oranges, vitamin
odic and other things that they could not
,ossibly afford.
Also included in the exhibition were
nursery and a hospital room. The
oursery empnasized cleanliness and the
auiortimce treouem changes of clothes
iniidren. It also showed the best
it thy, and illustrated model
-day diets Tor ch ildri in from two to
::'ars olii
A cite-act play in the hospital room
a rather bringing in his sick child.
.biumosis it diphtheria the treatment
0.-en the chili1 when left in the hospital.
od its final return home after recovery.
play aimed at breakin:! doter people's
it h(ISpItalinni: Their Children,
eTted r)V tilt,ex-
hilt
was reitectt't iii the folloixing
i onion!: s :fa visitors' nail!:
;-,,,,!/-0
oi?,1 the erlithititm, lie
lisait haring our
Iwo pregnant workers of
China Sun Dyeing Factory
"After seeing the t xhihition, I
leel that terMICT1 workers urgently
'iced this kind of practical et-Inca-
!ion It orefitly mcreasr a the tc.t,)it--.
Jetty(' of 11(1111(1.)1 (111(1 child health/. /
also feel than it deparristrates that the
People's Gorernmerit is truly tt?mk-
ing of the berietit of the people and
the happiness of the next gc,. era-
lion."
?Hsu Ching. Wing On Textile
Mill No. 3
SOVIET EXPERT VISITS NURSERY
The CWI Nursery in Shanghai. which
(?ares for 190 children from two to live
years old, received ir visit from an ex-
perienced Soviet woman and child health
worker, Dr. Tzihulskaya on May 30, 1951.
Alter examining the children. buildings
anti equipment. Inc cvictor asked many
questions concerning the diet, ciAly
schyirole arm general operation.
In a discussem %viz h staff mer.-.:)ers
idterwards, Air. Tzituilskaya expreed
net- approval of what was being done and
gave some practical advice. She reicm-
mended that every poi:sible use should
tie mafie cut sunshine and fresh air to build
Lip the resistance at he children LTA
them era's' healthy and string.
Sie thought it wie, a mistake to let titern
rest in rooms with curtained wmccws
out that they should he accustomed to
in broad run:light. Generallv. she
ionohasized yeit they :should nor be
coddled.
Kiddies in a CWI nursery.
Geography Class,
Dr. Tzibulskaya also suggested that
different schedules be worked out for the
varying age groups, and that all laundry
to both boiled and ironed for f,..11
5terilization.
SUMMER COURSE
One hundred and six boys and guTs
aged from 11 to 15. members of t:-:e
Pioneer organizations of schools in taw
factory district of Shanghi.
attended a one-month a ii.ntmer vircati( n
(curse organized by the CWI Childreuh
Cultural Palace and the Yulin Young
Pioneers. The aim of the course was to
iaise the cultural level of the must
viomising school children in the workers'
at and to develop their sense of
iesponsibility and leadership.
The boys and girls were housed in
itne of the Yulin primary schools. They
sure given the run of the newly-opered
Children's Cultural Palace for the.
.'.dies and activities which included art.
: r!1:,jC. dancing, literature. geography as:id
:del airplane constnicTion. A neari.v
nie factory gnve them the use at
, umning pool. Much time tt'as sne
physical culture nail srairts ant:
ii Id gained les- than two pound-, .0
'vi nu:t miring the mouth.
The biggest event for the children
Ot whOM had never been outsioe
r-tiatudiai. was a two-day excursion to the
?coast where they visited the navy.
Cid a long discussion with a famous
!aortic] woman agricultural worker. idni
1:,1Sted on getting on at three in t:A
morning to see toe sun rise over the at
In drawings, int work and discus.,:s
the children expressed the new happine-s
that had come into their lives since the
b?rmation 01 the People's Governme7.1
and the sure hopes tiaey had for T!.:E.
iiiture.
ORGANIZATIONS TAKEN OVER
In Shanghai, the Chapei and Honekew
Child Welfare Centres and a day nursery
1,.rmerly subsidized by the U.S. Church
World Service were taken over by the
China Welfare Institute last August.
The two welfare centres. housed in
itnset huts, are being reorganized as
caildren's libraries and reading rood's,
'Cie nursery, which has been caring ayr
Piety intants from two to five years
11 he continued for the time
w 'to the same ,-ituff as in?fore.
( fin RE( ONS FRI ( TS
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Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP8400415R012400130001-8
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RECONSTRUCTS
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CHEN HAN-SENG is a member of
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was professor of History at the National
University of Peking and more recently
Walker-Ames Professor at the University
of Washington, Seattle, U.S.A. From 1939
E. to 1942 he was Secretary of the Inter-
national Committee for the Advancement
of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, He
is now Deputy Chairman of the Chinese
People's Institute of Foreign Affairs.
CHAO PU-CHU is a noted relief and
Our Contributors
SOONG CHING LING, chairman of
the China Welfare Institute and the Peo-
ple's Relief Administration of China, has
devoted her life to the progress and
welfare of the Chinese people and to the
cause of peace and democracy through-
out the world. She was the wife and
secretary of the late Dr. Sun Yat-sen. In
the darkest period of reaction in China
she headed the China Civil Rights League,
and during the Anti-Japanese War, the
China Defence League (now the China
Welfare Institute). She has been one of
the Vice-Chairmen of the Central People's
Government of the People's Republic of
China since its establishment in 1949.
FU TSO-Yl is Minister of Water Con-
servancy in the Central People's Govern-
ment and a member of the National
Council of the People's Political Con-
sultative Conference and the People's
Revolutionary Military Council.
LI TEH-CHUAN daughter of a
preacher, comes of a family that has been
Christian for three generations. In her
youth, she worked as a teacher and as
secretary of the Young Women's Christian
Association in Peking. At 29, she married
the late General Feng Yu-hsiang, widely
known as "the Christian General." "
During the Sino-Japanese war, Li Teh-
chuan was a leader of the women's
movement in Chungking. After V-J day
she spent much of her time in child wel-
fare work and organized the Child
Welfare Association of China.
She is now Minister of Health in the
Central People's Government, chairman
of the Chinese Red Cross, vice-chairman
of the People's Relief Administration of
China and the All-China Federation of
Democratic Women.
welfare worker, a member of the Execu-
tive Committee of the People's Relief
E Administration of China and Vice-Chair-
man of its Shanghai branch.
He was active in mobilizing material
resources and manpower for the people's
E. forces in the Anti-Japanese and National
Liberation wars and was a religious group
'(Buddhist) delegate to the People's Poli-
tical Consultative Conference in 1949,
= Where he was elected a member of the
National Committee,
JEN TEH-YAO dramatist, graduated
from the National College of Drama in
1939. He is now director of the Children's
Theatre, China Welfare Institute, with
which he has been connected since 1947,
and for which he composed the well-
received children's opera "Always Be
Prepared." In 1951, he went to Warsaw
as a member of the Chinese delegation to
the World Peace Congress.
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7.7
I 0,
)k?
'
Approved For
March-April 1952
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
FRONT COVER: A worker in
the Tung Yung Machine
Works in Shanghai applying
the advanced Soviet high
speed cutting method which
greatly speeds up produc-
tion and improves the qual-
ity of products.
All material in CHINA RECON-
STRUCTS may be reprinted
provided acknowledgment is made
of the source. The editors would
appreciate receiving copies of
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elease 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
A Bfl-MONTHLY MAGAZINE PUBLISHED BY THE
CHINA WELFARE INSTITUTE
PROTECT THE CHILDREN!?Soong Ching Ling 1
INNER MONGOLIA TODAY?China's First
Autonomous Region?Lin Chung 4
CHINESE POST OFFICE SPREADS
KNOWLEDGE?Chu kisueh-fan 9
A Village Teacher Fights Illiteracy 12
Translations in China 13
CHINESE TEA AND THOSE WHO GROW IT?
Wu Chao-nong 14
China is Rich in Oil 18
CHINESE WOMEN AND CHILDREN?Tze Kang 20
New Spirit in Peking Handicrafts 24
Tunhuang Murals Inspire New Designs?Pictorial 26
Automobiles and Tractors: Home Produced?
The North China Trade Exhibition 28
First Trains in Szechuan 32
Transforming Our Cities 35
Man Wins Over "Fate" 38
Miners Produce More, Live Better 39
The Huainan Miners 41
"In Praise of Our Motherland"?Song with Music 42
Yu Chang the Wolf Hunter 44
A PLACE THE CHILDREN LOVE?Chen Shan-ming 47
Flood Relief in 195I?News from the People's Relief
Administration of China 51
Stamps--Commemorative and Special Issues of the
People's Republic of China 52
EDITORIAL BOARD
CUING CHUNG-HWA, Chairman CHEN HAN-SENG, Vice-Chairman
CHIEN TUAN-SHENG LI TEH-CHUAN LIU ONG-SHENG
WU YAO-TSUNG WU Yl-FANG
EDITORIAL OFFICE 2
16 TA TS'AO CH'ANG. PEKING. CHINA
CABLES: "CHIRECON.. PEKING
BUSINESS OFFICE;
157 CHANGSHU LU. SHANGHAI. CHINA
CABLES: "CHIRECON" SHANGHAI
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Approved For Release 200
Protect
The
Children!
SOONG CHING LING
PROTECT the children! Protect
them from every possible
harm! Give them every advan-
tage in life!
These are the demands of any
decent person. For nothing is
dearer to man than his children.
But today, the children are
under direct threat. Already war
is a devastating fact in several
corners of the world. Already
mothers are standing amidst torn
fields and rubbled streets, shed-
ding bitter tears for their young
ones. This has alerted mankind.
It is a warning that we must act
now to prevent such misery and
distress from sweeping over all
children. We can see that pro-
tecting the children is first and
foremost a problem of peace.
The world's ordinary men and
women want one thing above all
else. They want to live out their
lives, to raise their youngsters and
to do their work in peace. They
are solidly behind the idea that
humanity must be spared the
horror, the wounds, the waste, the
deforming of children which has
twice marked this century. They
FICH-APRII, 1952
Mao Tse-tung, leader of the Chinese people, is especially concerned for the
children of our country and is frequently seen in their company. Here he
Is receiving representatives of the Pioneers in Peking.
may differ in religion; they may
differ on political questions;
they may be workers, writers,
mechanics or farmhands; but they
all hold one thing in common?
that we must strive with might
and main to prevent war, to pro-
tect the children.
The broad and all-inclusive
delegations now streaming into
Vienna are a concrete expression
of the intensity of this feeling.
Answering the call of the Women's
International Democratic Federa-
tion, they are gathering for a his-
toric conference which will meet
from April 12-16 to mobilize all
those who seek to protect the
children. They come as repre-
sentatives of hundreds of mil-
lions of people who think that
peace and the well-being of chil-
dren are inextricably woven
together; that war, far from being
inevitable, can most certainly be
stopped in its tracks.
This meeting in Vienna is ex-
tremely important. It is the first
time in man's history that an in-
ternational movement has been
formed to protect the children,
that an organized attempt is being
made to break through to a solu-
tion of the gnawing anxiety which
has torn at women's hearts for
thousands of years?the fear of
what war does to their children.
THE SOLUTION starts with the
mother in every home taking
her stand that there shall be no
war. It gathers momentum as
each mother realizes that in the
neighbourhood, in the district, in
the villages and towns and in the
entire nation, there are other
mothers who feel equally strongly
about this question. Then it
reaches a crescendo of strength as
mothers act in unison all over the
world, not only to prevent war,
but also to stop the preparations
for war. Such unity of action is
entirely possible. We are living
in an age of expanding science,
when war effects everyone, every-
where, and the desire to avert
such disaster is universal. The
meeting in Vienna is a demonstra-
tion of this immense will for
peace. It will be a major step in
effecting the solution.
There will certainly be those
who will dare to resist and even
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1
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attempt to thwart this inex-
tinguishable urge to protect the
children. They will try every
manner and means of deceit. But
at each turn they will betray
themselves. For our demands
are simple and logical. One is
either for peace or against it.
Thus, it is easy to determine who
is friend and who is foe, with
whom we should unite and against
whom we should struggle.
THIS DISTINCTION is impor-
tant. Even those who now
prepare for war must take into
account the people's longing for
peace. They turn their whole
economy to war production; they
whip their people into a frenzy of
fear and confusion and besiege
the minds of children with terror
of the atom bomb?all in the name
of peace. In international or-
ganizations, the representatives of
some governments concoct pro-
grammes which, they claim, seek
peace. But the ink is hardly dry
before they rush off to side
conferences to plan war openly, or
dispatch their troops and equip-
ment to ring upon ring of newly-
built war bases. With these
people, there is no relation
between word and deed. But to
be sincerely for peace, words and
deeds must match.
Such people will expose them-
selves. They are bound to isolate
themselves from the multitudes
who want no part of their dirty
plots, and who will oppose in
every available way their schemes
of death for men, women and
children.
There will also be those who
will insist that organized action
by the world's mothers is of no
use. They will say that there is
really nothing we can do about
war since it is inevitable, since it
is man in his "natural state."
These people are the gullible
victims of those who profit by
war, of the breeders of misunder-
standing and the splitters trained
to vitiate any move the people
make for peace. We will seek to
convince them with facts. We
will show them, by the united
outcry of our hundreds of millions,
that man can,reject war once and
for all. We will demonstrate that
man not only hates war, but is
Learning to draw in one of China's ever-increasing number of day-nurseries
for the children of working mothers.
most creative and most satisfied
only when he is at peace and co-
operating with his neighbours.
THERE WILL BE still another
1- category of opposition to the
movement for the protection of
children. It will adopt a "learned"
or "philosophical" approach. Its
exponents have dragged Malthus
from his grave and are attempting
to resurrect his theories. "War is
to the benefit of the human race,"
they say in effect. "It reduces
the 'excess' population, allows
more breathing space, solves the
problem of the world's food short-
age," and so forth.
This is thinking which has the
smell of death. Yet we must
reply to it, since it does receive
credence in many western coun-
tries. Many recently published
books put forward this line of
thought. Highly "recommended"
scholars spout it all too frequently
in university halls, on lecture
platforms, in the press and over
the radio.
To these people, and to those
who listen to them, we say: Look
around you, sirs. How can you
not see what man has done with
his two hands and brain? See
how man, in his love of life and
peace, has worked the most
momentous developments in the
earth's history! See how he has
conquered, subdued, bent to his
will the forces of nature! See the
new gigantic strides he is taking
at this very moment! You must
be blind not to see that man has
accepted challenges, solved every
problem, and is on top, just be-
cause of his eagerness for life;
that today we have knowledge
with which to build a full and
cultured life for every man, wo-
man and child.
WE KNOW for a fact that man
" has but scratched the surface
in providing for himself on this
earth. The earth does not need
to be depopulated. Rather, there
is an actual need for more people.
There is no "fate" or "inevitabil-
ity" that requires our children to
be slaughtered in war. Rather,
we need to protect and nurture
them so as to have more hands
and brains to further develop
civilization.
These are the solid facts. In
China, in the past two years alone,
we have demonstrated them
beyond question. Many of the
former "China experts" made
their reputations by citing "over-
population" as the cause of China's
ills, thus diverting attention from
the heavy burden of feudalism
and imperialism with which the
Chinese people were weighed
down. The "chronic food short-
age" in China was their favourite
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illustration. But since the found-
ing of our People's Republic, we
have deprived them of this
example. We already produce
enough food to satisfy the needs
of our own population and provide
?an excess for export as well. Yet
we are still far from mechanized
farming and large sections of our
land remain to be reclaimed! So
the facts prove not only that we
can feed and clothe our present
population, but that we can indus-
trialize and support many more
people.
What better demonstration can
There be of the real causes and
remedies for the "insoluble" pro-
blems of the so-called experts?
Our own experience, in which we
were anticipated by others and
which holds true for all nations,
shows that where a system can
"function" only by condemning
people to poverty and death. the
people answer by condemning
that system to death?and them-
selves go on living!
So much for the philosophers of
decay and war who ask mothers
not to weep for their children be-
cause they are "expendable." No
children are expendable. No na-
tion is expendable. All races and
peoples have their own significant
accomplishments, which have
advanced or are advancing man-
kind. And now, at long last, the
peoples are beginning to act to-
gether for the rights of each. Is
there any reason for despair?
There is more reason than ever
for optimism. The difficulty does
not exist which man cannot over-
come!
Wherein does the main threat
to our children lie? Today the
key struggle is against the
destructive intent of a mere hand-
ful of men, those who own the
plants, banks, corporations, mines
and mills that profit from war.
These few persons also own the
media of communications in their
countries, which they use for their
own narrow interests. They have
industrial resources and a host of
mechanical voices to speak for
them. But their power is more
apparent than real. Their enter-
Mobile libraries serve children in
the streets and alleys of Shanghai.
!ARCH-APRIL 1952
prises could not work, their ad-
ministrations rule, their armies
fight?if the people united in their
own interest. They are formid-
able only while they can deceive
?and the deceit is wearing thin.
They are not the irresistible
stream which no obstacle can
oppose. On the contrary, the
people are the mighty river, they
the puny obstacle!
THE WISHES and demands of
-L the vast majority of mankind
cannot be swept away. They can
be rendered ineffective only if each
person stands alone, not if the
people unite. That is why our
crusade for peace, for the lives of
the children, is the most potent
force on earth. It can rip gun
and bomb from the hands of those
who poise them for war. It can
turn the energy of the atom to the
task of which scientists originally
dreamed, to help man live, not to
destroy him.
"In unity there is strength."
Everyone knows this old saying
and it applies now more than
ever. This is the point we must
grasp, understand and use as a
guide, all of us who want peace
and security for the. children. We
must act together.
Today, the Women's Interna-
tional Democratic Federation
offers every peaceful person and
nation an excellent opportunity
for united action. The Vienna
meeting will result in making the
world conscious of the urgent
Approved For R
need of protecting our children,
and the way to do it. It is the
duty of all to participate in and
advance this movement. It should
be the cause they hold most dear.
THE CHINESE PEOPLE send
-I- their warm greetings, with
their delegation, to Vienna. It is
our hope that the Women's Inter-
national Democratic Federation, in
rendering mankind this great
service, will achieve lofty success.
We believe that children every-
where should receive all the
blessings that nature provides, all
the benefits the energies of man
can mould. We want all children
to grow up well-proportioned
physically, their minds enriched
by man's most valued creations.
We want them to be full of
confidence, fearing no state, no
man, no aspect of the future. We
want to free them from the threat
of economic crisis and all other
calamities, natural or man made.
It is to the children that we
hand on the banner of life, to
carry along yet another stretch of
man's long road of progress. We
believe with all our hearts that,
given a start, they will build an
advanced society and culture in
which every person will have the
fullest life, the greatest joy, at the
expense of no other. We want
with all our hearts to give that
opportunity to every child. We
are striving for this, and believe
all peoples will strive with us.
That is why the Chinese people
want and defend peace.
Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
INNER MONGOLIA TODAY
A' ER the time of Genghis
Khan, the Mongolian national
hero, the Mongolian people
suffered under the exploitation of
their feudal princes, later supple-
mented by that of Chinese mer-
chants and officials. From the
eighteenth century on, all the
territories they inhabited were
administered as Chinese colonies.
Then, a little over thirty years
ago, what was formerly called
Outer Mongolia became an in-
dependent national state, now the
Mongolian People's Republic. The
area commonly known as Inner
Mongolia, which remains within
the national boundaries of China,
was organised as an autonomous
region in 1947, after it had been
freed by the People's Liberation
Army. In 1949, when the People's
Republic of China was estab-
lished, its self-governing status
was officially confirmed.
The Inner Mongolian Auto-
nomous Region of China was
formed from lands that were
formerly part of Heilungkiang,
Liaohsi, jehol and Chahar pro-
vinces. Its total area is 231,600
square miles. Its population is
2,400,000, and consists not only of
Mongolians but also of a large
number of Hans (the majority
nationality in China).
4
LIN CHUNG
Since the liberation of Inner
Mongolia the vast expanses of its
CHAPTER VI. POLICY TOWARD
NATIONALITIES
Article 501 All nationalities within
the boundaries of the People's Republic
of China are equal . . .
Arti:le SI; Regional autonomy shall
? emercised in areas where national
minorities are concentrated ..
Article 53, All national minorities
shall have the fre?dorn to develop their
dialects and languages, to preserve or
reform their traditions, customs and
religious beliefs . . .
The above excerpts, given in Mongo-
lian and English, are quoted from the
Common Programme of the Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference,
which now serves as the fundamental law
of the People's Republic of China.
pastures, fields, forests, lakes and
rivers, and all the great natural
wealth of the region, are no
longer bait for imperialistic greed
or feudalistic exploitation. This
wealth is now being developed by
the Mongolians themselves for
their own benefit.
Autonomous Inner Mongolia
was the earliest example of the
application of the nationality
policy of the new Chinese de-
mocracy. Now the Uighurs in
Sinkiang (once known as Chinese
Turkestan), the Tibetans in Tibet
and Sikang and many less
numerous nationalities also enjoy
or are establishing autonomous
status. By the second anniversary
of the People's Republic of China,
113 autonomous national districts,
large and small, had been set up,
as well as 165 united local govern-
ments of various nationalities
living together in the same area.
Before Liberation
The liberation of Inner Mon-
golia, which came shortly after the
defeat of Japan, literally saved its
people from extinction. When it
occurred, the Inner Mongolians
were starving, sick and almost
naked. The average man or
woman was dressed only in a
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ragged fur jacket, worn fur-side-
in during the winter and the other
way round in summer. Many did
not even possess such a "garment"
but wrapped themselves as best
they could in raw sheepskins, full
of holes. The population was
going down, herds had been
catastrophically reduced and
famine stalked the land.
This condition, inherited from
the centuries-old oppression of
Inner Mongolia, was aggravated
by the Japanese yoke which was
imposed upon much of the area in
1931, and almost the whole of it
after 1937. The Japanese invaders
stirred up trouble between
Mongolian and Han, the better to
exploit both. They ordered that
all pastoral and mountain
products be sold only to the
"Manchukuo Commercial Com-
pany," which paid extremely
low prices in kind and invariably
procrastinated in bringing in even
the commodities it promised.
Over those years, the Japanese
sshipped in vast amounts of opium
and liquor, with which they
systematically debauched the in-
habitants. Their rule was entirely
lawless; they could and did kill or
rob anyone at will.
Liberation and Self-Rule
The Anti-Japanese War, how-
ever, also advanced the liberation
struggle in Inner Mongolia. The
Chinese Communist Party, and the
People's Liberation Army which
began to operate in a section of it
after 1938, brought mighty re-
inforcements and a reliable rally-
ing-point to the people's fight
against oppression. Thus, im-
mediately after the Japanese sur-
rendered, the first steps to self-
government could be made.
The Inner Mongolian Autonomy
Movement was consolidated in
Kalgan, Chahar province, in 1945.
In 1946, a conference held at
Chengteh, Jehol province, united
the regional autonomy movements
of eastern and western Inner
Mongolia. In 1947, the Inner
Mongolian People's Representative
Conference was held at Ulanhot
(formerly Wangyehmiao, Liaoning
province) and on May 1 of the
same year, the People's Govern-
ment of the Inner Mongolian Au-
EARCH-ARIZIL. 1952
Approved For
tonomous Region was set up, with
Ulanfu as its Chairman.
Under this people's government
there are six meng or Leagues,
comprising 32 ch'i or Banners
(these are the traditional adminis-
trative divisions among the
Mongolians). There are also three
municipalities under the Leagues
and seven hstien (counties) outside
them in places with mixed Han
and Mongolian populations.
Since 1950, every one of these
territorial divisions has held three
or four local People's Representa-
tive Conferences, while democratic
elections have been held in nearly
2,000 kacha or village administra-
tive units. Delegates to the Peo-
ple's Representative Conference of
different grades come from all
walks of life?they include Mon-
golians and Hans, men and women,
workers, peasants, shepherds and
herdsmen, manufacturers, mer-
chants, intellectuals, lamas (Bud-
dhist priests) and princes.
All organs of government in
Inner Mongolia, from the highest
to the lowest, have been set up as
a result of such gatherings in
which representatives of the most
varied groups contributed to the
THE INNER MONGOLIAN AUTONOMOUS REGION
PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CIIINA
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C}IENGTEtI
lease 2004 02/19 ?
R012400130001-8
Tatung
PEKING
Approved For Release 2004/02/19:
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4
A primary school of the Silingo' League. Six out of every ten children In
Inner Mongolia are now In school.
common task. At every level, the
People's Government of Inner
Mongolia has faithfully observed
the nationality policy of the
People's Republic of China. This
has led to a new relationship
between the nationalities them-
selves, based on equality, friend-
ship and cooperation.
In military affairs, Inner Mon-
golia has organized strong cavalry
groups which are part of the
Chinese People's Liberation Army
and fought with it to drive out the
reactionary Kuomintang. To-
gether with the Inner Mongolian
Public Security Force, the cavalry
has destroyed numerous gangs of
armed bandits that used to ravage
the countryside, thus safeguarding
the people's lives and property.
All-Sided Improvement
Since her liberation, Inner
Mongolia has advanced in eco-
nomy, culture and health, setting
her feet firmly on a road of im-
provement to which there are now
no limits.
The land reform, carried out in
this region in 1947-48, has led to
great increases in agricultural
6
production. At the call of the
government, which helps them
with loans and in technical ways,
the Inner Mongolian peasants are
organizing mutual aid teams, using
more fertilizer, adopting new
farm tools and methods arid
working on large-scale installa-
tions to prevent both drought and
flood.
In animal husbandry, so im-
portant in Inner Mongolia, the
new policy of free grazing, along
with veterinary and breeding
assistance by the authorities, has
rapidly increased the quantity and
improved the quality of livestock.
Timber resources are being pre-
served and rehabilitated by active
fire-prevention work and the con-
servation policy of reasonable
felling, both supervised by a
newly created Forestry Adminis-
tration.
Trade, so long a weapon for the
exploitation of the people, has
been turned into a means of
serving them. By April 1951, no
less than 640,000 persons, or over
a quarter of the total population
of Inner Mongolia, were members
of cooperatives of different kinds.
Government trading companies,
dealing with the cooperatives and
individual producers, bought grain
from the peasants and animal pro-
ducts from herders and hunters,
supplying them with large quanti-
ties of goods of daily use in re-
turn. Private business has also
been developing. In the main
towns of the four eastern Leagues,
capital invested in private in-
dustry tripled between 1948 and
1950.
As a result of the increased
turnover of goods, price ratios
have changed in favour of the
peasants and herdsmen. In 1947,
in the territory of the four eastern
Leagues, the Inner Mongolian
peasant could buy only three-
quarters of a bolt of cloth for the
price he received for one ton of
his rough grain (kaoliang or
Chinese sorghum). Since 1949, he
has been able to get 2.3 bolts, or
thrice as much, for the same
amount. The herdsman, who in
1947 could get 11/2 bolts for thee
price of a 500 lb. cow, could buy
four bolts by 1950. This explains
the constantly growing eagerness
of the people to produce and the
consequent phenomenal growth of
their average purchasing power,
which increased by 460 per cent
between 1948 and 1950.
The rising standard of living has
also raised standards of education.
By 1950, in the four eastern
Leagues, no less than 61.7 per cent
of school-age children were in
primary schools. In Inner Mon-
golia as a whole, 80 per cent of
children finishing primary school
were going on to middle school
instead of breaking off their
studies.
In health, the most striking
event has been the virtual elimina-
tion of the dread bubonic plague,
once a threat to every life. In
1947, the death toll from plague
was more than 13,000. In 1950, as
a result of government leadership
in all-out mobilization against the
disease, there were only 23 cases
and 17 deaths. In 1951, no cases
of plague were reported.
The fight against syphilis, his-
torically deep-rooted in the region,
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has also begun on a large scale.
Of special significance are mea-
sure,s to improve mother and child
health. An example of what can
be done in this respect has already
been given by the Mongolian
People's Republic, where syphilis
and child mortality due to it have
been virtually wiped out.
Wealth for the People
Over half of Inner Mongolia's
231,600 square miles consist of
rich grassland. The natural pas-
tures of Silingol and Hulunbuir
are world famous, offering oppor-
tunities for a tremendous increase
in the present number of cattle
and sheep. The government's
"free grazing" policy, and its aid
to animal husbandry, are cal-
culated to achieve this increase in
the shortest possible time.
Aid to herdsmen and shepherds
assumes the most varied forms.
It includes preventative veterinary
medicine, organized campaigns to
kill wolves, mobilization of the
people to cut and store grass for
winter feeding, digging of wells
where surface water is scarce and
building of cattle-pens and sheep-
folds for shelter against snow-
storms and wild beasts.
As a result of all these measures,
Inner Mongolia's livestock are
already more than twice as
numerous as in 1945. In some
districts they have increased three
to four times. In the New Barga
Right Banner each shepherd and
cowherd has an average of 70
animals. The pastures are alive
with new prosperity.
Inner Mongolia is very rich in
salt, nitre and alkalis, which will
someday form the source of a
great chemical industry. The
famous Ujumuchin Salt Flat, an
unparalleled treasure, is seven
miles long and two to three miles
wide. Its large-grained salt, of
unusually high sodium-chloride
content, needs no special pro-
cessing before use. Fifty years
Women delegates register at the
People's Representative Conference
of Inner Mongolia.
ARCH-APRIL 1952
Approved For
ago, according to Manchu dynasty
records, 200,000 cartloads of salt,
of 600 lbs. each, were taken from
Ujumuchin each year. Present
annual output is on a high level,
and the deposit shows no sign
whatsoever of exhaustion. Pure
salt here is really "common as
mud." As recently as 1947, 2,000
cartloads were used to build a
defense wall against bandits,
which is still there to see. The
Silingol League has 60 large and
small salt flats besides the one
at Ujumuchin, which the local
people call "The Mother" because
of its seemingly endless abun-
dance.
Dalai Lake (Dalainor), in the
Hulunbuir grasslands, is full of
fish. It is about 43 miles long and
14 miles wide. The people say:
"There are so many fish in
Dalainor, their spines stick out of
the water. They swim layer
under layer from the surface clear
to the bottom. If you stick a pole
in the water, it doesn't topple
over." One old fisherman told me
that, in 1929, a single net set in the
winter, when the ice had to be
broken, caught 104 tons of fish,
enough to fill five train carriages.
Last year, one net brought in 40
tons. The lake is now being
fished to the extent of 4,000 to
6,000 tons a year.
Only nine miles north of Dalai
Lake is the Chalainor coal mine
which has been worked for some
forty years. It has seams close to
30 feet thick and reserves of
many billions of tons. There is
also a great deal of coal in the
Silingol and Chowuta Leagues.
Among minerals, preliminary
surveys show an abundance of
iron, copper, silver, gold, mica and
quartz.
On the great Khingan mountain
range, there are vast tracts of
virgin forest. Tall larches, grow-
ing thick as corn in a field, cover
an area 270 miles long and 130
miles wide between the south bank
of the Argun river and the north
bank of the upper Nonni river.
Approved For Relea4
The larches here stand 100 feet
high; many go to 120 feet or even
more. In all, Inner Mongolia has
some 35,000 square miles of forest
land, three times the area of
Belgium. These mountains and
forests are incomparable hunting
grounds. They abound in wild
fowl and valuable fur-bearing
animals.
Prosperity on the Way
While the prairies and ranges of
Inner Mongolia are well known,
many do not realize its agricul-
tural potentialities. In fact, the
eastern part of the region has
considerable expanses of rich, pro-
ductive black soil. The conception
of Inner Mongolia as a semi-desert
is false. The idea that its popula-
tion is backward and destitute is
out of date. The rich resources
and brave, hardworking people of
Inner Mongolia, once held down
under the weight of reactionary
rule are now coming into their
own.
The grassland is no longer de-
s9late. Millions of cattle graze on
it and soon there will be tens of
millions. Inner Mongolia is de-
veloping into a great source of
meat and other pastoral products,
of draught animals, of raw
materials for industry for the
whole of China. On steppe and
farmland, her people are joyously
producing and improving their
own lives day by day. Her under-
ground riches are being mined.
New cities, where mighty factories
will rise, are already being built.
A happy herdswoman shows off
her new calf. With government
aid, the number of livestock in
Inner Mongolia has been raised to
double the 1945 figure. (top)
In addition to regular schools,
literacy classes are held right near
the herdsmen's homes. (centre)
A scene on the Ulumuchin Flat?
its 21 square miles of pure salt
form one of Inner Mongolia's
treasures. (bottom)
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Chinese Post Office Spreads Knowledge
OUR Chinese People's Post
Office is an organization quite
different from the post offices of
capitalist and colonial countries
and from the post office of old
China. It does not confine itself
to the handling of mail, remit-
tances and other customary routine
but, like all other branches of the
People's Government, serves the
most varied needs of the popula-
tion and national construction. In
particular, it has become one of
the greatest and most active dis-
seminators of education and cul-
ture throughout the country,
especially in the vast rural areas
where 80 per cent of our people
live and work.
In China, such work was first
undertaken by the postal service
of the old liberated areas, which
was organized in 1938 and pursued
its heroic career through the Anti-
Japanese War and the War of
Liberation. The couriers of this
service braved every hardship and
often sacrificed their lives, to
carry not only the correspondence
of the People's Liberation Army
but also newspapers and other
literature. They helped to inform
the people, give them the orienta-
tion necessary for confidence in
victory, and, popularize the best
achievements in production and
defence.
With the liberation of the entire
Chinese mainland, the postal ser-
vice of the Kuomintang regime,
which had been bent to the needs
of foreign imperialism and the old
reactionary ruling class, also
passed into the hands of the people
and was reorganized to serve
them. By contrast with the old
post office, which had been used
by only a portion of the city
population and hardly served the
CHU HSUEH-FAN
Chu Hsueh-fan, Minister of Posts and
Telecommunications.
countryside at all, the new
People's Post Office has doubled
both its length of routes and its
number of offices and agencies,
mainly in the rural areas. The
chief emphasis in the tremen-
dous growth of the. past two
years has been on service to the
peasantry. By July 1951, rural
postal routes had been extended
by 328,309 miles and 41,901 new
village post offices had been set
up.
Cooperation with the Press
The combined resources of the
former liberated areas postal
system and that taken over from
the Kuomintang, together with
the vast extensions since libera-
tion, are thus available for cul-
tural and educational activity, as
well as ordinary postal work. The
main concentration is now on
increasing circulation of. news-
papers, periodicals and books.
Promotion of the press is parti-
cularly important because daily,
weekly and monthly publications
in China today not only carry
reports on home and international
affairs, but also spread knowledge
of the principles on which our
country is being built up and
acquaint every locality with new
methods of work and organization.
Propagating science, improved
tools for industry and agriculture
and the best achievements of our
literature, they have become in-
dispensable, as an aid in everyday
tasks, to peasants, workers,
government functionaries, educa-
tors and members of the pro-
fessions.
Close cooperation between the
People's Post Office and the press
was initiated in December 1949,
during the First National Postal
Conference and the National Con-
vention of Newspaper Managers,
both held in Peking. The de-
cisions then worked out have since
been put into effect. One after
the other, the post office has taken
over the circulation of many big
newspapers and magazines. The
method followed has been to
transfer trained staff members
from the circulation departments
of the papers themselves to the
postal service. In the meantime,
private sales agencies handling the
papers also continue to operate,
with post office aid and guidance.
Millions of New Readers
While newspapers have long
existed in Chinese cities, hundreds
of Chinese villages never saw
them in the past. The first aim
of the new system has therefore
been to make sure that at least
!ARCH-APRIL 1952 9
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one newspaper is delivered re-
gularly to every village and ham-
let in the land. The results
already reached in this campaign
are remarkable.
Newspaper circulation in China
as a whole shot up nearly five
times between the beginning of
1950 and the end of 1951. The
People's Daily of Peking, leading
paper in the country, increased its
distribution 31/2 times in eighteen
months.
An even more striking jump
took place in the distribution of
papers published especially for
the rural areas. The Peasant
Masses, printed in Chekiang pro-
vince, reported a 19-fold increase
in readership in a single year.
North Szechuan Peasants had to
augment its printing facilities
several times to cope with reader
demand. Today, peasants con-
stitute 60 per cent of all newspaper
readers in China, a situation no
one would have conceived possible
a few years ago.
Growth of Reading Groups
Let us take a closer look at how
the post office operates in the cul-
tural field.
In the first place, our postal
workers are inspired with the
conviction that circulating news-
Soon after dawn, Shanghai postmen
start on their newspaper delivery
routes.
5R012400130001-8
papers, magazines and books is not
merely a technical job, but that
the task of satisfying the people's
thirst for knowledge is both
honourable and patriotic.
With this attitude, postmen in
the cities make every effort to
deliver newspapers and period-
icals on time, collect subscriptions
and secure renewals. In the
countryside, they penetrate into
the remotest places, to bring the
press and all kinds of popular
pamphlets to the peasants.
Wherever they go, they persuade
the less literate to organize into
groups centering around some
more literate person. These
Postal workers fold and address
newspapers for distribution to sub-
scribers.
groups enter collective subscrip-
tions and, by gathering regularly
for reading and discussion, keep
their members abreast of the
times. In Shensi province, for
example, there are over 23,000
reading groups with 320,000 pea-
sant members. Around Changsha,
Hunan province, a single postman
organized 1,294 rural reading
groups while another set up 1,149
groups in fifty villages within 25
days. Rural postmen often them-
selves read and explain newspaper
articles to the people at regular
intervals, becoming recognized
cultural leaders in the villages as
a result.
Reading groups also have
their important place in urban
surroundings. One branch post-
office in Kweilin, Kwangsi pro-
vince, organized 1,008 during the
month of May 1951. Shanghai has
904 reading groups, over 600 of
them in factories. In Peking,
almost every block and alley has
its own group, in which people
collect every other evening to hear
and discuss what is in the papers.
Help to Circulation Agents
The postal service with its na-
tionwide network, and the in-
dividual postmen and postwomen
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Before the subscriber is awake his morning paper is
waiting for him.
with their intimate local contacts
and knowledge, have evident
advantages in undertaking a job
of this kind and scope. But our
post office does not seek to mono-
polize the work. On the contrary,
it promotes, supplements and as-
sists many other types of effort.
Postal workers give active help to
the elected circulation agents for
various publications in factories,
schools, peasant associations, rural
mutual-aid groups and coopera-
tives. These circulation agents in
their turn, lead reading groups
and clubs and frequently organize
public meetings on current events,
national production plans and
other themes broached in the
press. They also frequently act
as correspondents on local affairs,
collecting the suggestions and
opinions of readers and forward-
ing them to the papers for pub-
lication or action.
Cooperation between the post
office and people's organizations
of different kinds is growing with
NEWS FOR RURAL AREAS
Blackboard newspapers have
become a popular feature in Chinese
village life. In East China alone
there are now more than 109,000
such news boards which carry
dispatches relayed by Peking Radio
at dictation speed.
This form of news dissemination
is bringing millions of formerly
isolated readers into close touch
with the affairs of the nation and
the world.
Postal workers put up the day's paper on the walls,
for all to read.
especial rapidity in the villages.
Land reform, which has freed the
peasants from landlord exploita-
tion and made them feel that they
are masters of their own soil and
country, has stimulated the desire
for technical and political know-
ledge to a degree undreamed of in
the past. Land reform workers
and local government officials are
enthusiastic supporters of the
"cultural stations" set up by rural
postal agencies, from which they
pick up bundles of papers to dis-
tribute wherever they go.
Mobilizing for Peace
Through its work in the educa-
tional and cultural fields, the
Chinese People's Post Office has
contributed its share to making
the 475 million people of China
both informed and active in the
affairs of their own country and
the world. It is largely through
increased circulation of news-
papers that the workers and
peasants have consciously come to
link their efforts to the major
issues of our time, fight actively
for increased production, con-
tribute to repel imperialist aggres-
sion in Korea and participate in
the great international campaign
for peace. A majority of our
adult population has signed the
Stockholm Appeal for the abolition
of atomic weapons, the World
Peace Council Appeal for a Five-
Power Peace Pact and the nation-
al protest against the rearmament
of Japan.
Proud of the results already
achieved, the post office is con-
stantly striving to extend and
perfect its press work. Postal
workers are being educated in the
political significance of circulation
and promotion. The shift system
of postmen has been readjusted so
that all newspapers and period-
icals may be delivered promptly.
Total courier lines are being re-
organized. Coordination with
other circulating agencies, both
public and private, is improving
constantly.
Our country and population are
huge, presenting many hard prob-
lems to be overcome. But the
beginning already made proves
that no difficulties exist which
cannot be conquered. With the
experience gained, the Chinese
People's Post Office will continue
and expand its effort to bring
knowledge to all the people.
JARCH-A,PRIL 1952 11
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A Village Teacher Fights Illiteracy
FF4DUCATORS of Lushan county,
in the province of Honan, in
eastern central China, met
recently to elect a model school-
teacher. They chose Sung Shou-
ching, a woman teacher from
Shenkou village.
Shenkou is a mountain hamlet
of less than sixty families. Up to
now only very few of the people
were literate. Sung Shou-ching
went to live in Shenkou soon
after she was married. She was
the daughter of a primary school-
teacher and had had a few
years of primary school herself.
Having learned to read and write,
she was regarded by the people of
Shenkou as a "person of learning."
That winter the People's Gov-
ernment appealed to villagers
to organize winter schools to
teach adults during the agricul-
tural slack season. Village leaders
in Shenkou came to Sung Shou-
ching and asked her to take over
the Women's Reading Class.
The class started off very well
with twenty girls attending every
afternoon. But the older women
in the village did not like their
daughters and daughters-in-law
going to school. They started
making sarcastic remarks about
"school-going women." Soon the
girls began to skip their classes
until finally no one turned up at
all.
When Miss Sung realized what
was happening and why her class-
room was empty, she quickly
called a meeting of the objecting
old women and explained the
advantages of literacy. She also
visited them individually. One
evening she heard the mother of
one of her delinquent pupils
grumbling: "The merchant is a
scoundrel. I mistook a thousand
yuan banknote for five hundred
yuan. But when I gave it to him he
didn't bat an eyelid." Miss Sung
immediately said: "That's be-
cause you don't know how to read.
If you did, you wouldn't have been
cheated."
Old Mrs. Chang had to agree.
After this discussion she said she
would never again stop her
daughter from going to school.
She even asked to be taught her-
self. In a few days she could read
the words on banknotes, and tell
the difference between 1,000 and
500 yuan bills.
News that old Mrs. Chang was
learning to read spread very
quickly. When the Women's
Reading Class was resumed, at-
tendance grew larger. Of the
fifty-six young and middle-aged
women in the village, thirty-seven
attended regularly. Women who
had too many children to look
after to attend classes regularly
would often drop in to see the
teacher. They would ask her to
help them to write on tiles, which
they used as slates.
Every morning Miss Sung went
from house to house helping her
students to review the lessons of
the day before. Over and over
again she explained the meaning
of new words. She held their in-
experienced hands, and guided
them while they wrote. Very
much moved, the women would
say: "I'll never be able to look
Teacher Sung in the face if I don't
study hard."
On moonlight nights small
groups of women sat outdoors
seeing who could write the great-
est number of characters. Before
long they were able to memorize
six characters a day instead of
three as at the beginning. By the
time the Spring Festival was over
the eight best students could write
three hundred characters without
looking at any text, and could
A MODEL TEACHER
Many new teachers in China
have been elected models by the
people they serve. This picture
shows Yu Yen-ping, a model teacher
of Yaohua Villas, a suburb of
Shanghai, with some of her pupils.
Soon after liberation Miss Yu set
up a people's winter school where
she taught many peasants to read
and write. She also trained a
great number of new teachers.
When in 1951 the Shanghai Peo-
ple's Government called for winter
schooling for 100,000 peasants, Miss
Yu organized 14 classes which
were attended by 400 out of the
.600 peasants in her district. It was
for this that she was elected a
'"model teacher."
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This old peasant is so happy to be able to read, he can still hardly believe
It. As a result of the great literacy drive since liberation, there are now
many, many like him.
read simple notices posted by the
village government without any
difficulty.
During the Spring Festival the
students of the Women's Reading
Class could often be seen swing-
ing to the joyful music of the
yangko dance. They even began
to make speeches on current poli-
tical and military topics. This
again shocked the old women.
One day when Chiao Kwei-yung
was returning from a yangko
dance her mother-in-law, pretend-
ing to address a dog that was pass-
ing by, called angrily: "Wrig-
gling like that! Don't you have
any sense of shame?"
Upset by these remarks, Chiao
Kwei-yung did not go to the read-
ing class that afternoon. When
Miss Sung called in the evening to
find out what was wrong, the
mother-in-law said: "My daughter-
in-law spends all her time after
school playing. She doesn't do
any work at all. I'm not letting
her go out any more."
Miss Sung pacified her, saying:
"Kwei-yung already knows 100
characters. You would be mak-
ing a mistake not to let her go to
school. But she is wrong not to
do any housework. Please let me
talk to her."
Miss Sung advised Kwei-yung
to avoid a quarrel with her moth-
er-in-law and to do more around
the house so that the old lady
would gradually be brought
round. The advice proved to be
good. A few days later the
mother-in-law visited the teacher
and said: "My daughter-in-law is
working very hard now. She
cooks, carries water, and has real-
ly changed for the better. I used
to think: 'What do young people
do when they get together except
play around?' That's why I didn't
want her to attend school. I see
now that I was wrong."
From then on Miss Sung im-
pressed on her students the neces-
sity of doing housework. She
presided over meetings at which
the girls criticized those .who
showed signs of laziness. This
brought peace to families where
there had formerly been a lot of
quarrelling. At the end of the
Spring Festival many of them
took hoes and went to work in the
wheat fields. They organized
mutual-aid teams and helped each
other to learn more new charac-
ters as they worked. Now they
are all making plans to enroll at
a regular school.
Teacher Sung Shou-ching
earned the respect of all the
villagers because she not only
instructed the women in reading
and writing but also taught them
to improve their work while they
studied.
TRANSLATIONS
IN CHINA
SINCE the liberation, the
people of China have had
far greater access to the
treasures of world culture than
ever before. Translators are
busier. Larger numbers of
worthwhile foreign books are
appearing in Chinese editions.
They are sold at prices more
accessible to readers than ever
before, through a much larger
network of bookshops.
The most active demand has
been for translations of Soviet
literature and that of the People's
Democracies. This is natural.
Under the Kuomintang dictator-
ship, such books could hardly be
obtained. The people of China,
who have accomplished their
own revolution and are engaged
in the basic reconstruction of
their country, are avidly inter-
ested in all aspects of similar
experiences abroad.
At the same time, however,
classical literature and modern
progressive works from many
other countries are available in
unprecedented abundance.
Among novels on the shelves
of the big bookshops, one finds
new editions of Cervantes,
Balzac, Tolstoy, George Eliot,
Dickens, Flaubert, Victor Hugo,
Mark Twain, Jack London,
Remain Rolland, Theodore Drei-
ser, and Howard Fast.
In drama and poetry, one can
buy Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe,
Schiller, Pushkin, Heine, Walt
Whitman, Anton Chekhov,
George Bernard Shaw.
In literary criticism and re-
search, one can pick up Georg
Brandes, Ralph Fox, George
Thompson.
In philosophy, apart from
Marxist philosophy, various
works by Francis Bacon, Hegel,
Dietzgen and others have been
republished, while more recent
translations include American
authors such as John Sommer-
ville.
In scientific literature, there
are new translations from Albert
Einstein, J. D. Bernal, and
others. The popular scientific
books of H. G. Wells continue to
find readers. The autobiography
of Charles Darwin is on one of
the new lists of works translated.
Plans are now under way for
a great many more translations.
These will continue to bring to
Chinese readers the best writing
and thought of every land.
MARCH-APRIL 1952 13
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elease2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R01240
A typical tea garden in southeast China.
CHINESE TEA
And Those Who Grow It
WU CHAO-NONG
AS everyone knows, tea is a
special product of China.
When people talk of tea, they are
naturally reminded of the country
where it was first cultivated and
used as a beverage. Reliable
documents show that the Chinese
people have been drinking tea for
more than two thousand years.
By the eighth century, the land
of scores of counties, spreading
over several provinces, was
covered with tea shrubs. These
areas ranged from the Huai and
Yangtze river valleys of Central
China to the Min river valley in
Fukien on the southeast coast and
the Pearl river region of China's
southernmost province?Kwang-
tung. Tea was already being
widely drunk throughout North
China as well. Even at this early
period, it had become an article of
large-scale internal trade.
Somewhat later, tea was intro-
duced into Tibet, Sinkiang, Inner
and Outer Mongolia and Japan.
To serve these markets, it was
planted in more than five hundred
counties in seventeen provinces.
The number of peasants engaged
in tea-growing grew to over ten
million.
After China's sea communica-
tion with Europe began, the
tremendous output and high
quality of her tea became known
/4
all over the world. Since the
eighteenth century, the trade has
been international. At its peak
the export of Chinese black tea
reached 180,000,000 lbs. a year;
that of green tea over 21,000,000
lbs. a year.
How Tea Exports Declined
Attracted by the profits to be
made out of an article of such
universal consumption, foreign
capitalist interests began to open
plantations in India, Ceylon, Java
and Japan. All these enterprises
began by importing tea seeds and
tea-shrubs from China. They sent
students to China to learn how to
cultivate and process tea or invited
Chinese experts to train their own
personnel. Thus Chinese teas
were ousted from the markets of
colony-owning powers.
By the end of the nineteenth
century, when the reactionary
Chinese government broke off
relations with the Soviet Union
after the October Revolution of
1917, the vast Russian market was
also temporarily cut off. So it
came about that Chinese tea was
largely displaced from the markets
of the world.
The Japanese war against China
that began in 1937 finished the job
by cutting off sea-borne trade
completely. It also seriously dis-
rupted production. On the eve of
liberation, the export of tea from
China had fallen to a pitiable low.
At all times in the past, the
international trade in Chinese tea
was controlled by the imperialists.
They collaborated with Chinese
compradores, brokers and usurers,
whose interests were those of the
feudal landlord class, to pay miser-
able prices to the actual producers.
Even when China's trade in tea
was at its highest, the tea peasants
were robbed by super-exploitation
and lived in misery.
The continuous decline in tea
exports deprived these peasants of
the last crumbs of benefit from
the trade, plunging them ever-
deeper into the abyss of poverty.
It was in total disregard of their
interests, as well as those of the
national economy, that the Kuo-
mintang pursued its policy of
alienating the Soviet Union,
slamming the door in the face of
the biggest customer for Chinese
black and green tea.
Agony of the Growers
The peasants of the tea regions
were as exploited and oppressed
as other peasants in China?in
some ways more so. The reac-
tionary regime piled heavy taxes
and levies of all kinds on top of
the extortions imposed by the
landlords. There were times
when the peasants' own income
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from the tea they grew was
pushed down to half their cost of
production. In addition, the pea-
sants were swindled through short
weight. A saying grew among
them: "It's better to sell a load
of fire-wood than a load of tea."
The Japanese invasion com-
pleted the ruin of the previous
decades. It not only wiped out
sea-borne international trade but
paralyzed the internal market
as well. Destruction and dete-
rioration of inland communica-
tions made it impossible to get
tea to the national minorities
within China. The Japanese in-
vaders struck a direct economic
blow at the Chinese product by
dumping Japanese and Taiwan
teas in the northern and north-
eastern provinces which they
occupied. Tea manufactories
closed down, throwing tens of
thousands of workers out of em-
ployment. Tea-growing peasants
began to chop down their shrubs
to make room for grain crops.
Production fell catastrophically.
There was no significant re-
covery in the years immediately
following the victory over Japan,
when Kuomintang oppression and
corruption reached their height
and the people all over China
fought to free themselves in the
War of Liberation.
Liberation Saves the Tea Trade
The birth of the People's Re-
public of China brought hope and
new life to every part of the
country. With the victory over im-
perialism, feudalism and bureau-
cratic monopoly, the tea growers
too stepped firmly on the road to
recovery and real prosperity. Be-
cause of the importance of the tea
trade to the national economy,
and its bearing on the livelihood
of millions of people, the Central
People's Government took prompt
and energetic steps to rehabilitate
it.
In December 1949, the govern-
ment established the China
National Tea Corporation to direct
the planting, processing and
marketing of tea on a national
scale. Relying on the organized
From this factory in TunIci, Anhwei
province, tea is transported by raft
down the river.
71,1 ARCH-APRIL 1952
Approved For R
effort of the people, the corporation
has since worked systematically
and effectively to revive the tea
trade, harmonizing the activities
of state and private enterprises
toward the common goal. The
expanding cooperative movement
has been one of the greatest factors
in transforming the whole aspect
of the tea areas. A considerable
part of China's tea crop is now
sold through co-ops, under clear-
cut procedures and for fair prices.
China's friendly diplomatic
relations with the Soviet Union
and the People's Democracies now
guarantee a constantly increasing
foreign trade. Chinese tea grow-
ers have thus been freed of their
century-old dependence on im-
perialist buyers and are no longer
vulnerable to imperialist com-
petition or blockade. The policy
of independence and equality
pursued by the People's Govern-
ment has brought independence
and equality to the tea producers
and the entire trade.
Inte rnal markets too are being
rapidly restored. Better live-
lihood for all the people of China,
including the national minorities,
has led to a sharp upturn in home
demand. Government promotion
of interflow trade between town
and country and between different
parts of China has opened up
long-clogged channels of trade.
The stagnation of the tea industry
has at last come to an end.
New Growth Begins
The problems that face the tea
areas today are problems of
growth. It is necessary to raise
productivity, improve quality and
increase the income of the
peasants. Working toward these
goals, the China National Tea
Corporation is promoting the
production of black tea through
gradual mechanization. It also
calls on all tea peasants to gather
tea leaves when they are most
tender and maintain high stand-
ards by careful sorting.
The achievements of the China
National Tea Corporation are
summed up by the fact that its
turnover in 1950 (including
domestic sales) was equal to 250
per cent of the entire value of
black and green tea exports by
both state agencies and private
companies in the year 1949. In
1951, its operations were running
at a rate 28.6 per cent above those
of 1950.
The remarkable development of
the production and sale of Chinese
tea during the last two years pro-
vides concrete evidence of the
improvements that have taken
place in the national economy and
in the techniques and administra-
tion of the tea industry. It de-
monstrates the faith the people
have in the government and the
ample reasons they have for such
faith.
New Life for Tea Peasants
A major part in the recovery of
the tea trade has been played by
government loans, offered to tea
peasants to overcome difficulties
and increase production. Very
large sums have been made avail-
able to each of the chief tea
iiii,tricts Le country.
with niir,
?,;( Men' purchases of tea. these
rapidly solved ILe financial
ioi,enis of the peasants and
habied them to invest in fertilizer
new tools.
rikinoexample is provided
i y a vi liar in Ihnkiang county,
finnan province. where 394
irnilies of tea cultivators bought
-.-!00 new imolements, 2.7 tons of
gypsum, about half a ton of
CIO-1;1r and 10 tons of lime in
the first year oi iMeration.
u(? i ,:iiri!hases are uniirecedeno
ins..orv of the I hinese tea
tea of
-urn been
0
loans applied to preHiwtive use
.11 rean v resi iii e11 in w ide-
eorcan betterment of crows. One
. nnan tea peasant. Chen e-
cm115ncscihbed 11.1' situation
-..vorn:-?: -in tie nast we
'Aereii at our wit; :Tin about
here to horr?iw rhoniw and ran
10 r ?1"--: off ('I i'1 ii I! rd it.
ali we ml vi' (10 is stay
ene and the money times
with-
icr Nskiny. '),Vha a iiovern-
dv government buying of
is also a source 0( happiness
? I.Tio.vers. As one expressed
meat ng: c peasants
have .got up from our knees ,::nd
our tea has a better time too. In
the old days no one wanted to
huy it and the price was low.
_Now the People's Government
conies for it and, what's more,
never cheats us. liurrah!"
Dawn of Cooperation
The productive enthusiasm of
the peasants has been further
enhanced by collective labour.
Chinese agriculture used to be
characterized not only by
remely small holdings but also
:,:cattereci and minute cultivatioa.
a production in particular was
eJieline subsiiiihry to scire
001 crop, carried on piece-meal
and reearded as tr0.-Ial.
TEA PRODUCTION COSTS
REDUCED
amounting to `:51,000
m (Ilion (about USS100,000 or about
113.0001 have been made by the
East ' hi na branch of the China
N ational Tea Corporation during
1;11' past year through the combined
efforts of the workers in patriotic
r?m illation drives.
most of the savings were made
by applying new methods of auto-
matic, tea processing. Other sub-
stantial economies were made by
changing the methods and materials
used for packing. Experiments
are now being made for using wax-
coaed car dboard to replace the
aluminum lining of tea cases. If
Ulf,: is successful, further large
vings will be effected.
R012400130001-8
::.(dary machines have replaced the
oid clay ovens for baking- tea.
in order to change this situation.
e tea peasanis are rapidly being
inized P I .werk together
erough voluntary cooperatives.
!-:iich cooperatives are already
umerous in the main tea districts.
Kirt from joint labour, there has
10 been an increase in joint tour-
closing and marketing?saving
f ;Lich time and encrgy for pro-
c.iiction. It is a common sight
n,)-waclays to see women tea
pickers going to the gardens in
cooperative groups early in the
morning and singing merrily
1.%gether over their work. The
contrast with the past is evident
even to the most superficial ob-
s ':'Vers.
More Black Tea for Export
Abroad, black tea is almost
universally preferred to green.
The present production of black
tea in China is not sufficient to
meet the demands of foreign trade.
Many districts producing green
tea of ordinary quality would be
much better off if they switched
to black. The government has
already assisted several to make
the change, with the result that
the livelihood of the peasants has
improved greatly. The greatest
success has been achieved in the
tea district of Pingshui. Chekiang
province, where the tea peasants
grow no other crop.
-If it sells, tea is gold; if it
doesn't, it's trash," the Pingshui
p,ople used to say from bitter
experience. Now the processing
of black tea has assured them a
market at all times. The govern-
ment is carrying on an educational
campaign in numerous places.
explaining to the peasants how
black tea can increase their
earnings. Administrative and
technical personnel have been
sent out into the countryside to
organize workshops for the
primary processing of black tea,
to introduce hand roller machines
and to promote the collective
methods in processing.
The shift to black tea in Ping-
shin county has brought the
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peasants an average profit equiva-
lent to the value of five hundred-
weights of rice for each hundred-
weight of tea, in many cases
higher. It is now commonly said
among the peasants that while
the land reform enabled them to
get up from their knees politically,
black tea has done so econo-
mically. "Since the People's
Government came, we haven't
worried about our everyday life,"
remarked one old man who works
at processing black tea. "In all
my sixty years the highest price
I remember is five hundred-
weights of rice for a hundred-
weight of tea. This year it was
eight or nine. I'll be able to get
some new clothes for the first time
in five years."
Income Rises; Life Improves
In Chekiang province it used to
take three pounds of tea to buy a
pound of silk, now the prices are
equal. In Hoshan, northern
Anhwei province, profits of tea
growers in 1951 were six or seven
times greater than in 1946.
Once subject to cold and hunger,
most tea peasants now have
plenty of vegetables, salt and fats
to go with their rice. They eat
fish and meat on occasion. They
are wearing better clothes and
sleep under new quilts.
The general economic enlivening
of the tea areas can be seen at the
regular town and country fairs.
Anhua district, Hunan province,
sold only 2.6 million pounds of tea
in 1949. In 1950 the marketed
output had risen fivefold to 13
million pounds.
The number of primary tea
processing workshops increased
from ten in 1946 to 33 in 1951.
People unemployed before libera-
tion are now busy as tea sorters
and skilled workers.
Here is one eloquent fact.
During the Spring Festival in 1949,
Anhua butchers slaughtered five
pigs and were unable to sell all
the meat. For the Mid-Autumn
Festival in 1950, they kill ed 40
pigs and had to turn some buyers
away.
A cargo of tea is loaded for export.
4RCH-APRIL 1952
Approved For
Expert sorting ensures high grade tca for the market.
Soochow peasants who grow
jasmine and other fragrant blos-
soms used in tea fla vouring have
seen a new demand spring up for
their product. In 1950, many built
new houses for themselves. Last
year they built modern hothouses
for all-weather cuttivation. The
same thing is happening among
flower growers in Nanking.
The economic progress of the
tea peasants has awakened them
politically. They believe in the
future, and are organizing collec-
tive production groups. They
have set up workshops to make
machines for themselves, machines
they could not afford when work-
ing alone.
Our country has become a good
mother to these people who have
produced so much wealth and
enjoyed so little of it in the past.
They know that their present new
life and hope could never have
come without the leadership of
the Communist party. With joy
and confidence, they are improving
their productive efficiency and
rallying, with the rest of the
nation, to the development and
defence of the People's Republic
of China.
L '
_
Approved For Relen'
CHINA IS
RICH IN
()IL
A tit ,:f ten been described
poor niition.- This
Like. It was made
.:? In He literature
e:hose companies
our ncirket with
e1 moduct:i--at a fat
rias great
? 1:! Huth pe?roieum and
, Trimerais. Since libera-
eak.e had a rapidly-
: (e-. ? t refining
cv01.
ehdp: Chinese had
eH (ieceived by de-
o?? !,?paeald.11 lliat only
in,00rts could
occds. the National.
? ??-hre held in
!.--eenieer was a
ii:uminated
? ; aroce(I ?iveicil thousands
0, hay .;lowed that
? .f .1re mund throughout
,?!,? particutAriv in its
el.11 soul hwestern and
easn?Th !eglors. l)L?tails were
known deposits are
(1(",...l'in;)(qi and now others
Iii i:-CL)Vered.
t(Th
ricts and Figures
, ho attended the ex-
,;ii or read the raany articles
;hiheieedit the press were
lehte the foLowing facts:
e: two years of the
!e-s Lepubt:c of China, the
t'.' [(IC wai survey
in tile field Las increased
[; kg s lit pre-liberation
\vi:h the reac-
t-,ne:tritang re time, whose
:-AL,w,?H no a:ipropriations
t,Ast-drillings. the Central Peo-
hH: ?: Government has devoted 76
,ten cent ot its total investment in
?!!e Hi industry to this activity.
,H finds have resulted.
? iii of eriale oil in China
!!;Ha per cent above the
live years of
?iKtioree ii rfihine. The
'
- .Limmr-gt.;nroLL.--tgroL.
-JAL, ..zittl10
Petrtliellrn C14)0111l'ilt h. initiating the industrialization of nertbwe4 China.
Till-, pilll mediation plant produces high-quality gasoline.
CRUDE OIL
PRODUCTION
1944-48
Average Output
for last 5 rears
before liberation.
170.0
1951
Total
Output
process of growth can be seen
from the above diagram.
Manufacture of oil products is
also at its highest point in Chinese
history. Gasoline production was
Year-by-year output of
crude
oil (1949 100)
1944
. 95
1945
. 94
1946
. .. 98
1947
. 75
1948
. .. 108
1949
. .. 100
1950
.. .. 135
1951
.. .. 170
50 per cent higher in 1951 than in
1!449. Kerosene production was
in per cent
Storage capacity has been in-
creased tremendously. The tank
f MINA RECONSTRUCTS
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This model lorry brigade devised a
record-breaking way of increasing
oil-drum loadings.
capacity of the government-
operated China National Petro-
leum Corporation is 150 per cent
over its pre-liberation peak. The
capacity of its oil warehouses has
likewise grown by 90 per cent.
Rapidly Growing Facilities
Substantial forward steps have
been made in oil processing, no-
tably in the synthetic oil industry.
In the Northeast, high-octane
gasoline used by our aviation is
being produced from coal. The
Japanese, during their long oc-
cupation, made little headway in
this direction.
The Northeast also abounds in
oil-bearing shales. Oil distilled
from this source now exceed .s by
30 per cent the level of production
under Japanese rule. Moreover,
the quality of the product is im-
proved.
These advances have been
achieved through the rehabilita-
tion of old processing units and
the construction of new ones.
The plant at Fushun, which was
almost totally destroyed by the
Japanese and the Kuomintang,
has been fully rebuilt. Installa-
tions erected since the liberation
of the region include the synthetic
gasoline plant described above, a
thermal cracking plant to process
oil-bearing minerals, a polymer-
ization plant which produces
high-quality gasoline from gas
released in the cracking plant,
and a high-pressure hydrogena-
tion plant.
Refining facilities in northwest
China with its five oil regions
(northern Shensi, western Kansu,
central Kansu, the Hohsi corridor
and Sinkiang) have also been sub-
stantially extended. Petroleum
development is one of the factors
that will soon turn the once poor
-ARCH-APRIL 1952
and desolate expanses of the
northwest into a major industrial
area.
As in other phases of the con-
struction of new China, the bene-
fits of increased production in the
oil industry have been passed on
to the people. By an order of the
Ministry of Trade issued Decem-
ber 13, 1951, prices of petroleum
products to consumers throughout
the country were reduced by 10
per cent. There could be no bet-
ter proof of how much progress
we have made in developing our
oil resources and foiling the im-
perialist embargo which, among
its other objectives, has aimed to
starve us of oil.
Roots of Success
In the short period since the
liberation, China's oil industry
has progressed more than in the
previous half century. This is
because the political and social
freeing of the Chinese people has
also unchained the productive
forces of our country.
The first drillings in Yenchang
oil field in north Shensi province,
for example, were made some 60
years ago. But practically no-
thing happened afterwards be-
cause of the influx of foreign oil.
It was only when the People's
Army made the region its base
that the field began producing
regularly?despite the Kuomin-
tang blockade which made it im-
possible to restore or supplement
the antiquated equipment.
During the Anti-Japanese War,
the Kuomintang spent large sums
to equip the China National Petro-
leum Corporation's field in Kansu.
But after V-J day its masters, the
"Oil flows!"?a new well begins to
produce.
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American monopolies, inhibited
the growth that might otherwise
have taken place. Clearly, China
could never develop her oil indus-
try, or any other, while her posi-
tion remained semi-colonial.
Today, by contrast, China has
become truly independent and
enjoys truly friendly, truly equal
relations with the U.S.S.R. and
People's Democracies, which are
interested in helping us develop,
not in holding us back, for any-
one's private profit. From these
sources, we have obtained all ma-
terials that cannot yet be pro-
duced at home. Soviet specialists
have put their experiences freely
at the disposal of Chinese oil
technicians and workers, whose
labour enthusiasm is high because
they are working for themselves
and the whole people. The result
is a degree of initiative and a
tempo of construction never seen
in our country before.
The thermal cracking plant in
the Northeast was built in only
four months. The synthetic gaso-
line plant was completed in half
a year. Drilling and electrical
apparatus for the oil fields and
practically all machinery needed
for refineries are now made in
China. Efficiency has increased
in every department of oil pro-
duction, processing, storage and
transportation.
in brief, the long stagnation of
China's oil development has come
to an end. Oil will not form a
"gap" in our industrialization as
the imperialists predicted. On
the contrary, we are already
building a petroleum, industry
worthy of our great country.
Voung Pioneers of the Shill Chia Ilutung
primary school in Peking present their most
honoured emblem, the red necktie, to Kuo
Chun-ching, famed heroine of the People's
Liberation Army.
CHINESE WOMEN
AND CHILDREN
1ZE KANG
I It tt(.r Itrt):1(1
\\-ttirtt.?11?
1:11 ri
I.I ii-
HS In
ind
the
Iii fl
ino's
soine basis
e7_1 v ot China
ya, oimressed
?i,:.oiogo-1 Lv
and
" [coil the
,
I p ii
Z:111V.
i
rtkn
Ii 0?k"
en:erir,,L every held of work,
11(11. nized a eiluals in all spheres
'i Lv law and in fact.
Universally eiger tor knowledLe,
linpby in work and study becait'e
tney know Ow flil.tire is one it
ilialitoci improvernent.
Tip: same tihermation has
.ne about in ine i:\es of Chine,;,,
was the fate of
Cidn:se eldidren in the pas:?
babies were ileiivered iiy
,-noned with
silL that a III roving number of
Y.one-n and I I L? horn infants
ehildren begged
:nt, streets be.-inie their
on-
?',iishcd mothers or had to
si.oes ior a pill-mice.
'I hiLt-
c,00v'(I in iationes resulting
11 hoLil exactions, or perished
eouniics. hi cause public hea'.tii
medicine hardly existed and pee-
vent ye did not exist at
Womana nil cnild workers
codied weaith for foreign and
5R012400130001-8
Chhiese owners in factories where,
as the cheapest raw material,
they were worked mercilessly
with no provision for either health
or safety.
State Protects Mother and Child
Today the health, welfare and
education of all Chinese children
Lecome a major concern of
our society and state. The Com-
mon Programme of the Chinese
People's Political Consultative
Conference, the basic policy laid
do'.vri for the People's Republic of
China when it was esiablished on
(kdober 1, 1949, states in Article
ihat "public health work and
id( dicai work shall be promoted
arni attention shall be paid to the
health of mothers. infants and
children."
The new Marriage Law pro-
mulgated by the People's Govern-
ment in 1950 provides protection
to both mother and cliild.
The Labour Insurance Regula-
tions introduced on May 1, 1951
give women workers 56-days'
maternity leave with full pay.
make it illegal to dismiss pregnant
workers and require all factories
with over 500 workers to set up
thf.ir own medical service.
These laws have not remained
on paper as was the case wi
many in the past. The People's
Government is implementing them
actively and has allocated large
budgets for the purpose. Women
and minors in industry are assured
equal pay for equal work. Many
thousands of day nurseries take
care of the children of working
it 'tilers in town and country.
Mother and child health depart-
ments have been set up in the
national Ministry of Health and in
regional and provincial health
bureaus. In district health
centres, separate sections or
specially assigned personnel take
charge of the work. Such direct
government responsibility for
mother and child care has no
precedent in Chinese history.
Striking Figures
An idea of the scope of this
activity may be gained from the
fact that 744 woman and child
health stations and 9,464 maternity
service stations have been set up
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in towns, industrial suburbs, rural
districts, sub-districts and villages.
China now has 156 children's
hospitals. There are many special
gynecological and obstel,rical
hospitals, child health sanatoria
and mother and child health
institutes. The All-China Federa-
tion of Democratic Women and
the cooperative movement have
set up numerous health stations of
their own in this field.
In the past two years, China
has trained 4,340 nursery work-
ers, 3,743 woman and child care
workers (not including Southwest
China and Inner Mongolia), 458
gynecologists and many other
categories of personnel. A Wo-
man and Child Health Experi-
mental College with training
facilities has been set up by the
Ministry of Health. The Peking
University Medical College has
organized a department for mother
and child health studies. An
entirely new Woman and Child
Health College has been opened
in Mukden. In all medical
schools, the number of students
specializing in gynecology, obstet-
rics and pediatrics has increased.
Local stations are re-training
old-fashioned midwives on a large
scale. Manuals on pre-natal
hygiene and child care, written
for both mothers and practition-
ers, have been issued in hundreds
of thousands of copies?and
posters in millions. Millions of
people have also seen filmstrips
and attended illustrated talks on
the subject. As a result of these
widespread and varied activities,
mother and child mortality has
fallen greatly. In Hoche district,
Pingyuan province, the death rate
from infant tetanus has fallen
from 42 per cent to 1 per cent.
In the sphere of preventive
medicine, no less than 119,137,715
children have been vaccinated
against smallpox in the past two
years. Nearly a million children
have been inoculated with BCG
serum against tuberculosis, as
well as against diphtheria and
whooping cough. On Children's
Day, June 1, 1951, free medical
examinations were given to chil-
dren under seven years old in all
cities of China.
Effects of Land Reform
The most striking change in the
life of the Chinese people has
been the land reform, already
completed in an area containing
over 300 million rural inhabitants.
Landlord estates were divided
among individual peasants re-
gardless of sex or age. This gave
reality to the new status of wo-
men. They are now equal
citizens, instead of pieces of pro-
perty to be transferred from the
father's homestead to the hus-
Before liberation life for women was endless toil.
In China today women drive
combines on state-owned farms.
band's or prey to the lusts of the
all-powerful landlord.
An idea of what chains have
been struck off our women by the
land reform may be gained from
the motion picture "The White-
haired Girl." Many people out-
side our country have already
seen this film, which, with the
opera of the same name, is based
on a true incident of our War of
Liberation. It exposes not only
the material greed of the landlords
but also their constant sexual ag-
gression against the wives and
daughters of the peasants who
were totally dependent on their
mercies and dared not resist.
Sitting among people viewing
"The White-haired Girl" in China,
one often hears the angry ex-
clamations of women in the audi-
ence when these past humilia-
tions, about which the old ruling
classes maintained absolute
silence, are stripped bare on stage
and screen. Along with the land
reform, the new Marriage Law of
China is cleaning the whole coun-
try of slave-trade in women, of
servitude of girls before marriage,
of the keeping of handmaids and
of the former unlimited masculine
dictatorship in matters of mar-
riage and divorce. Our women
today are independent persons,
active in every field. All ele-
ments of discrimination against
women workers, whether in
wages or in eligibility for promo-
tion, are being eliminated from
Chinese life.
MARCH-APRIL 1952 21
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1 ;iris in both city and country
an I roe to choose their own part-
ners in marriage. Industrious-
oess iii ability have become the
p ii dies most sought after by
husbands and wives, since labour
is now the main criterion of
worth and respect. The popular
winstrehs ballads of our country-
once concerned with the love
affairs of the ancient great and
the frustrations of ordinary young
men and women under the op-
pression of the old society, are
giving place to optimistic recitals
Rural children are getting their
first chance at a proper education.
Formerly only the landlords and
the top layer of rich peasants
found it possible to educate their
children?for other peasants the
effort required tremendous sacri-
fices or was altogether impossible.
Land reform has led to an
in-
mense increase in village schools.
Almost the very first thing that
peasants do with the deposits the
landlords must now refund to
them is to contribute a portion
towards setting up village schools.
Women are keen students of engineering.
of the new life. In the songs sung
today, true lovers succeed in over-
coming all obstacles to their union
but are loath to be idle even dur-
ing their honeymoons. Labour
is a joy when it is labour for one's
,own welfare and future.
Education for All
Old China was a cuuntry of
l.literates. The illiteracy among
women, outside a few Pig cities,
was oracticaliv total. Now. in
both ei t y and village, women
ducK. to I iteracy classes and
courses in many other subjects.
1.)ebinanined to make up for the
griorance once -forced upon them
iv eonditions and tradition, even
grandmothers of sixty or seventy
am learning to read and write.
lit flilte!'iiil improvement in
t.tir country nas already elimi-
nated the once-common spectacle
In' starving child, Children
ionger beg in our cities?they
!to to school instead. Great effort
has been put into a multitude of
new activities, institutions and
pubiications for children.
All over the country, peasants are
busy building schoolhouses, mak-
ing classroom furniture and be-
sieging county governments with
requests for teachers.
In northern Szechuan, the num-
ber o primary schools doubled
in the spring of 1951 as compared
to I he previous term. This area
alone now has 15,622 primary
H;cliools, over 13,900 of which have
been set up by the peasants them-
selves. In eastern Szechuan.
2,0110 village schools were set up
bet ween February and April last
year. Ho Ken, a former poor
pea:ion I who donated 2,000 catties
of erain for a.school said feeling-
ly, "When I was a child, I starved
and froze. Where could I get
looney to go to school'.' My three
children also don't know how to
reaci yet. Now, Chairman Mao
has given us back what the land-
lord used to take away, I don't
have to worry about food and
clothes any more. I have bought
a cow and a plough. and I still
have some money left over.....
How better to spend it than for
a school?"
In rural schools in China, the
enrolment of poor peasant and
farm labourers' children has risen
immensely. The educational
policy of the People's Govern-
ment works actively to increase
the proportion. Country children
who in the past could look for-
ward only to the killing toil and
prospectless existence which
made old men and women of their
parents by the time they reached
their forties are now full of ambi-
tions to which only their own
ability can set a limit. They
dream of becoming tractor driv-
ers, engineers, scientists, poets,
aviators?of heroic deeds in de-
fence of our new democratic
China which has opened such
prospects to all. They hate the
past and its dark memories and
are a force for progress that can-
not be underestimated.
The Young Pioneers organiza-
tion of children between the ages
of nine and fourteen was founded
only two years ago. It already
has a membership of 2,400,000.
No one can pass by these young-
sters, with their white blouses and
red scarves, without admiring the
clear-eyed future masters of the
nation. In the Pioneer organiza-
tion and out of it, boys and girls
strive eagerly to be strong in
body and to know everything?
yet their striving has nothing to
do with thoughts of personal
wealth or of dominating others.
The dreams in their heads are of
transforming our country and
serving our people, of living in
friendly comradeship with the
common people of all lands.
Wherever one goes, one hears
their fresh voices raised in song.
The extent of the educational
effort of the People's Government
for China's children can be judged
from the fact that in 1951. which
was only the second year of its
foundation, 110 million copies of
new textbooks were printed. The
number of elementary schools is
already 66 per cent above that of
1946.
Women Workers and Leaders
China's liberation has given her
independence and has made it
possible to advance to large-scale
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construction. The liberation of
Chinese women has enabled them
to take their proper place in this
great effort of the whole people.
Our industries now have 650,000
women workers. Thousands are
participating in the great Huai
river control project, which is
ending the threat of floods in an
area containing one-seventh of
our agricultural land. A woman
engineer, Ch'ien Chen-ying, is
assistant construction chief of this
mighty undertaking.
The whole country knows the
names of Ho Chien-hsiu and
Chang Shu-yun, two outstanding
women workers who invented
and introduced new methods in
textile production, thus contribut-
ing immensely to the national
wealth. Chao Kuei-lan, a girl
worker in a Dairen plant who lost
an arm while courageously avert-
ing an explosion that threatened
the whole factory, has become a
national example of readiness to
sacrifice for the common good.
Regarded as a model by all Chi-
nese womanhood, she is now
studying in a party school. In
old China, only a few years ago,
Chao Kuei-lan was a very poor
girl to whom nobody paid any
attention.
Chinese women are appearing
in many fields in which they were
never seen before. We now have
women railway builders, women
They work on the trains.
locomotive engineers, postwomen
and women drivers in city trans-
port. Many young women have
joined our people's army, navy
and air force, to help defend the
peace we need to build our new
life. Others are attending officers'
training schools. Even women
parachutists are no longer a
novelty.
Leading the work of rebuilding
our society and our country are
the members of the Chinese Com-
munist Party, among whom are
600,000 women. There are 150,000
women among our new-type
government functionaries at
In the government and defence forces they help their
country to build for peace.
various levels of national and
local administration.
The whole nation is proud that
Soong Ching Ling (Mme. Sun
Yat-sen), a great woman of China,
was awarded the Stalin prize for
the promotion of international
peace in 1951. All the Chinese
people, and Chinese women parti-
cularly, are inspired by this high
and meaningful honour. Our
country builds for peace. The
emancipation of Chinese women,
and the improvement of the health
and education of Chinese children,
will enable them to live fully and
richly in the peaceful world the
peoples can and will achieve.
Drawings in this article by Tsai
Cheng-hua
HEALTH MILESTONES
No major epidemics have
occurred anywhere in China
during the past two years
thanks to nation-wide epide-
mic prevention work.
During this whole period,
not a single case of smallpox
has been reported from
Peking, Port Arthur, Dairen,
Yin gk o w, Chingwangtao,
Chefoo, Amoy or Canton.
In 82 cities including
Peking, Shanghai, Mukden,
Nanking and Sian, 850,000
children were inoculated
against tuberculosis with
BCG serum.
eARCH-APRIL 1952 23
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New Spirit
In
Peking
Handicrafts
XCITING things are happening
Pekimi's world-famous
F' ii I ia? first time in
undreds ot years. new designs are
Jiipearing in clogionneiiii :ind puree-
in Jade in id ivory carvings,
carpets and ne(_dlework.
aster eralismen are making
iior,os ivory figurines of China's
iiisunt-day men and women
i.ead of _Buddhist saints and
herinn.s. Cloisonni.i. trays
painted silk lanterns have
eimie alive wan boys and girls
n:'ile inihe buoyant ?jangko
d.tzice. Pezic,... doves ily on powder
\.es and piates. Vases are
f:;Ente0: with colourful patterns
:alipted from the best. not the
'a dent. periods of China's art.
These things represent a
iiiveloning revolution in craft
which had remained
iimreotyped SMCC the eighteenth
ciinturv. Who has not seen the
iv' rlastinr dragon against a back-
on iund niinute ringlets. the
Hi.:sters of sI vi ized flowers, the
homan figures painted on porce-
?1 licorm6 v, are
!nape, ii t., riprn. Turkey
I , tne tPurteenth centt,rv. Desiens
cci %%al, h. nt \vire fillets; secured
f31.se. I lie ..aaces hetween the
W.I ti enamel.
viii rr...n have developed this
ta viirv hin pitch, producing
:;rw, bc ?1111.1fui desigr.s.
orker applies colour to cloisonne in a Peking workshop.
lain in costumes and moods be-
longing to a long-buried past?
Under the patronage of the later
Manchu court, these designs had
lost all movement in a maze of
ornamentation. Later they were
turned out automatically for
foreign taste in "chinoiseries.'
The Chinese themselves became
heartily tired of most of them.
When people made presents to
each other, they preferred to give
fruits. sweetmeats or other things.
How the Change Began
It was only after liberation that
Peking's handicrafts began to
awaken from this long lethargy.
The people's authorities gave new
encouragement to a group of
Tsinghua university professors
v:ho had been engaged for some
time in drawing designs based on
ancient Chinese bronzes and
porcelains, and had asked forward-
looking master craftsmen to adapt
them in cloisonn?In June 1950,
the government set up the state-
owned Peking Handicraft Com-
pany. It engaged these professors
and a group of artists to produce
designs blending the vigorous
hest of ancient Chinese art
with the atmosphere of present
day China.
At first, the venture met with
many difficulties. Exporters
fused to handle the new products,
maintaining that their customers
in America, Britain and other
capitalist countries would only
buy the designs they associated
with China, such as dragons and
frail languishing women. The
handicraft workers had been
mechanically producing the old
ornate things for generations; to
change meant loss of time, and
besides they were not convinced
that it would work out.
To break through these ob-
stacles, the company arranged
talks for the craftsmen at which
the tradition of Chinese art and
reasons for their degeneration
were discussed. The craftsmen
were urged to turn back to original
sources and develop them in a
more healthy direction. Ample
loans were made available to the
workshops. The handicraft com-
pany itself placed large orders for
articles of new design. It agreed
to pay for all losses incurred in
changing over and experimenta-
tion.
In the spring of 1951 the Ameri-
can embargo sent the handicraft
business looking for new markets.
The first efforts were focussed on
stimulating the internal market.
To get the Chinese consumer to
buy its goods, the company dis-
covered, it was necessary to pro-
duce articles in tune with popular
sentiment since liberation. The
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same thing applies to China's new
international contacts. Both the
government and the people's
organizations were sending repre-
sentatives to friendly countries.
These needed gifts to take with
them which would give people
abroad some idea of the new spirit
in China.
Peking craftsmen began to carve
statuettes of China's new heroes
and heroines who had laid down
their lives for their country. Their
products became more alive and
their own enthusiasm mounted.
They kept the artists busy by
asking for more and more designs.
Motifs from Tunhuang
Then in the spring of 1951, a
new stimulus appeared. More
than a thousand hand-painted re-
productions of ancient murals
from the Tunhuang caves in Kansu
province were shown for the first
time in Peking. The exhibition
caused a sensation. Everybody
talked about it. Lectures were
given on the origin and history of
the works shown. Day after day,
artists went with their easels and
paints to copy the pictures. This
exhibition had a tremendous in-
fluence on handicrafts too.
Tunhuang is a small town on
the edge of the Gobi desert. Once
an important stage on the post
road linking China with Iran,
India, Greece and Rome, it
possesses great cultural monu-
ments in the shape of 469 caves
decorated with Buddhist religious
paintings and frescoes com-
missioned by devout passersby
who prayed for good fortune in
their business and their travels.
The oldest of these paintings
dates back to 366 A.D., while a few
were added as late as the
eighteenth century. The best of
them range from primitive direct-
ness in the early period to rich
colour and composition in the
T'ang Dynasty (618-906 A.D.).
While the main themes are
religious, the murals also show the
people of each period farming,
fighting, hunting and enjoying
themselves. The cornices, friezes,
columns and high ceilings of each
cave are filled with wonderfully
decorative geometric designs.
!ARCH-APRIL 1952
Most of the Chinese public had
little previous knowledge of this
treasurehouse of art belonging to
their own country. When the
Peking Handicraft Company took
the local craftsmen to see the ex-
hibition they' were filled with
amazement by the perfection of
the geometric designs and the
brilliance of the chromatic
schemes. They visited the ex-
hibit again and again. They
eagerly attended a lecture specially
arranged for them and asked the
artists who had done the repro-
ductions to provide them with
designs. These designs have now
appeared on trays, vases, lamps,
?powder boxes, tea containers and
rugs. The secretary of the Peking
Handicraft Company says, "Our
workers are like people who have
been on the same tiresome diet
for years and suddenly find new,
delicious food."
To raise the level of handicrafts
in other parts of China, the new
Peking products have been sent to
big trade exhibitions held in many
large cities. Abroad, they have
been shown in the Soviet Union,
in Switzerland, Sweden, Poland,
Denmark and Norway. Every-
where they have been admired for
the originality of their design and
excellence of their workmanship.
Combining old skills with living
designs, they are bound to become
known throughout the world.
For the first
time in hund-
reds of years,
new designs
are appearing
In Peking's
handl crafts.
The peace dove
Is one of the
most popular
themes._
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25
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A SUDDHA
FANO DYNASTY ISIS-006 A.D.
HALOS
pproved For Release 2004/02/19
T'AIYG DYNASTY (51/1-817 A.O./
MUSICIANS
TUNHUANG MURALS
Major treasures of China's ancient art, long Bel
of the country where they are located, were revealed to
hibition featured reproductions of the magnificent and
Kansu province. It captured the imagination of handicr
simple and stately Tunhuang designs in cloisonne (a kir
pieces, as well as examples of the new designs that dra
on pages 24 and 25).
MODERN PEKING CLOISONNE WARE WITH
P83-00415R012400130001-8
SUP DYNASTY (581-617 A.D.)
SPIRE NEW DESIGNS
by travelers who managed to reach the remote part
pie of Peking at an exhibition held last year. The ex-
ive murals that fill 469 caves at Tunhuang, in western
:?kers in China's capital, who have since adapted the
-utmel-work). Some details of the Tunhuang master-
ration from them, are shown on this page (aee article
BASED ON THE TUNHUANG MURALS.
GANDHARVAS (Top)
CEILING DESIGN (Below)
VAN? DYNASTY (618-906 A.D.)
WEI DYNASTY (366-580 .4.D.)
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TOP OF SHRINE WEI DYNASTY (366-580 A.D.)
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AUTOMOBILES AND TRACTORS:
HOME PRODUCED
T the great North China Trade
Exhibition in Tientsin, late
In 1951, people crowded around
the first automobile and tractor
made entirely in China.
The car was one of several
.ilready manufactured in Tientsin.
Tractors are being produced by
workers in Taiyuan, Shansi pro-
vince. The appearance of both
was epoch-making, a herald of the
riiture in Chinese national in-
lustry, transport and agriculture.
Among the thousands of in-
iustrial products and great num-
i_ers of machines dispiayed in the
xhibition were over a hundred
erns of major importance which
china was never able to make
hefore liberation. They included
ai-cutting machinery for our
!nines, automatic universal pre-
cision lathes and a variety of other
modern machine tools. Among
regional "firsts" on display were
-1)O-h.p. diesel engines to provide
iiower wherever needed in town
And country, electric trolley buses
and other items.
The instruments of production
(nd transport exhibited in Tien-
;.sin had all been macie during the
oeriod of rehabilitation of Chinese
,.conomy. Large-scale industri-
alization of the country has still to
hegin. Yet what has already been
achieved proved to every patriotic
,-isitor and foreign well-wisher
that China can make anything
that she requires. It was also
testimony that the American-
inspired embargo on machine
exports to China, designed to
cripple our industry, has on the
contrary stimulated it. In suc-
cessfully solving problems posed
by the embargo, Chinese industry
has made a faster leap forward in
its range of output than might
otherwise have been the case.
Raw Material Wealth
As with productive equipment,
so with raw materials. The
variety of North China's natural
resources, and of the uses to which
they are already being put, came
through vividly at the exhibition.
To cite a few examples, there
were specimens of coal from
Shansi, Hopei, Suiyuan, Pingyuan,
and Chahar; iron ore from Chahar,
Hopei, Suiyuan, Pingyuan and
Shansi; sulphur from every pro-
vince in the region; gold from
Hopei, Shansi, Suiyuan and Inner
Mongolia. North China supplies
gypsum to the whole country and
its asbestos, with fibres up to 21/2
inches long, is of very good
quality.
Plants whose possiblities were
hitherto ignored are now being
put to industrial use. Paper
manufactured from "chih chi
tsao," a kind of wild grass that
grows along the Yellow river and
was previously used only to make
brooms, is more resistant to fold-
ing and crushing than American
banknote paper. Strong gunny
sacks are being made of another
domestic fibre that was burned for
firewood in the past. Last spring,
the rubber-producing grass, kok-
sagyz, was experimentally planted
in Suiyuan province, with initially
favourable results.
While it has long been known
that North China has rich re-
sources, many of the raw materials
shown were an eye-opener to
the visitors. Peasants, workers,
government economic personnel
and private businessmen all
learned a great deal from the
Tientsin exhibition.
More than 20,000 white-ker-
chiefed peasants from the north
China countryside, chosen by their
fellow-villagers to attend the
exhibition, stayed for days and
sometimes weeks in the homes of
Tientsin residents. The peasants
had all experienced tremendous
improvement in their own lives as
a result of liberation and land
reform, but this was the first time
they were able to see how the
whole nation is moving forward.
They saw their own future as they
crowded avidly around the
generators for village power and
light stations (some of them had
never even seen an electric light
before), the tractors and combines
and the improved animal-drawn
agricultural implements, already
available in quantity, that raise
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the productivity of farm labour
several times. They realized their
own part in the country's progress
as they viewed various industrial
products made out of the crops of
their own fields. In the models of
hydraulic schemes which will
soon solve major flood, drought
and irrigation problems, they saw
that even the "unconquerable"
forces of nature can be bent to the
control of man.
Industry Meets Agriculture
The benefits of industry are
already available to peasants on a
scale immeasurably greater than
ever before in Chinese history.
Fertilizers are cheap. So are
many agricultural machines. 'That
something new is happening in
China is plain from the remark
of one peasant who lingered
around a mechanical oil press:
"It does the work of the four mules
we use for the job in our village
?and it costs a lot less."
Peasants, particularly those or-
ganized in mutual-aid teams and
able to make group-purchases,
placed many orders for new
equipment at the exhibition. By
invitation, they visited agricul-
tural implement factories in Tien-
tsin and gave their suggestions to
engineers and workers as to what
Finishing the
first jeep made
in Tientsin.
These workers
are now pro-
ducing a
station - wagon
model as well.
needed to be made, and what
could be done better.
At other factories which they
inspected, the peasants watched
spellbound as great looms turned
out cloth like magic?unlike the
laborious treadle looms of the
villages. They made many worker
friends and constantly sought ex-
planations from them of all they
had seen.
Confessed one peasant repre-
sentative: "We used to ask,
'why is the working class supposed
to be the leader?' We peasants
thought we could make everything
we were likely to need except
salt. We grew our own food,
spun and wove our own cotton,
produced our own vegetable oil
for cooking and lamps. But now
we see a much better future ahead
of us and we can't get there
behind a wooden plough and an
ox. However hard we try, we
can't grow telephones and electric
lights."
What Workers Have Achieved
The exhibition showed clearly
that the advance of new China,
now that ancient oppressions have
been removed, takes place through
the combination of science, collec-
tive effort and a forward-looking
outlook.
In the pavilion devoted to
industrial improvements, many
photographs and charts recorded
the changes the New Democracy
has brought about in the workers'
lives. All the humiliating prac-
tices which symbolized the total
absence of workers' rights in the
old society, such as the searching
of workers by factory guards
before they went home, have
now been abolished. Workers
in government-owned enterprises
elect their own representatives to
China's first tractor made in Tai-
yuan, Shansi province, was a centre
of attraction for peasant and other
visitors to the exhibition.
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Management Councils, which
are in charge of administration,
production and wages. In private
factories, their delegates sit on
1.abour-Capital Consultative Con-
ferences which discuss improved
production 'and find solutions for
d isputes.
How workers' suggestions and
inventions are encouraged, and
how Indus development bene-
fits from this, was graphically
illustrated. A very old Chinese
proverb says that "three shoe-
makers make a sage." The
workers of China, discarding craft
"sc,crets" and democratically com-
bining their rich experience to
lm prove production and ration-
alize management, have devised
many new methods that no sage
ever thought of.
When the Tientsin Automobile
Assembly Plant decided to make
its first car, instead of just putting
cars together, it was found that
many tools were lacking. The
workers talked this over, and im-
provised what was needed out of
old machines and spare parts.
Engine castings presented a parti-
cularly difficult problem, but after
initial failures this too was solved.
Altogether, in Tientsin, no less
than 8.455 workers' suggestions
were made in the first seven
months of 1951. A large part of
them were adopted with benefits
to their initiators in the form of
special payments, and to the
nation through increased output.
New Ways in Farming
In agriculture too, science and
democratic joint effort are work-
ing remarkable transformations.
Chinese peasants used to say:
"You don't need skill in farming;
all you need is sweat."
The agricultural improvement
pavilion at the North China Trade
Exhibition refuted such ideas. It
was not sweat but science that
produced the enormous melons
and cabbages, the heavy-headed,
large-grained wheat, the 900-1b.
pigs that were displayed there.
Peasant delegates
carefully examine
one of the new
agricultural Im-
plements Chinese
Industry is sup-
plying, In large
numbers, to the
villages.
Having witnessed these results,
achieved sometimes on state
farms, sometimes by the most
forward-looking rural mutual-aid
groups and individual owner-
cultivators, the peasants flocked
with new interest to see the de-
monstrations of ploughs that could
cut deeper into the soil, seed
selection procedures, new ferti-
lizers and sprayers to destroy
various pests.
Devoting its utmost effort to
the increase of agricultural yield
per acre, the government has pub-
licized the example of the 49-
year old peasant Chu Yao-li, who
reached a cotton yield of 7,296 lbs.
an acre, or 222 lbs. more than his
last year's record. Chu Yao-li
came to the exhibition himself,
was received as an honoured
guest, and gave explanations of
his methods. If the average cot-
ton productivity in North China
could be raised to even one-fifth
of Chu's yield, the total present
harvest would be more than
doubled. No wonder Chu has
become a national figure.
The basis for more widespread
application of science and better
tools in farming has been laid by
organizing the peasants for joint
work. Mutual-aid teams have
already played a tremendous part
in rehabilitating North China's
agriculture from the ruins of war,
in bringing cereal crops back to
the pre-war level and cotton out-
put to 55 per cent above pre-war.
They have also facilitated repair
of dykes and irrigation ditches
and the battle against locusts.
Benefits of Cooperation
Experience, as tabulated in
figures at the exhibition, indicates
that mutual-aid teams generally
get the best harvests; buy more
animals, build better barns, use
better tools, solve puzzling prob-
lems more easily through com-
mon discussion. Moreover, they
keep in closer touch with new
methods, new events and new
markets through reading-groups
which regularly peruse news-
papers and pamphlets. About 55
per cent of all North China pea-
sants are already members of
mutual-aid teams, and in some
counties as many as 90 per cent
have joined.
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The mutual-aid team is a sea-
sonal or more lasting, cooperative
for the purpose of work only; the
land, buildings and most tools
remain individually owned. Now,
however, a new form of organiza-
tion, the Agricultural Production
Cooperative, has begun to appear.
In this higher form, land as well
as labour is pooled.
In the old days, China's pea-
sants were nameless. The new
democracy has produced tens of
thousands of peasant leaders
whose fame has spread far and
wide. Li Shun-ta of Shansi pro-
vince, who attended the Tientsin
exhibition, became a national hero
by organizing a model mutual-aid
group which issues challenges to
others all over our vast country.
Chia Lan-hu of Hopei province
enlisted his village in a coopera-
tive afforestation effort, planting
450,000 trees on waste land and
protecting the fields of the people
from sandstorms. Bewhiskered
56-year-old Ma Yi-chien organized
another cooperatiVe which irri-
gated and flushed out large tracts
of alkaline farmland, increasing
its yield tremendously.
Not only is China's country-
side producing more, but the
cultivators are much better off.
Price relationships are becoming
more favourable to the peasants.
Before liberation, it took the price
of 31/2 tou (a tou is 13.3 lbs.) of
wheat to buy an ordinary iron
ploughshare. Now one can buy
three ploughshares for the price
of one tou of wheat.
Life-Giving Trade
All underestimation of trade
(on the ground that "it does not
create new values") is opposed
by the People's Government,
which does everything possible
to promote internal commerce.
With both industry and agricul-
ture producing more, and the
liberated peasants entering the
market as customers for all sorts
of goods, the growth of exchange
between town and country be-
comes more important daily. The
Tientsin exhibition was organized
to increase such trade. In the
first and largest of its 17 pavilions,
one could see how every form of
transport, from trains to camel
caravans, is utilized to knit the
Peasants take notes while a demonstrator lectures on a new machine. They
will use these notes for reports to their own villages.
country into an economic unit;
how land and water routes have
been improved and coordinated
one with the other; how market-
ing procedures have been re-
formed, products standardized
and credit facilitates expanded to
help both seller and buyer.
The North China Trade Exhibi-
tion was itself a mighty stimulus
to commerce, both within North
China and between North China
and other regions. It was at-
tended by representatives of gov-
ernment and trading organiza-
tions, of North China's 10,000
cooperatives which now have over
ten million members, and of
thousands of private firms.
Orders actually placed at the ex-
hibition amounted to Y1,560,000,-
000,000 People's Currency (about
US$70,000,000 or over E24,700,-
000). The trade turnover result-
ing from it indirectly will of
course be much greater.
The Tientsin exhibition is only
one of many held in various parts
of China during the past year and
a half. Some, as for instance the
Northeast Trade Exhibition at
Mukden, showed an even larger
trading turnover. Taken to-
gether, these exhibitions have
helped considerably to strengthen
the national economy and to lay
the basis for large-scale indus-
trialization.
CORRECTION
We regret that, due to errors
in conversion to English units
and other oversights that oc-
curred in the editorial office,
certain figures in the article
"Ending the Flood Menace"
(CHINA RECONSTRUCTS, No.
1) were printed wrongly in some
of the distributed copies. The
attention of readers who may
have received such copies is
called to the following cor-
rections.
Page Col. Line Printed Should Read
4 2 4 170 miles 480 miles
4 2 6 Over 16 Approximately
million 158 million
cu. yds. cubic feet
5 2 6 102,000 307,000
Cu. ft. per
second
5 2 7 99,000 Cu. 297,000
ft. per
second
8 2 14 eight
sluice
gates
8 2 18 fixed dam movable dam
8 2 20 two of
69 feet
nine sluice
gates
four of
69 feet
The caption accompanying the
picture at the bottom of page 6
was also inaccurate. It should
read:
"In the first phase of the work,
reinforced cement structures
were built in 56 places along the
Huai and its tributaries."
MARCH-APRIL 1952
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First Trains In
Szechuan
A RROGANT young officials who
ft moved to Chungking and other
places in Szechuan province with
the Kuomintang regime during
the war with Japan used to jeer
at the people there, "You've never
seen the sea; you've never seen a
train." This would always make
the Szechuanese angry. They
had been waiting a long time for
a railway to help the development
of their great and productive area
which is as large, as populous and
as rich in agricultural and indus-
trial resources as the whole of
Germany.
ver since 1906, when the
Manchu dynasty still ruled, there
had been talk of a railway from
Chungking to Chengtu. Surveys
were made, part of the roadbed
laid out, station buildings erected
at different times and contracts
drawn up with all kinds of foreign
concerns. Indeed, the collapse of
the Manchu empire in 1911 was
precipitated by a revolt of the
Szechuan people against its
attempt to turn over the projected
line to American bankers (in the
famous Hukuang loan scandals).
But whether the Manchus, the so-
called Republic, the provincial
militarists or the Kuomintang
Excited chil-
dren brought
bouquets for
the railway
workers when
the first train
r a n from
Chungking to
Nelkia.ng.
grafters were in power, it was all
the same. There were plenty of
promises, the people were taxed
to within an inch of their lives
with each "revival" of the pro-
jects, corrupt officials dickered
with imperialist monopolies over
the unhatched chickens of railway
profits, but no rails were laid and
no trains ran. So it went on for
over forty years.
Today the people of Szechuan
(now divided into four admini-
strative areas) are riding and
hauling their goods in trains. The
Central People's Government did
in a few months what previous
governments had prated about for
decades. It took no more than
half a year after the liberation of
Szechuan for railway-building to
begin in earnest. On June 15,
1950, the first spike was driven on
the 329-mile stretch of railway
running west from Chungking,
Szechuan's commercial and in-
dustrial port on the Yangtze river,
to Chengtu, centre of its richest
agriculture. On July 1, 1951,
regular train service started on
the 102-mile section from Chung-
king to Yungchuan. By the end
of 1951, trains were puffing into
Neikiang, 175 miles from Chung-
king.
Soldiers and People
The People's Liberation Army,
which freed Szechuan from the
long night of feudalism and im-
perialism, was also the force that
changed the Chungking-Chengtu
railway from dream to reality.
Its officers and men did not con-
fine themselves to military tasks,
or sit around in garrisons and eat
off the people. No sooner had
they cleared out the main forces
of reaction than they got to work
building.
Having no previous experience
in railway construction, the army
men asked engineers to teach
them. As they worked, they held
on-the-job classes and forums,
studying the experience of the
Soviet Union in building railways
in the face of all kinds of hard-
ships. Now they have mastered
the required techniques to such an
extent that the foundation laid for
the line is the firmest of that of
any railway in China. They have
also broken national records of
construction, and their methods
have been adopted in the building
of the Tienshui-Lanchow line in
the Northwest, another new and
Building one of the 970 bridges
of the Chungking-Chengtu line.
INA RECONSTRUCTS
415R01240013000a
New housing goes up to relieve Shanghai overcrowding.
TRANSFORMING OUR CITIES
CHINESE cities are being rebuilt
ILA on new foundations. Roads,
bridges, water supply and sewage
disposal are being extended and
improved. City life grows easier,
healthier and cleaner. Peking,
Shanghai, and Tientsin today
manage to keep their streets Freer
of garbage and litter than does
New York, despite all the
mechanical equipment at its dis-
posal. This may be hard to be-
lieve for anyone who knew only
the old China. But it is true.
Before liberation, whatever im-
provements were made in city
services were for the benefit of
the rich alone. Any convenience
they may have afforded the work-
ing people was purely incidental.
This was obvious to every eye.
Running water, electricity and
even pavements often ended
abruptly in the middle of some
city block, because that was
where the last "person who mat-
tered" lived?and everything be-
yond was considered unimportant.
The difference between services
available in well-to-do residential
areas and workers' districts of the
same cities was shocking. The
one had everything the twentieth
century can provide. In the
other, people were forced to live
as though none of the inventions
of the past 300 years had been
heard of.
Present improvements are be-
ing concentrated precisely in
these workers' quarters. The fol-
lowing is a review of some of the
things done in the past two years,
city by city.
Water and Sanitation
In :Peking today, 1,200,000 peo-
ple are using running water free
of bacillus coli. Miles of new
water mains have been installed.
Before liberation, there was no
piped water at all outside the city
walls. Now pipes have been ex-
tended to serve miners' settle-
ments in the western suburbs.
Drainage and sewage disposal
in the capital have improved be-
yond recognition. Heavy rains
no longer turn any of its streets
into deep canals where the water
stagnates for weeks at a time.
Open drains are being replaced
by culverts. Newly paved smooth
street surfaces also help drainage.
Half-an-hour or 40 minutes after
even the most torrential down-
pours, there is no longer any
water in the streets of the
working-class districts. This is
true even of the lowest-lying
areas, around Dragon Beard Ditch,
where rain always used to inter-
rupt communications, and some-
times caused houses to collapse.
The centuries-old underground
sewage system of Peking, not used
for years because it was neglected
and blocked, has been cleared of
all obstacles and made fully
serviceable. Almost a hundred
miles of its culverts have been
cleaned and repaired.
More Bridges; Better Roads
Shanghai is concentrating on
the repair of bridges and roads,
which deteriorated badly through
the years of Japanese and Kuo-
mintang occupation. The 44-year-
old steel Garden Bridge, which
was in poor condition when the
city was liberated, has been
structurally restored and thor-
oughly rust-proofed after four
months' work. The Huang Peng
A corner of the 80-million gallon
precipitation tank of Tientsin's new
waterworks.
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bridge has been rebuilt in rein-
forced concrete, involving tl ic
use of the longest steel cables ever
employed in local bridge con-
struction. Many other bridges
have been renovated and re-
opened to traffic after long disuse.
NT:111V,* streets in former slum
71.-c..,7.1f; of Shanghai were torn up
for sewer-laving., t nen re-surfaced,
]na .v o r k project that also re-
lieved the temporary unemploy-
m.m in the city in 1950.
1,.7..ter hydrants have been in-
in many places, including
tf:e hanks of Soochow creek, to
the inhabitants of boats and
es who formerly bad to use
o !fl!by (-reek water to drink.
Areas wiiich have b( in without
'co ighis hr years. or never
Fed them, are now illuminated at
night.
Progress in Tientsin
In Tientsin, the emphasis has
been on an ample, safe supply of
water to serve both the city's
inhabitants and its industries.
This city, the largest port of
N,,rth China, has just increased
its water supply by 65 per cent.
Construction was based on a plan
made 15 years ipg.,0 but shelved by
the British interesis which then
C( nt rol led the waterworks?be-
cause the well-to-do minority of
p,)pulation already had
"onough- water, and to give
i;oaiar people more would he
--;;neconomical.- N,,w Tientsin
a giant new precipitation tank
\vater with a capacity of
III! 11011g:allons. By using
natural differences in water levels,
the engineers have a,-ranged for a
steady flow to the purifying plant
wlthout expensive pumping ma-
chinery. The width of culverts
has been doubled.
Tientsin's water is now safe to
drink from the tap, which was not
the case before liberation. Pre-
parations are being made to soften
all city water while still in the
storage tanks, thus saving huge
quantities of soap.
Tientsin's communications have
also been bettered. New locally-
made trolley buses run in the city.
The main highway leading to
Peking, long in a terrible state.
has been fully repaired. People
used to joke about this road, "A
person riding into Tientsin is so
banged around that he arrives
with a bump on his head, hating
the city before he has even seen
it.- Now the road is a subject of
compliments, not jeers.
Labour Heroism at Nanking
Nanking has re-surfaced 864,000
square yards of city streets. The
historic Chang Kan bridge, de-
stroyed by the Japanese invaders
was rebuilt in half a year. Seventy
feet wide, and made wholly of
concrete, it carries traffic to
southern Kiangsu province.
Many labour heroes emerged
on the Chang Kan bridge job, on
which 700 men were engaged.
Aware of the importance of
restoring this major communica-
tions link, they worked on the
buttresses in icy water during
the winter months and through
the turbulent spring thaw. City
residents assisted by providing
comforts and helping equip their
dormitories, and by themselves
doing volunteer work to complete
a culvert, construction of which
had been discontinued under the
reactionary Kuomintang.
A new 20-mile long sewer has
been laid to serve 200,000 people
living in the southern part of
Nanking. Sewers in other sec-
tions of the city have been
cleaned, repaired and extended.
Despite the fact that the
Kuomintang made Nanking its
"capital" for so many years.
Open drains are being replaced by
culverts. The picture shows work
on the notorious Dragon Beard
pitch in Peking.
CHIN k RECONSTRUCTS
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Large public swimming pools give relief from summer heat. This is the shallow pool at
Shih Cha Hai, Peking, which also has others for more expert swimmers and divers.
367,000 of the inhabitants lacked
water service of any kind, and
had to drink impure water from
old wells and stagnant pools. One
of the first things done after the
liberation of the city was to install
365 conveniently-placed hydrants
to bring piped water to these
areas.
Housing, Parks and Hospitals
Wuhan (the triple city of Wu-
chang, Hankow and Hanyang) is
the industrial hub of central
China. Reconstruction here has
been concentrated on buildings
and roads. The pace has been such
as to cause temporary shortages
of bricks and other materials.
Wuhan has a new workers' hos-
pital, a new theatre and a movie-
house built specially for railway
workers, new government build-
ings and over 500 units of new
housing. The old municipal hos-
pital has been repaired. About
300,000 square yards of trees and
flowers have been planted and
road surfaces have been paved.
Wuhan's Central Park has been
renovated and a new People's
Square, with a capacity of 220,000
persons, is planned for the city.
Hangchow, capital of Chekiang
province, has repaired 254 old-
style streets with an overall
length of 30 miles, and provided
them with proper drainage and
sewers. By contrast with the
"modern" thoroughfares along
which Kuomintang officials rode
around in their cars and big mer-
chants and bankers did their
business, such streets were never
taken care of in the past.
Soldiers Build a City
Not only are old cities in China
being made over, but altogether
new ones are being built.
In faraway Sinkiang, men of the
People's Liberation Army are
working on a new garden city
which will be completed in five
years. They have already built
over 20 miles of paved roads and
many houses. The city will begin
with an area of 51/2 square miles,
with 350 acres devoted to three
parks. Trees and flowering shrubs
will line all streets and squares.
The city will have industrial,
administrative, commercial and
residential zones. It will serve as
a focal point for several large
mechanized farms in the sur-
rounding countryside.
Construction on the Sinkiang
site began under the most difficult
conditions. In winter, the ground
froze hard, and had to be hewn
like rock when foundations were
laid. Beams for the houses were
horse-hauled to the site from 60
miles away (there is still no rail-
way). The People's Liberation
Army men, soldiers who serve the
people in peace as well as defend
them, are determined to finish the
job ahead of schedule. They have
volunteered to work on Sundays
as well as weekdays.
The People Volunteer
Labour enthusiasm is the
foundation of all reconstruction
and new building in China's cities.
It is the weapon with which
technical difficulties are overcome,
old methods improved, new ways
boldly tried out, and time-tables
revised downward. In all cases,
regular workers are supplemented
by volunteers. Thus Nanking
stevedores repaired several miles
of streets in their spare time,
saving the city the cost of labour.
In Wuhan, students, government
functionaries?even priests and
nuns?undertook to work several
hours a week to put their city in
order. Among the Wuhan volun-
teers were an old woman of 80
and a schoolgirl of twelve.
The people are building in this
spirit because the cities, the
country, the government are now
theirs.
Workers held a block meeting when
they moved into Pinghuang Villas,
Shanghai, one of the developments
replacing the old airless slums.
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To fight plant diseases, which
our peasants in the past accepted
as an infliction from heaven, the
People's Government has con-
centrated chiefly on prevention
and mass education in science.
Success has been achieved in
checking grain smuts and other
blights.
Tree planting on
4 huge scale bas
begun through-
out China. This
young timber
was planted by
peasants in Sulu
county, Hopei
province.
Man Wins Over "Fate"
1-N 1950, during the spring thaw,
o great ice-jam piled up at
various points along the big bend
of the Yellow River. threatening
tne whole area with disastrous
koods. Try as they mii.tht, the
pf.asants could not ;c,t the ice
floating again by their usual
tnethods. Local artillery units of
the People's Liberation Army
came to their aid and tried to
smash the blocks with gunfire, but
they were too solid even for this.
Then, on Chairman Mao Tse-
lung's own orders, the People's
Air Force worked day and night
to destroy ice-jams at 30 different
points with heavy bombs?and
there was no flood either that year
or next.
Throughout the ages, the Yellow
River used to inundate the Honan
plain whenever its rate of flow at
Shenchow, in that province,
exceeded 353.000 cubic feet per
second. As soon as the People's
Government was established. it
mobilized the peasants to increase
I he height of the surrounding
dykes and build a large detention
nasin. The result was that floods
'vera avoided although the river's
low rose to 600,000 clinic feet per
.:econd in 1950 and to 312.000 cubic
'eel per second in 1951.
In the near future, the Yellow
River, source of a hAndred evils,
will be made to irrpiute tens of
Ii )usands of souare miles of
cuitivable land that now lacks
only water to make it produce.
It will be opened to navigation
over great stretches that were
lik.-!less for transport in the past.
Conquering Drought
As with floods, so with drought.
People said of north China, before
liberation, that it suffered "nine
droughts every ten years." In
1951. for the first time, a
threatened drought was averted
hy organized human effort.
Under the personal leadership
of large numbers of government
functionaries headed by the
chairmen of Hopei and Pingyuan
provinces, ten million peasants
dug 38,955 new wells and over
4,000 irrigation channels equipped
with 66,603 waterwheels. The
parched land was watered and
became green again.
In the "drought year" of 1951,
peasants in Hopei province
managed to plant and save more
than two million acres of cotton,
helping the country to achieve the
biggest crop in its history.
Battling Crop Pests
The People's Government is
also waging war on various crop
pests that used to make deep in-
roads on agricultural production.
Last year, 34,000 government per-
sonnel of different grades led over
six million peasants in campaigns
against the grain-devouring locust
and that deadly enemy of the
cotton plant, the boll weevil.
Over 8,000 tons of insecticide were
sprayed by planes of the People's
Air Force, supplemented by 96,623
liquid sprayers and 4,451 powder
sprayers on the ground. No less
than 86 per cent of the 7,000,000
acres of land afflicted by these
parasites were cleared of them.
Planting Forests
Forests are important for water
conservancy, drought prevention
and soil protection, as well as
timber. The reactionary Kuo-
mintang regime, with its corrupt
officials and marauding troops,
reduced the already depleted
forests of China to a bare 5 per
cent of the national territory.
Floods, dust storms and droughts
increased as a result.
The People's Government pro-
tects all forests. In addition, in
the first year of liberation alone,
it planted 300 million saplings.
In the spring of 1951, the second
year, 500,000 acres of land were
afforested. This was more than
the Kuomintang did in all its 22
years of misrule.
China has 675 million acres
(over a million square miles) of
sub-marginal land on which trees
can be grown. The government
plans to turn all this land into
forest within thirty years. When
this has been done, forests will
cover 20 per cent of the entire
area of China instead of 5 per cent
as at present. The appearance of
the country, as well as conditions
of agriculture, will change. De-
nuded hills around Chinese
villages will he clothed in green.
Watersheds will be guarded by
stands of timber. Vast shelter
belts will transform now arid
sections of northwestern China
and Inner Mongolia.
Chinese peasants once believed
that man's fate depended on the
"will of heaven." Such super-
stitious ideas are being replaced
by a conviction, already well-
founded in experience, that man
must and can conquer nature.
Common effort under the New
Democracy is what the people
rely on today in fighting calami-
ties and building their new life.
The days of submission to "fate"
are gone forever.
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CHINA RECONSTRUCTS
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Miners
Produce
More,
Live Better
Equipped with new tools
and work clothes, and
better paid than ever be-
fore, miners in China's
state-owned collieries have
raised their output 23 per
cent.
OT long ago, Yuan Tze-ming,
? I an ordinary miner at the
Pinghsiang colliery in Kiangsi pro-
vince, wrote in his diary: "There
was a time when I often had no
wages coming in, and did not
know what it was to be warm and
well-fed. But this year everybody
in my family has bought new
clothes, new blankets, new mos-
quito nets and soft pillows. This
year, I bought presents for my
friends, yet I still have Y415,000
saved up. Also, we have a pig."
This is typical of the swift
changes taking place in the lives
of Chinese coal miners, both on the
job and in their homes. Shower
baths have been installed at pit-
heads. Miners have moved out of
the dirty, leaking hovels in which
they used to live into new well-
built dormitories. Their children
go to school at the expense of the
administration. Old miners can
retire to special homes. A whole
new network of hospitals, sana-
toria, libraries, spare-time schools,
theatres and social halls serves
China's mining communities.
Miners used to have a hard time
getting married. Now good wages
and the respect in which workers
are held have changed this.
Parents no longer put up a fight
when their daughter wants to
marry a miner. In the Northeast,
during the last two years, housing
built by coal mine administrations
for married couples totalled over
2,253,000 square yards of floor
space.
Safety Measures
Every precaution is being taken
to make the work of the miner
safe. This is a startling change
from the old days when deaths
among miners were often counted
by hundreds in a single accident
and when the mine administra-
tions, with the utmost callousness,
worked on the principle: "We
are interested in coal, not in
lives." In 1950, the Central Peo-
ple's Government ordered that all
coal mines be thoroughly in-
spected and ventilation equip-
ment installed.
Safety training classes were
set up and until miners had a
thorough knowledge of the new
regulations they were required to
devote at least two hours a week
to their study. Wide publicity
was given to all safety measures
and special committees were or-
ganized to see that they were
carried out.
One convincing proof of the
need for such vigorous action
came from Northeast China. An
inspection of a machine shop at
the Fushun coal field early last
year brought to light no less than
3,000 ?work hazards. These were
all eliminated, the majority on
suggestions from the workers
themselves. The results were im-
mediate and in the following
period the number of fatal acci-
dents decreased by 78.8 per cent.
Safety work has now become a
job for everyone. Last June, for
example, a miner in the Chenghsi
colliery injured his foot while at
work. The administration imme-
diately called all workers and
staff to a meeting at which the
reasons for the accident were ex-
plored. Afterwards, led by their
MARCH-APRIL 1952 39
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During rest periods in the pits, literate miners teach those with less education.
.zrade union, the miners were
divided into panels which in-
vestigated the matter in greater
detail and recommended neces-
sary changes. This procedure is
typical.
When the trade union of a
colliery in Northeast China started
mine safety campaign. the wives
of the miners also joined in. They
pledged: "When our husbands get
out of bed, we will examine their
pockets to see that they carry
nothing inflammable to the pits."
Miners' families also undertook to
see that they got enough sleep.
To ensure this, older women now
get the children of night-shift
workers together and tell them
stories so that they don't make
any noise while their fathers rest.
Even the pedlars in mine towns
now do their business at de-
signated spots and do not cry their
wares so loudly as before.
'rhe result of all these varied
measures is that the death rate in
Chinese coal mines decreased by
75 per cent while injuries dropped
65 per cent, in the first half of 1951
as compared to 1950. Not a single
mine explosion took place in 1951.
Power Tools Appear
Mining techniques are changing
very fast. The old honeycombing
methods are going out and the
"long wall" method of timber-
ing is coming in, increasing both
ill
safety and production. Pneumatic
picks and drills are replacing
manual ones. When these were
first brought to the Fengfeng Coal
Mine, some miners were en-
thusiastic but others, more con-
servative, were fearful. They
argued that the new tools were
too heavy, that they were so noisy
that one could not hear if the
ceiling cracked, and therefore
dangerous.
Coal - hauling
and man-trips
In the Huainan
mines are no
electrified?an
example of the
way the
miner's life
and work have
changed since
liberation.
5R012400130001-8
As a result of discussion, Pit No.
506 undertook to make a trial.
Seventeen miners were elected to
operate the pneumatic tools. The
pit was divided into competing
teams. Members of each team
siLned a compact to cooperate
closely with each other. To the
surprise of the older men, a new
record was made the very first
day. Pneumatic driller Li Kwang-
('heng and his team cut 37.18 tons
in four and a half hours. Other
pits joined the competition. In
two weeks, one set a man-day
record of 254 tons!
'I' )day, the miner rejoices in the
nthchinery which produces on
;ircii a large scale, calls for less
strength and, in combination with
:a!'ety measures, reduces the
hazards of work. According to re-
cent. estimates, all collieries in
China are overfulfilling their
plans. The national average pro-
ductivity, among miners, has risen
by 23 per cent.
This year, the People's Govern-
ment will continue to rebuild and
re-equip existing mines, and to
prepare for the opening of new
ones. Mining bureaus all over the
country will also pay special
attention to helping privately-
owned collieries to achieve higher
output.
CIIINA RECONSTRUCTS
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Approved For ReOise 20
The Huainan Miners
ATYPICAL example of the
improvement in the life of
miners since liberation is provided
by the Huainan colliery in north
Anhwei province.
Knowing that their own welfare
is dependent on production, the
miners have raised working re-
cords beyond all estimates. In
1951 the coal output target was
surpassed by 11.7 per cent and
topped that of 1950 by over 100
per cent. During the year 175
miners earned the title of "model
worker," and 74 miners' brigades
were named "advance teams," for
efficiency in working methods.
Following ?the increase in pro-
duction, came the overall im-
provement in the miners' welfare.
Compared with 1950, average
wages in 1951 increased 7.82 per
cent and were scheduled to be
raised another 19.5 per cent this
spring. In addition large monetary
awards were given to all model
workers.
Economically better off and
politically awakened, the Huainan
miners became eager to raise their
cultural level. Over 7,600 went to
sparetime schools during 1951 and
are now all able to read simple
texts. Among their family mem-
bers, 2,359 women enrolled for
study and 5,285 children entered
middle, primary ? or vocational
schools.
With a welfare fund contributed
by the government, the miners
were able to set up a hospital, a
recreation centre, a model work-
ers' home, a sanatorium and a
spare-time school. They have also
formed 56 different kinds of clubs.
Most of the miners have already
moved into good housing. In 1951
the mine administration built
3,025 dwellings and repaired 4,817.
It also opened many nurseries.
For the first time in their lives
great hope and happiness has
come to the miners of Huainan.
An "advance team" on its way to
work. (top)
Dancing is popular at all times.
(centre)
Huainan miners built this new,
modern hospital. (bottom)
MARCH-APRIL 1952
Approved For Rel
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IN PRAISE OF OUR MOTHERLAND
Moderato Grandioso
Music and Words by WANG HSIN
Red Flag way - ing high. Loud- ly rings our
song of vie-to ? ry,
?We ?-^ -4110
? ?
6.=
mp
ig our be
I /i i).
..: _il
. It -,-
' ff
Prais-ing our be ? by ? ed ___ Mo ?
"ION*
stronger ev-ery day.
OEM -
-0- -.0-
11
titer- land, Grow-ing
rich
- er and stronger ev-cry day
stronger ev-ery day.
Fine
(IIINA RECONSTRUCTS
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Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
in).
7
___0t.
leys,
:iant,
shine,
T?
?7
---i-.
Flow
In
Our
.
?11P ?
-
-
-
AL
>
-
the
de -
own
>
7
Hwang
pend
Peo
Ho
- ence
- pie's
>
it
4,11\
Through the mount
We love la
East - em skies
>
-
-
ains,
hour,
are
through the val
we are val
lit with sun
_
and
Re -
e
?)
M) IEM111111.1111111111t
?
/
0
?
i=
MIMI
eallIr
_
--7.
-
--
-411-
and the Yangtze - kiang,
Great
and
spac-ious
and
beau - ti -
ful
free-dom our i - deals.
Ev -
cry
hardship
we
have con -
quered,
pub -lie here we build,
With
our
lead -
er
Mao Tse -
tung
is our
That's how_
be-by - ed Moth - er - land.
we won our lib - er - ty.
Point - ing _ to us the way a - head.
He - ro - ic peo - plc have
We dear-ly love_ peace, we
Our lives are grow-ing bett - er
>
000
stood up brave and free,
love our Moth-er - land,
ev - ery sing -le day,
Firm - ly u - nit - ed with the strength of steel.
Who_ dares in vade us is look-ing for his grave.
The light of our fu ture fills us all with joy.
RCH-APR1L 1952
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43
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Yu Chang the Wolf Hunter
VOT LONG AGO, in the Huaian
district, of Chahar. near Inner
Mongolia. a little girl was snatched
by a wolf. The people ran after
the beast, but in vain. Suddenly
a rifle cracked and the wolf fell
dead, releasing the child who was
I (Trifled but not seriously injured.
the girl's parents effusively
ihanked the old peasant who had
tired with such accuracy and
effect, he replied briefly: "My
own daughter was killed by a
wolf. When I shot the beast,
felt I was rescuing her. I hunt
wolves because I want to protect
our children."
Shortly afterwards, the same
old man, his gun slung over his
shoulder, was seen on the platform
at many village meetings called to
aid Korea and defend our own
country from the threat of
-asion. At fairs and gatherings.
he hung the carcasses of wolves
he had killed in front of the public.
"The imperialists are as ruthless
and cunning as wolves," he would
say, again and again. "If we
don't keep them away we will
never have peace."
There are those who need end-
less hammering at a point before
it penetrates their heads, but to
the people of Huaian these words
were convincint'. Moreover, the
man who spoke them was not just
;myhody. He was Yu Chang,
Iheir own countryman, now
famous throughout new China as
lu -wolf-hunting hero."
WHO is more familiar with the
V wolf-nature than the inhabit-
-ints of Huaian? Wolves breed in
White Dragon mountain and Wolf
'Huth mountain, both situated in
he district On occasion, the
beasts have become so hold as to
invade the villages in packs. carry-
ng away sheep, pigs and children,
Wolves menace both people and livestock in Chahar provinee and in Inner
Mongolia, where wolf hunting is a serious business.
attacking anyone they came
across. When the Kuomintang.
which gave such matters little
thought. was still in power. wolves
killed 200 neople in Huaian in a
single year. The terrified peasants
did not dare no into their fields,
no one ventured out of door.-; at
night, and travellers did not trA)ve
except in large groups.
Of all the human people, no
one can speak with more authority
about wolves than Yu Chang.
Fond of hunting from childhood,
he started with rabbits and jackals
and. after a few years, went on to
wolves. To hunt the wolf with a
!nuzzle-loader of village manu-
facture calls for great skill and
courage. One must approach him
at close quarters and kill with the
first shot. A wounded wolf will
leap at your throat before you
have time to reload. Moreover,
to kill a wolf with a native tiin
is a much harder proposition than
doing it. with a rifle.
As Yu Chang says, one must hit
a wolf "square in the nose if he
is coming at you; right under his
tail if he is running away; smack
on his shoulder-joint if you flank
him from the front and behind the
ear if you flank him from the
rear." All these are difficult shots,
but if you can't manage them you
had better not fire at all, because
you won't even stop the animal.
THROUGH MANY YEARS, Yu
Chang learned to shoot un-
erringly. He also took to trapping,
which requires strategy because
wolves are wary creatures whose
every habit must be studied if they
are to be outwitted. But at one
time all these painfully acquired
skills threatened to go for nothing.
Suddenly, during the Kuomintang
period, Yu Chang's war on the
wolves came to a dead stop. The
Kuomintang officials began to con-
sider him a "dangerous fellow"
because he was independent,
CHINA RECONSTRUCT!
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Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
popular, active in reconnoitering
the countryside and good with
weapons. Yu Chang, the seasoned
hunter who had never flinched
before a wolf's fangs, was
frightened by the wolf-men in
authority,?against whom, as a
plain peasant, he had no appeal.
Shocked and discouraged, he put
aside his gun and traps.
I 4ATER the Japanese invaders
I succeeded the Kuomintang.
Under their rule, in the summer
of 1941, packs of wolves once again
ranged up and down Huaian. It
was in that year that a well-known
and much feared lone wolf slunk
into Yu Chang's own yard, where
his wife and five-year-old daughter
were enjoying the cool evening,
pounced on the child and dragged
her off. When the hunter came
home, he grabbed his long-unused
gun and set out in pursuit. Fail-
ing to find the wolf in the dark,
he came across the beast's tracks
only at daybreak. The tracks led
him to the half-eaten body of his
little girl.
After this, the grief-stricken Yu
Chang left all other matters and
devoted himself once more to
trap and gun. He forgot his fear
of the officials. He brushed off
the superstitious old men in the
village, beaten down by long
slavery, who muttered that his
daughter's death was "heavenly
punishment" for many offences
against the "supernatural" wolves.
Neither men nor gods could pre-
vent the father from having his
revenge?and after many sleepless
nights on the trail the chance
came. The cunning lone wolf
finally approached Yu Chang's
trap, sniffing at the bait sus-
piciously. Yu Chang, who was
watching, fired once and did not
miss.
The father's vengeance only
brought him more trouble. Once
more the human wolves, Japanese
quislings this time, smelled prey
and got to work. When news of
Yu Chang's resumed hunting
Under Kuomintang and Japanese
oppression, Yu Chang swore never
to hunt again.
reached the town police, they
ordered his arrest. He was
dragged from his home to jail.
His frantic wife was kicked when
she went to beg for mercy. Some
time later, Yu Chang was re-
leased, with black eyes and a back
half-broken from beatings. The
rich fur of the wolf he had slain,
taken from him as "evidence,"
ended up as a rug on the bed of
the police chief's wife, who liked
such things.
THIS TIME, Yu Chang vowed
-I- never to touch his gun again
as long as he lived. Even libera-
tion, which came to Huaian after
the war, did not change his fixed
resolve. The Communist party
overthrew the old rulers. Yu
Chang received seven acres of
prime land in the land reform and
began to cultivate them with his
family, hard workers all. Free-
dom and a better life came to him
and to all the Huaian people.
Why hunt again and court mis-
fortune, risk the loss of all this
happiness? That was how things
looked to the old man, scarred to
the depths of his soul by the
oppression of the o] .d order.
But the wolves did not leave the
people alone. In 1949 they des-
cended on the district again?
killing and mauling over a hun-
dred persons. The marauding
beasts became so daring that they
entered the county town, and
children were kept home from
school. The District People's
Government, unlike the autho-
rities of the past, called on the
peasants to organize themselves
for a large-scale hunt. Yu Chang,
however, was not among those
who responded. He let his wea-
pons lie and farmed his land.
When the people, remembering
Yu Chang's skill, came and asked
him to lead their effort, the
veteran wolf hunter declined. He
gave as an excuse his age and poor
health, but the real reason was his
deep, unreasoning fear. Only
after repeated urging and long
visits by the district chiefs, only
after fine new arms were supplied
that made his hunter's heart leap,
did Yu Chang finally consent, still
with deep foreboding.
(NCE ON THE TRAIL of his
" ancient enemy, however, Yu
Chang's old instincts, courage and
rich experience rushed to the
surface. Within three days he had
personally caught a wolf alive on
top of the town wall and killed
two others. The campaign was a
success. The streets of Huaian
became safe. Peasants who had
stood in awe of the "godly" powers
of the wolf began to see a talisman
in the human skill of the famed
Yu Chang. Delegates came from
every place that was still infested.
No sooner did Yu Chang clear one
village of wolves than he was
called to another.
45
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Self-confidence and self-respect
returned to the old hunter. The
admiration and love with which
he was met everywhere made a
ew, man of him. He took
pleasure in travelling from place
Ii place and saving the people.
When rewards were offered, he
refused, saying: "It is for my
fellow-countrymen that I came
out, not to seek profit." His re-
nown grew to new heights after
he tracked down a she-wolf long
known for size, elusveness and
ferocity. Terrified villagers who
had caught a glimpse of her said
hiat she was -as big as a donkey,
with bloodshot eyes." Even Yu
Chang was puzzled at first by the
beast's apparent ability to move
te knit without leaving a trail. It
was only alter many long days
hat he discovered that she had an
unusual habit of walking only in
cart-ruts along the roads. When
he set his best trap in a place
based on this knowledge and hid
to watch the capture, the she-wolf
came up to it, calmly chewed the
wire that secured it, sprang the
trap and carried it off, bait and
:U1, in her teeth.
Yu Chang had been so sure of
-oaring this wolf that he lay in
ambush without firearms, carrying
only a long iron hook for the
finishing stroke. It was with this
hook that he gave pursuit through
the snow, stalking the beast from
the East Mountain to Taiping
valley, keeping after her for three
,lays and nights, hungry, his boots
worn out, his feet half-frozen.
Finally, the tired wolf's vigilance
began to falter while the hunter's
determination was stilt keen. Yu
Chang was able to surprise her,
and kill her with his hook. Even
after skinning, the carcass weighed
well over a hundred pounds.
ALONG WITH the honours
- piling on Yu Chang, came a
problem, the new kind of problem
which, instead of thwarting people,
makes them grow and advances
the common interest. Unstinting
of his energy in helping others,
the old wolf-hunter was still con-
servative on one point. He was
ready to use his skill at any call,
but not to divulge his techniques.
When village cadres tried to per-
suade him to teach his experience
to whole groups, so that the people
themselves could handle the
wolves, Yu Chang became stub-
born. How could amateurs absorb
quickly what it had taken him a
lifetime to learn, he asked him-
self. Besides, why should he part
with knowledge so hardly ac-
quired?
It was only after Yu Chang
had been invited, as an hon-
oured participant, to provincial
and national meetings of labour
heroes, after he had heard the
speeches of Chairman Mao Tse-
tung and other leaders, that he
began to realize that this attitude,
"natural" in the old society, was a
form of selfishness. Gradually,
Yu Chang's ideas changed. "If
After liberation Yu Chang was
persuaded to resume hunting for
the sake of the people.
wolves are to be wiped out over
large areas, I can't do it alone
though I hunt day and night," he
thought. "Only large numbers of
skilled hunters can do it. And
who can teach them better than
I?" That was how Yu Chang
learned what makes a true peo-
ple's hero in our time.
ODAY Yu Chang is a public
-I figure of the new type. Aided
by the government, beloved by the
people, he finds joy in teaching
and organizing large numbers of
hunters. He has trained over 120
apprentices and helped form some
sixty teams in different villages.
He has lent his most prized
Soviet-made trap to village black-
smiths to be copied. When some
of his apprentices encountered
material difficulties, Yu Chang
sold his own furs to help them
out. Always on the lookout for
men able to pit wits and daring
against the wolves, he even under-
took to turn two former opium
smokers who had become village
pests into hunters?and succeeded.
This is the man who appears
throughout Chahar and Inner
Mongolia, now in one district, now
in another, telling what the new
society has done for him, inspiring
assurance that with its help men
can conquer wolves as well as all
other calamities.
As a speaker and propagandist,
Yu Chang is in endless demand.
Old men listen to him with
respect, because his past was their
own. Young men look up to him;
he can teach the best of them
skill and courage. Who can more
appropriately speak of the power
of our country than this simple
peasant whose labour-trained
brain and hands have outmatched
the wolf in strength and cunning?
The illustrations in this story are
from a coloured poster series used
in peasant education?and displayed
at the recent North China Trade
Exhibition in Tientsin. Such posters
hare done much to introduce new
methods of production and organization
to both peasants and workers.
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Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : C
A PLACE
THE CHILDREN
LOVE
CHEN SHAN-MING
11HE NURSERY of the China
Welfare Institute is only
ten minutes by car from the
western edge of Shanghai. En-
tering the main gate, one is struck
with the beauty of the compound,
its numerous tall evergreen and
maple trees and its wide, green
lawns that give off a pleasant
grassy fragrance. One feels that
such a place must be a paradise
for children, and the joyous
shouts of the kiddies soon prove
this to be so.
The CWI Nursery, which was
started after the liberation of
Shanghai, is a pilot project for
the solving of several of China's
main problems in child care. The
first of these problems is con-
nected with the position of women
in the new society. Our liberated
women are being drawn into the
work of reconstructing the nation.
Many find it difficult, however, to
do so as long as there is no provi-
sion for the care of their children
while they are at work.
The second problem concerns
the many women who volunteer
for temporary work in outlying
areas where they cannot take
their children. To meet i,heir
needs, we must have homes which
give complete care, twenty-four
hours a day. This is a transition-
al problem. As more facilities
become available in or near every
place of work, all our children
will have both group and home
life. Today, as a legacy from the
pre-liberation period, the number
The CWI
Shanghai nur-
sery is in a
modern, sunlit
building.
of nurseries, though growing
rapidly, is still inadequate to meet
the expanding demand.
A Pilot Project
The CWI Nursery is an experi-
mental one. It takes care of some
200 children of working mothers
in industry, government and peo-
ple's organizations. It operates
around the clock and provides
everything a child needs in medi-
cal care, food, play, education
and companionship.
Since such work in China is
comparatively new, the nursery
constantly assesses its own ex-
periences and makes changes
necessary for the normal and
healthy development of the
children. Methods which have
proved themselves are written up
and made widely available to
mothers, child care workers and
other nursery institutions. A
teaching centre for nursery educa-
tion is now being planned.
The main emphasis in the CWI
Nursery is on physical develop-
ment. A resident pediatrician, of
many year's experience, assisted
by six graduate nurses, keeps an
eye on the children from the
moment they enter the institu-
tion. Before admission, every
child is thoroughly examined and
given a tuberculin test. If the
reaction is positive, the child is
X-rayed to make sure no active
lesions exist. If it is negative, a
BCG inoculation is given. After
admission all children are vac-
cinated against smallpox and in-
oculated with pertussis vaccine,
diphtheria toxoid, and other pre-
ventives according to a schedule
set by the Shanghai Municipal
Health Bureau.
Each morning, there is a health
inspection. Suspected cases of
illness are immediately isolated
in an infirmary. After their noon
nap, the temperature of all the
children i taken. The health
1ARCH-APRIL 1952 47
Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
section keeps a constant check
on minor ailments. Height and
weight are measured every month
and special attention is given to
children who are underweight or
do not increase regularly in
weight. A complete physical
examination is given each child
every three months.
The nursery staff carries on
constant health teaching. The
children are taught about life in
the infirmary through stories,
songs and rhymes. Through
posters and conversations, they
have learned why preventative
injections are good for them and
will help them to grow strong.
Now, during physical examina-
tions, many help the doctor by
handing her tongue depressors
and a flash light. When the time
comes to be weighed, they un-
dress and stand on the balance,
anxiously asking whether they
have grown. In the infirmary,
they chat and joke gaily with the
nurses.
The life in the infirmary is pat-
terned as much as possible after
lie regular life of healthy kiddies.
Sick children have their own sets
of toys and playthings and a de-
finite daily schedule. After re-
covery they greet the nurses when
they see them, with smiles and
1-1,1ppy calls.
Last winter, a little boy in one
class caught measles. The first
step taken was to isolate him im-
mediately. Then all parents who
were in the vicinity were called
to give blood transfusions to their
children if they had been exposed.
Children whose parents were not
available or suffered from poor
1..ach child has its own wash basin
:Ind all are taught to look after
themselves.
ease 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
The children seem a little dubious
when Chen Shan-ming brings
them their first
puppy,
health received blood donated by
the doctor and nurses. As a
result, the epidemic was controlled
within one class. Due to good
care, the infected children
developed no complications. Some
even gained weight during their
;:tay in the infirmary.
The children's diet is carefully
planned and supervised by R
trained nutritionist. Each child
gets one egg, two dishes of mixed
protein, a dish of rice or noodles,
fruit, milk, biscuits and dessert,
soup and five cups of water daily.
The food is eaten in three well-
balanced meals supplemented by
two light snacks of milk and
biscuits or nuts in the afternoon.
Educational Programme
The main emphasis in the
nursery's education programme is
on love. Children are taught to
love their country and people.
They learn folk songs and dances
and hear stories about the builders
and defenders of new China.
Here is a typical result. Once a
?-zroup of 31/2-year-olds went to
visit a nearby vegetable garden.
On the way home, they met three
soldiers of the People's Liberation
Army. They immediately began
calling them "Uncle" and asked
We soldiers to play with them.
One bright-eyed little girl said,
"You army uncles are brave. You
love all children, help the pea-
sants and protect us from our
enemies. When we grow up we
want to be like you." The chil-
dren began to sing one of their
songs called "The Good Libera-
tion Army." The three soldiers
picked the children up one by one
and gave them tight fatherly hugs.
They were reluctant to go on
about their business and wanted
to stop and play with their small
friends. When the children came
back to the nursery, they re-
ported, "We saw some Liberation
Army Uncles. We shook hands
with them and they picked us up
and said we were good children."
The story was repeated over and
over again to the envy of all who
had not had the same good luck.
_bITINA RECONSTRUCTS STRUCTS
Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001
Approved For Release 2004/
The children are taught to
love and respect labour. Every
opportunity is taken to show them
how the things which they use
are produced. They see how the
chairs they sit on are made by the
nursery carpenter, how the food
they eat started with plowing and
planting by the farmers, how the
milk they drink is prepared by
the cook.
Making Things Grow
The older children also plant
vegetables in their own garden.
The first day that a class gets an
allotment is filled with great ex-
citement and happiness. The
children divide into groups. One
picks up stones and wheels them
to the garbage pile. A second
pulls up the weeds. A third,
aided by the teachers, digs and
hoes. The fourth group plants the
seeds. The garden is watered
every day. When the first eager-
ly awaited sprouts appear, the
youngsters' faces are radiant with
proud happiness.
When the vegetables are ready
to eat, the children take them to
the cook and ask that they be
prepared for the next meal.
Many children who previously
disliked vegetables now eat their
whole portion and ask for more.
Children who have worked in the
garden take the initiative in pro-
tecting all plants and flowers in
the nursery.
In the children's own activities,
self-reliance and mutual help are
stressed very early. The 11/2-
year-olds are encouraged to feed
themselves with only occasional
help from the teachers. Older
kiddies learn to undress and later
to dress themselves. They take
turns undoing each other's back
buttons, making beds and clean-
ing the classrooms and play-
rooms. All put their chairs back
in place after meals, learn to use
their handkerchiefs, wash their
hands before eating and to line up
in good order when going from
place to place. In this way, the
youngsters quickly become inde-
pendent. Group encouragement
together with individual help
where it is needed is the principle
employed.
Love of nature is also devel-
oped in the children. They are
taken on trips to nearby farms
and vegetable gardens, to the
The youngest
children a r e
housed in a
separate build-
ing, the play-
room of which
Is shown in
the back-
ground of this
picture.
park, the zoo and the dairy. They
learn the life cycle and functions,
common plants, animals and in-
sects. Older classes help to plant
vegetables and to feed the nursery
pets. When the children first
saw the cows in the dairy, many
were frightened of these huge
animals. But after watching the
milking and feeding, all of them
were willing to stroke the calves.
Public Spirit Taught
Love of the people's property is
taught by emphasis on good care
of toys, which are put back in
their places after playtime and
washed regularly in soap and
water. The children are taught
to take good care not only of the
toys in their own class but also
those of other classes and those
shared by the whole nursery.
Natural curiosity to see how
things work is diverted from de-
structive into constructive chan-
nels. For example, young Lin-
lin once gave the wall a taste of
his wooden hammer. The teacher
explained that all big boys keep
their home in good condition and
that hammers are used to make
toys. After this, Lin-lin became
a voluntary one-man guard for
the walls of the playroom.
Finally, the children are incul-
cated with love and deep appre-
ciation for their parents and the
work they are doing for the coun-
try. Parents are urged to come
and see their children once a
week. If they have no time on
Saturdays and Sundays, special
arrangements are made. At the
end of every month, the nursery
provides transportation to the city
where parents come and take
their youngsters home for the
week-end. In addition, parent's
meetings are held every two
months, at which time the Nursery
49
VIARCH-APRIL 1952 Approved For Release 2004/02/19: CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001-8
The nursery has many foreign visitors. These pictures show friends from England
(left) and Pakistan (right) receiving a warm welcome.
staff reports on the health and
progress of every one of their
charges.
The Children's Holiday
International delegates and
friends of China often come to see
the CWI Nursery. The young-
sters crowd around their "Indian
Aunties," "Soviet Uncles" or
"English Uncles." They want to
shake hands and be picked up.
They also sing and dance for the
guests.
When the Indian peace delegate,
Dr. M. Atal, came to visit the
nursery, he was greeted by young
Cheng-wei who bowed to him and
presented him with a bouquet of
flowers almost as big as himself.
The doctor bowed, picked a
red carnation and gave it back to
the little boy. Cheng-wei was
surprised but soon recovered,
with a beaming smile and a quick
"thank you." The doctor then
found himself surrounded by ex-
pectant eyes and outstretched
hands. He left with only one
flower as a memento of his visit.
This peace delegate brought hap-
piness to the youngsters, and their
joy and love gave him new
strength in his own struggle.
There are many celebrations.
in the nursery, of which Interna-
tional Children's Day is the most
important. Early in the morn-
ing, last June 1, little Chen-sen
stuck his head out of his mosquito
Jo
net and yelled, "Big demonstra-
tion today." This was followed
from all sides by: "I shall carry
Chairman Mao's portrait," "I
shall be the Spirit of Peace." "The
teacher says today is like our
birthday." "Teacher says we have
to behave on our birthday."
After breakfast the older classes
marched in a demonstration while
the younger ones acted as specta-
tors. All the children were
dressed in bright colours, there
was much noise from the waist-
drum and yangko dance teams.
Then followed the Spirit of Peace
and the portraits of China's great
leaders. The marchers sang and
danced, shouted slogans and
pinned flowers on the teachers'
dresses. They had heard so much
about people's parades since libera-
tion that they were overjoyed to
have one of their own.
The nursery staff prepared the
children's favourite dishes for
the noon meal. In the afternoon,
there was a meeting. Tse-ke, six
years old, was chairman. He
said, "Today is our birthday. We
are very happy. We will be good
boys and girls. Let's tell Chair-
man Mao and Vice-Chairman
Soong Ching Ling that we will
grow up to be good people like
them." This was followed by the
presentation of flowers to teach-
ers, cooks and nursery attendants
as an expression of thanks for
their work. Then each class gave
a performance, even the two-
year-olds going up to the platform
and singing "Little, Little Mouse."
The final part of the celebration
was a cartoon film.
Staff Standards Are Raised
The responsibility of caring for
the children is taken very serious-
ly by the CWI Nursery staff.
After an 81/2 hour work-day,
they devote a further hour to
political and professional study.
Two years of such study have pro-
duced most gratifying results.
Staff members have been able to
overcome most of their indivi-
dualistic attitudes and developed
a selfless revolutionary striving to
better their work in every way.
Before the liberation, many
nurseries had to disguise them-
selves as hospitals, orphanages
or schools to get even an allot-
ment of rice. Since liberation,
the best houses have been allo-
cated to them by the people's
government, which gives them
every attention and consideration.
In Shanghai alone, the number of
nurseries has increased several-
fold. The China Welfare Institute
is proud to be pioneering in this
work.
It is proud to give their earliest
training to children who are
wanted, protected and respected
in new China, who will grow up
to love their people and help build
a world of progress and peace.
Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R012400130001 RECONSTR UCTS
111N-iNtIPE
Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-0
A red ribbon
joins the loWer
part of the
flagstaff to an
olive branch
signifying
peace and a
large figure
"1" in yellow.
An inscription
under the flag
reads "Com-
memor at big
the First An-
niversary o f
the Founding of the People's Republic of
China." The value, a decorative leaf
design and the words "October 1, 1949"
and "1950" appear at the base. The in-
scription and base are differently coloured
in each of the five stamps comprising
the set, while the central design is the
same.
Denominations are: 11100, red, yellow
and purple; 11400, red, yellow and red-
brown; Y800, red, yellow and dark green;
Y1,000, red, yellow and olive; Y2,000, red,
yellow and blue. Four of the stamps are
27 x 311/2 mm. The exception, an
unusual one since it is not the highest
value but the one used for ordinary
domestic postage, is the Y800, which is
much larger, 38 x 45% mm. Perf. 14.
For the Northeast, 0.4tMfil is added
beside the flagpole. Values are NEY1,000;
2,500; 5,000; 10,000 and 20,000.
Like all contemporary Chinese stamps,
each commemorative bears the words
rti _Mega (Chinese People's Postage)
below all other elements of the design,
in close proximity to the denomination.
The commemoratives also carry minute
identifytn,?; numbers and symbols on the
bottom margin, according to the follow-
ing system: *g 1.4-3 means "First Com-
memorative Set, consisting of four
stamps, third stamp." Al]. stamps are
printed on unwatermarked paper and are
not gummed.
It is interesting to note that, in sets
Nos. 4 and 5, traditional Chinese decora-
tive elements were introduced to frame
the stamp designs. This tendency was
to become stronger in subsequent issues.
Readers wishing to order any of
the commemorative issuer. described
above may do so by sending an
International Money Order for the
face value of the stamps, plus
return postage, to:
The Philatelic Division
Peking Post Office
Peking, People's Republic of
China
Please do not send money to
this magazine.
CHINA
RECONSTRUCTS
presents with each issue
Articles?Pictures?News
of life in China today
SUBSCRIPTION RATES
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In subscribing, you will find it convenient to use the slip inside
the front cover of the magazine and to make your check or money
order payable to the nearest foreign distributor. A list of dis-
tributors appears on the back of the subscription slip. Persons
resident in China may, if they wish, subscribe for friends abroad
at the domestic rate.
AM=
Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-0
15R012400130
Our Contributor,
SOONG CHING LING (Mme.
Sun Yat-sen) is Chairman of the
recently-established Chinese Peo-
ple's National Committee in Defence
of Children. She is concurrently
Chairman of the People's Relief
Administration of China and the
China Welfare Institute. She was
awarded the Stalin International
Peace Prize for her valiant fight
for peace and democracy through-
out the world.
LIN CHUNG has just returned
from a survey of Inner Mongolia
which he made in Pursuance of his
duties as a member of the executive
committee of the People's Relief
Administration of China.
CHU HSUEH-FAN has been
Minister of Posts and Tele-
communications in the Central
People's Government since its
establishment in 1949.
WU CHAO-NONG has worked
in tea production and trade for 30
years. He has visited tea planta-
tions and factories in many
countries, including India and
Ceylon, and has written and
translated many books dealing with
the industry. He is now general
manager of the China National Tea
Corporation
TZE KANG (Peng Tze-kang)
is a well-known newspaperwoman
In China. She began her journalis-
tic career at the outbreak of the
Anti-Japanese War as a correspond-
ent of the Ta Kung Pao, for which
she continued to work until libera-
tion. Now an editor of the Pro-
gressive Daily News in Tientsin,
she is concurrently one of the
literary editors of China's leading
newspaper, the People's Daily of
Peking
WANG HSING, one of China's
outstanding young composers, Is
vice-director of the Tientsin
People's Theatre. Previously a
musical worker in the old liberated
areas, he has written many popular
songs. Ile attended the last session
of the Chinese People's Political
Consultative Council as a repre-
sentative of the All-China Federa-
tion of Literature and Arts.
CHEN SHAN-MING is the
head of the China Welfare Institute
Nursery and concurrently an
Executive Committee member of
the Shanghai Democratic Women's
Federation. She is a graduate of
Yenching University and the
P.U.M.C. Nursing School in Peking.
She holds an M.A. degree in Child
Development from Teacher's
College, Columbia University, New
York and has had ten years
experience in work with small
children.
15R012400130001-8
Approved For Release 2004/02/19: CIA-RDP$3-004163e4014N1
A, PUBLIC FIGURE
CHINA
not many years ago, Li Shun-ta was a poverty-stricken refuge.. Today -hundreds of millions of men, women and
children in China know his name and admire his achievements. This simple, hankorking man has given an example to our entire
peasantry of how to tread boldly forward to prosperity along the road opfiNJ by liberation. His work methods and
achievements hay* been publicized by the government the press and people's organizations.
Li Shun-ta's initiative in organizing mutual aid teams and introducing new methods of cultivation has brought higher
productivity and a better life to his own village. In MI, Li Shun-ta's mutual-aid team challenged teams all over the country
to compete in raising agricultural output. Their response has already had a marked effect on Chinese agriculture as a whole.
Ll SHUN-TA and his Farah, fleeing from famine in
,Ionan province during the Anti-Japanese War, settled
a small village in the bare Shansi mountains.
HE WAS THE FIRST to respond when the Libera-
ted Area Government called on the peasants to organize
mutual-aid teams to increase production.
DURING THE ANTI-JAPANESE WAR, when
there was a shortage of harvest labour, Li Shun-ta
mobilized old men, women and children to help.
LI WAS NOT AFRAID to by a new variety of
^ "Golden Queen," introduced by the government.
His once skeptical neighbours came to admire the result-
ing bumper crop.
WHEN THE GOVERNMENT urged the peasants "IF THE MOTHER SEED IS STOUT, the
to soak their seeds in warm water to combat disease, U offspring will be fat," says U Shun-ta who is the Rrs4. to
was the first to try. The good results again convinced introduce the practice of seed selection in his locality
his neighbours.
ALSO LED in investing in improved imple-
nents and propagandizing their merits far and wide.
UNDER LI SHUN-TAS LEADERSHIP the IN toSo LI SHUN-TA WAS ELECTED model
village grew prosperous. "Our wild mountain has peasant of Shansi province and attended the Netinnal
become a treasure mountain," the vsllagers said. Conference of Labour Models in Peking whore he was
personally congratulated by Chairman Mao Tse-tun.
This picture story of Li Shun-ta is typical of the many presented in series of coloured posters at the great North
China Trade Exhibition at Tientsin. Such posters have done much to educate peasants and workers in new methods of
production and organization and to put an end to the old dependence on -fate." They are among the many ways by
which th? cultural level of the Chinese people is being raised.
Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R2ww,uggcad
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