OCR
XeAé June - page three While these developments go on, the other sectors of the economy in Red China show a very clever effort to combine the needs of furthering production with the Communist ideology. Judicious compromises are maéde which show genuine skill. this is true of agriculture, where collectivization is proceeding with the speed of a snail. The governement is realizing, that collectives can be only formed if and when enough motorized equipment can be obtained. As this equipment is at present almost unavailable -since tanks are replacing tractors - the gover= nement tries to keep the land as far as possible in the hands of the larger peasants, whose production is more suited to feed the great cities and industrial areas. In order to avois direct respon= sibility in the slow-dowmm, the governement has at present handed the whole operation of land-refom over to the farmer's Committees in the villages. But by the same token it was ordered, that at ‘least one third of each Committee must be composed of the repre= sentatives of the larger owners, or the Kulaks in Soviet lingo. Tne governement can trust the Kulaks to oppose any land distribu+ion at present - and can hang those same opppnents with ease — once a speed-up of the land reform will be calied for. in the meantime this agricultural policy has increased the production considerably, as for example in the most essential goods like grain, rice and cotton. In all three of these goods considerable rise of production has been attained ; and in two, namely grain and cotton exportable surplus should be expected. The same slowdown policy is also applied in industry, though there naturally progress of collectivization is faster, Still over 50% of light industry is still in private hands. Also in the fields of transports, especially shipping, the private sector is stfl1 considerablee It is only in the heavy fields that nationalization has progressed seriously, like e.g. 90% of steel 70% of coal 3 78% of the electric power works and so one These nationalized industries are today almost exclusively in the service of the re-armament. They are furnishing less and less to the civilian sectore In the commercial sector it should be noted, that the Western blockade is hitting China less than at first. This is due to the fact, that the Russian market is furnishing goodsiincrea=singly, and that the fumishing even of civilian goods has risen to a very large degree. Some goods unobtainable for the common man in Russiage exported to China. Russian goods in general are now widely visible in Chinese skops, They are more expensive than where the Western goods before, but their quality is not as bad — as was believed at first. hat 1 f \ 12.