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NEW CHINA'S

First Quarter-Century

FOREIGN LANGUAGES PRESS
PEKING  1975

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Editor's Note

A quarter of a century has already passed since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Under the wise leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao Tsetung the Chinese people have succeeded brilliantly in every field, changing the old, poor and backward China into an initially prosperous socialist new China. How have these earth-shaking changes been effected? What effort have the industrious and brave Chinese people exerted in achieving their goals? To what extent have China's industry and agriculture advanced?

These are some of the questions about new China which are answered in this selection of reportage articles issued by the Hsinhua News Agency and from Chinese newspapers. We hope New China's First Quarter-Century will be of interest and use to our foreign friends.

Printed in the People's Republic of China

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Medical workers successfully use Chinese herb medicine to produce general anaesthesia.

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Contents

Forward Along the Great Road of Socialism         1

A Stable Socialist Economy                        7

Tapping Mineral Resources in a Big Way           14

Producing Machinery Self-Reliantly               19

Why China Builds Small Industrial Enterprises    24

Peking — from Consumer City to Industrial
  Centre                                         28

Transformation and Expansion of Shanghai's
  Industry                                       33

How China Achieves Self-Sufficiency In Grain     39

Why China Has No Inflation                       45

Revolution In Education                          51

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New Medical System                               58

Women in Socialist New China                     71

Changes at the Anshan Iron and Steel Company     77

Battle in the Taching New Oil Zone               88

Trunk Railway Line in China's Southwest	        100

A Railway in Rugged Mountains                   108

A Successful Voyage                             119

How the Chinese People Control Their Rivers     130

A New Dam Across the Yellow River               142

The Tachai Road                                 155

Three Former Grain-Deficient Provinces Show
  Surpluses                                     180

Development in Science and Technology           190

The "Barefoot Doctor" System Grows in Strength  199

1

Forward Along the Great Road of Socialism

Editorial by "Renmin Ribao," "Hongqi" and "Jiefangjun Bao,"
October 1, 1974

TWENTY-FIVE years have elapsed since the founding of the great People's Republic of China. These have been years in which the people of all nationalities in our country have fought in unity under the leadership of our great leader Chairman Mao, years in which our country has forged ahead along the road of socialism.

In celebrating this glorious festival, we extend our warm greetings to the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, revolutionary cadres and revolutionary intellectuals fighting on all fronts of socialist revolution and socialist construction, to patriotic personages, compatriots in Hong Kong and Macao and patriotic overseas Chinese and to the people of all nationalities throughout the country. We express our heartfelt thanks to the people all over the world and to friends in various countries for their support to our country's revolutionary cause and just struggle.

On the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China 25 years ago, Chairman Mao solemnly proclaimed to the world: The Chinese people comprising one quarter of humanity have now stood up! This proclamation¬

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expressed the firm confidence with which, as masters of their own destiny, the proletariat and the people of all nationalities of China looked forward to the future of their motherland. Earth-shaking changes have taken place in China in the past 25 years. Old China, poor and backward, has changed into socialist new China with the beginnings of prosperity. Under the guidance of Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line and under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, we have in the main completed the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production and have carried out successive socialist revolutions, each time more deeply, on the political and ideological fronts. We have won big victories in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in which the bourgeois headquarters of Liu Shao-chi and of Lin Piao have been smashed, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought has permeated people's thinking, socialist new things have bloomed everywhere, and the dictatorship of the proletariat has been further consolidated. As we persevere in the principle of maintaining independence and keeping the initiative in our own hands and relying on our own efforts, our socialist construction is briskly advancing and an independent and fairly complete system of industry and of national economy as a whole based on socialist agriculture is taking shape. Imperialist and social-imperialist encirclement, blockade, aggression and subversion have all ended in ignominious defeat.

Chairman Mao points out: Only socialism can save China. The course we have traversed proves that the socialist system enjoys matchless superiority and immense vitality as compared with the capitalist system and¬

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that, to build up, consolidate and develop the socialist system, it is imperative to unite the people of the whole country and persevere in continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat over a long period of time.

To stick to the road of socialism or to restore capitalism — this is a struggle between the two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and between the two lines, the Marxist and the revisionist. The four major inner-Party struggles between the two lines since the founding of the People's Republic of China all centred on the question of which road to take. The Party's basic line tells us that such struggles will continue for a long time to come. In the economic sphere, our basic victory in the transformation of the system of ownership has not ended the struggle between socialism and capitalism. In the political and ideological spheres, it will take a very long time to decide the issue in the struggle between socialism and capitalism. Chairman Mao points out: Before a brand-new social system can be built on the site of the old, the site must be swept clean. Invariably, remnants of old ideas reflecting the old system remain in people's minds for a long time, and they do not easily give way. We must continue to criticize the old system and old ideas, Struggle against sabotage by class enemies at home and abroad and make constant efforts to perfect the socialist system in the course of practice.

The aim of the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius initiated and led by Chairman Mao is precisely to occupy all spheres of the superstructure with Marxism, to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, to pre vent the restoration of capitalism and thus to make¬

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certain that our socialist state will never change its political colour. We must continue to broaden and deepen the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius for a long time. Organizations where mass investigations have been more or less completed should direct their main attention to study and criticism. We must read and study conscientiously and exert ourselves to digest works by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and by Chairman Mao, for this is the key to deepening the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius. We must continue to criticize Lin Piao's counter-revolutionary revisionist line and, especially for the present, study Chairman Mao's military writings and criticize Lin Piao's bourgeois military line. By adhering to the principle of making the past serve the present and by applying the Marxist stand, viewpoint and method, we must criticize the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius and sum up the historical experience of the struggle between the Confucian and Legalist schools and of class struggle as a whole in order to serve the current class struggle and the struggle to oppose and prevent revisionism and to help consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat. Attention should also be paid to training Marxist theoretical workers and enlarging their ranks in the course of struggle. In the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius, we must further heighten our consciousness of the struggle between the two lines, push forward on all fronts and further strengthen our adherence to the socialist orientation.

The socialist system under the dictatorship of the proletariat opens up broad avenues for developing production with greater, faster, better and more economical results. We must adhere to the principles, dig tunnels deep, store¬

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grain everywhere, and never seek hegemony and grasp revolution, promote production and other work and preparedness against war, conscientiously sum up and spread the experience of the advanced units which have done well in revolution and production, and work hard to fulfil or overfulfil this year's national economic plan and the Fourth Five-Year Plan. We must rely wholeheartedly on the working class, consolidate the worker-peasant alliance, give full play to the socialist enthusiasm of the people in their hundreds of millions which has been generated in the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius, and accelerate socialist construction The working class, poor and lower-middle peasants and labouring people of all nationalities of our country have high aspirations, they have ability, and they will undoubtedly build our great motherland into a modern socialist country. The People's Liberation Army should thoroughly implement Chairman Mao's military line, carry forward our army's glorious tradition and make new contributions in defending our great socialist motherland.

The unification of our country, the unity of our people and the unity of our various nationalities these are the basic guarantees of the sure triumph of our cause. Class enemies at home and abroad always try to undermine such unification and unity by every possible means, and we must sharpen our vigilance. it is imperative to strengthen the Party's centralized leadership and the great revolutionary unity of the whole Party, the whole army and the people of the whole country under the guidance of Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line. We must learn to handle all problems from the dialectical approach of one dividing into two and earnestly¬

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carry out the proletarian policies laid down by Chairman Mao, strictly distinguish between the two different types of contradictions and handle them correctly, unite over 95 per cent of the cadres and masses, bring all positive factors into play, unite with everyone that can be united with, and do everything possible to turn negative factors into positive ones so as to serve the great cause of building a socialist society.

As we celebrate National Day, we express deep solicitude for our compatriots in Taiwan Province, who are our kith and kin. We are determined to liberate Taiwan!

The international situation characterized by great disorder under heaven is developing in a direction favourable to the people of all countries. Beset with troubles internally and externally, the two hegemonic powers — the United States and the Soviet Union — find the going tougher and tougher. The struggles of the third world and the people of all countries are pushing the wheel of world history forward. In this excellent international situation, we should continue to carry out Chairman Mao's revolutionary line on foreign affairs, redouble our efforts to run China's affairs well and strive to make a greater contribution to mankind.

Under the leadership of the Party Central Committee headed by Chairman Mao, let us further enhance the excellent situation prevailing in our country and unite to win still greater victories!

7

A Stable Socialist Economy

OVER the past 25 years the Chinese people, under the leadership of Chairman Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China, have turned the poor and backward old China into a socialist new China with initial prosperity.

As a result of the fulfilment of three five-year plans and the construction for the first three and a half years of the Fourth Five-Year Plan, China has established a solid socialist economic base. With improved farming conditions, she has strengthened her ability to resist natural disasters. She is now able to increase agricultural production considerably in the face of minor natural disasters and keep the loss at a minimum in the face of major ones. Good harvests have been reaped for the last 12 consecutive years. The output of grain and industrial crops is enough to satisfy both the people's basic needs and those of developing industry. Industry is beginning to provide agriculture and other branches of the national economy with essential raw materials, fuel and technical equipment, satisfy the domestic market and expand its exports. The economy is now equitably distributed. A number of large key projects have been¬

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built in the interior so that industry is no longer concentrated in the coastal areas. With stable prices and a thriving market, China has become a country without either internal or external debts. All this shows that an independent and fairly comprehensive industry and national economy with a socialist agriculture as base are taking shape.

Under the triple yoke of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism, old China was extremely backward economically. Without enough grain and cotton to supply herself, she imported grain every year from the mid-19th century. She was plagued by perennial problems of inflation, rocketing commodity prices and shrinking markets. The labouring people lived in dire poverty. When new China was founded, industry, more than 70 per cent of which was light industry, accounted for only about 30 per cent of the total industrial and agricultural output value. Technical and production levels were very low. It was on this tattered basis that China proceeded with the stupendous task of building a socialist economy.

Proceeding from her actual conditions, China has developed her economy by making full use of her resources, relying on domestic accumulation and the wisdom and strength of the people and by undertaking construction self-reliantly.

After her founding in 1949, new China confiscated the enterprises run by imperialism and bureaucrat-capitalism, carried out land reform, democratic reform and a series of other revolutionary movements. This sparked the enthusiasm of the workers and peasants and spurred the rehabilitation and development of industry and agricul-

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ture. In 1 952 China outstripped all previous levels in the output of major industrial and agricultural products. The rehabilitation and development of the national economy smashed the blockade of the imperialists and provided the necessary prerequisites for planned socialist economic construction.

By 1956 China had basically brought about the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce. The radical changes in the relations of production gave an impetus to the development of the productive forces. With unprecedented enthusiasm, the peasants who had embarked on collectivization swung into construction of water control and other farmland improvement projects and succeeded in wresting high yields. The workers displayed their revolutionary spirit as the leading class of the state and constantly raised industrial production. China fulfilled or overfulfilled her targets under the First Five-Year Plan in 1957. It was the first time that the Chinese people had their own industries producing aircraft, motor vehicles, modern machine tools, power-generating equipment, metallurgical and mining equipment and other new products.

Under the guidance of the general line laid down by Chairman Mao — going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism — in 1958 a Great Leap Forward took place in China's national economy. People's communes were established in the countryside. Total industrial and agricultural output value that year was 55 per cent higher than in 1957. Continued advances in industry and¬

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agriculture enabled the country to fulfil the major targets set for the Second Five-Year Plan two years ahead of schedule.

The Soviet revisionist Khrushchov renegade clique in 1960 perfidiously withdrew all its experts from China, tore up hundreds of agreements and contracts and stopped supplying important equipment in an attempt to sabotage China's socialist construction. Under Chairman Mao's leadership, the Chinese people, working with a will and self-reliantly, defeated the plot of Soviet revisionism to sabotage. China's industry, science and technology continued their progress independently.

The third and fourth five-year plans for developing China's national economy have been carried out in the heat of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which smashed the bourgeois headquarters of Liu Shao-chi and then of Lin Piao, consolidated the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist economic base, sparked the revolutionary zeal of the people and accelerated the development of the social productive forces. The national economy continued going forward at a fairly high speed. In 1970 China fulfilled or overfulfilled the major industrial and agricultural production targets for the Third Five-Year Plan. total increase in China's grain output in the eight years from 1965 to 1973 was greater than in the 15 pre-Cultural Revolution years of 1950-65. Gross industrial output value in 1973 was more than double the 1965 figure.

Where do the resources, funds, equipment and personnel come from for China's socialist economic construction? The Chinese experience answers: from self-reliance.

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China has built the Taching, Takang, Shengli and other oilfields, and modern oil refineries and petro-chemical complexes. She is self-sufficient in both variety and output of oil products and now exports oil and oil products from a surplus.

The people of the nine provinces south of the Yangtze River have located a great number of coalfields, opened many of them and produced large amounts of coal. This changed the long-standing situation in which coal had to be transported from the north to the south. China is now self-sufficient in ores for her iron and steel industry thanks to the opening of many new mines.

China relies mainly on herself for machinery. Not all existing equipment is up to date. However, with wisdom and creativeness the working class is able to make new machinery up to modern standards out of ordinary equipment. The performance of some old machines has been greatly raised after technical transformation. Twenty-five years' hard work has enabled the machine-building industry to supply the various branches of the national economy with complete sets of equipment.

China does not rely on foreign loans or increasing her people's burden to accumulate funds for socialist economic construction, but depends entirely on accumulation within socialist enterprises. With the enthusiasm of the people for socialism, it is possible to create great wealth. Mass movements for increasing production and practising economy have been carried out in state-owned enterprises to accumulate more funds.

Today, China's annual revenue is a dozen times what it was in the early years after the founding of the People's Republic. Her present annual investments in¬

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industrial capital construction are several times her entire annual revenue in the early post-liberation years. The people also follow the policy of building the country through diligence and thrift, and apply this all the way from managing households to running enterprises and all other undertakings, in order to save all possible money for the construction of the country.

Part of China's engineers and technicians are trained in schools, but a still greater number are trained through practical experience in factories. The method of close co-operation among leading cadres, technicians and workers in production and construction has not only greatly accelerated the progress of science and technology but trained tens of thousands of experts of worker origin.

In her socialist economic construction China pays attention to co-operation and exchange with other countries on the basis of equality and mutual benefit. But she does not rely on others. Chinese experience shows that the economy of a given country can be developed at a fairly fast pace provided the country relies on itself. On the contrary, reliance on foreign countries would only bind the people hand and foot, slow down economic construction and detract from political and economic independence.

In her socialist economic construction, China has adhered to the general policy for developing the national economy formulated by Chairman Mao: Take agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading factor. In planning, emphasis is placed on agriculture, light industry and heavy industry in that order, so that all three forge ahead.

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Grain production in 1973 was more than double that of 1949, and there have been great increases in various industrial crops. Agriculture provides light industry with raw materials and markets and promotes its development, the total output value of light industry in 1973 was a dozen times that of 1949. Agriculture and light industry provide markets and funds for heavy industry, enabling it to grow faster. The rapid advance of heavy industry in turn provides a growing amount of technical equipment for the modernization of farming and the promotion of light industry. In this way industry is made to play its leading role in the national economy.

The successes in China's socialist economic construction are the fruit of the great effort of her hundreds of millions of people under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the guidance of Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line. In the two great revolutionary mass movements — in industry, learn from Taching and in agriculture, learn from Tachai — the workers and peasants of the country learn from the workers of the Taching Oilfield and the peasants of the Tachai Production Brigade. They work in the spirit of hard work and self-reliance, enabling China's national economy to develop fairly rapidly and steadily.

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Tapping Mineral Resources in a Big Way

WITH an area of 9,600,000 square kilometres and a coastline 14,000 kilometres long, China possesses rich mineral resources in its vast territory and coastal sea. However, these natural resources, like those of many other countries of the third world, were for almost a century controlled and rapaciously exploited by the imperialists and colonialists. Old China was an attractive piece of meat scrambled for by several imperialist powers. In the middle of the 19th century, under the guise of "aid," "tourism" and "evangelism" the imperialists began sending their agents to China to survey the mineral resources with the aim of seizing them. Through unequal treaties imposed on the Ching dynastic government, several imperialist powers appropriated the mining rights in a dozen or so Chinese provinces. They paid Chinese labour miserable wages to open up the mines and ship out the ores they had plundered, while the manufactured goods and materials they sent back to China were sold to the Chinese people at very high prices, fleecing them doubly.

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With the founding of new China the unequal treaties were abolished. One of the first things she did was to place all mineral resources in the country under state ownership and take into her own hands all surveying and exploitation of them.

There were only a little more than 200 geological technicians and some 800 workers engaged in geological prospecting work in old China. Today, all over the country, tens of thousands of technicians and hundreds of thousands of people are working in several hundred regional teams doing geological surveys, mineral prospecting, petroleum geological exploration, hydrogeological and engineering geological work and geophysical prospecting.

This army of geological workers use various kinds of equipment and apparatus to explore mineral deposits, carrying out the prospecting on land, in the sea and from the air. The core-drilling work done in 1973 alone was scores of times the total done in the more than 40 pre-liberation years.

China has also mobilized the broad masses of the people, including people's commune members, to explore and report local mineral deposits. This has done away with the myth that prospecting can be done only by experts and resulted in the discovery of tens of thousands of prospects and numerous mineral deposits. Some new mineral formations have been found, and the amount of reserves of over 100 varieties of minerals has been established. The discovery of many rich coal and oil fields gives the lie to the imperialists' assertions that China is "oil-poor" and that "coal is non-existent south of the Yangtze River." The verified deposits of iron,¬

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manganese, copper, tungsten, aluminum, nickel, lead, zinc, sulphur, phosphorus, asbestos and many other important minerals are increasing. In old China, deposits of only 18 minerals were known and their reserves were greatly underestimated.

Although formerly it was thought that there was no rock salt in the southern province of Kiangsi, a prospecting team, acting on information provided by the people of nine counties, started to search for salt in a small basin. After interviewing 3,000 people, analyzing the water from scores of wells and springs and studying the formations of different rock layers, they located a salt deposit estimated to be big enough to meet the needs of the whole province for the next several thousand years.

Old China had not a single geological institute and only geology departments or courses in a few universities. After liberation, starting from 1953, a number of geological institutes and prospecting schools were set up in Hupeh and Hopei provinces and in Changchun and Chengtu cities. Geological departments were established in a number of science and engineering colleges. While thousands of geological prospectors were being trained in secondary schools and institutions of higher learning, great numbers of geological technicians with a good theoretical foundation and practical work experience were brought up on the job by veteran workers in the field. Today, many of the chief engineers, regular engineers and technicians in China's geological prospecting teams are people trained on the job.

While making use of advanced expertise developed in other countries, geological prospecting, designing and¬

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research organizations in China rely mainly on their own efforts to design and build all kinds of prospecting equipment and geological apparatus as well as to solve geological and prospecting problems.

Before liberation, all prospecting machinery and geological apparatus were imported. After the founding of the People's Republic a number of big and medium factories were set up. Privately-owned small iron works, foundries and machine repair shops, after being transformed into enterprises under joint state-private ownership and later into state-owned ones, were merged and expanded into factories specializing in producing prospecting equipment. Today, big, medium and small factories run by the central and local authorities and geological teams to manufacture and repair prospecting and geological equipment are in operation in all parts of the country.

Under unified economic planning China has embarked on setting up medium and small mines while opening big ones so as to give full play to the initiative of the local authorities and the broad masses in tapping new mineral resources. A number of regional and county administrations and people's communes also engage in prospecting and mining. The ores they mine are mainly used locally to speed up agricultural development and in making articles of daily use to meet the people's needs. Surplus ores are turned over to the state. Output from the locally-run small coal mines in Honan Province, for example, now meets one-third of the province's coal requirements, and in the last few years the Pingmo Commune in the province has extracted more than 100,000 tons of bauxite for state-run factories. Today, not only¬

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the regional authorities and mining departments in all parts of the country but also millions of ordinary people are engaged in a common effort to open up new mines in China to advance all-round development.

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[A photograph]

Anshan Iron and Steel Company — one of China's important steel centres.

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[A photograph]

Successful trial production of integrated circuit electronic computer that does a million operations per second.

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Producing Machinery Self-Reliantly

BUILDING machinery and equipment by self-reliance is an important factor accounting for the rapid growth of China's national economy.

In a quarter-century, new China has built a good number of big enterprises forming the backbone of her machine-building industry and tens of thousands of small and medium ones. In accordance with the requirements of the development of the national economy, the country has also built up industries making metallurgical, mining and power equipment, equipment for the petroleum and chemical industries, machinery for the textile and other light industries, motor vehicles, ships, tractors, machine tools and instruments and meters.

China's machine-building industry has developed an adequate base, with a fairly comprehensive range of trades, rational geographical distribution and much improved capability to produce whole sets of equipment. In fact, it has already supplied a large quantity of such equipment to the various departments of the national economy. In 1973 it made 5 and 5.5 times as much mining and metallurgical equipment respectively as it did in¬

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1965, the year before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolut1o The outputs of motor vehicles machine tools and petroleum and power equipment in 1973 were from 2.7 to over 7 times those of 1965.

Pre-liberation China, which depended mainly on imported machines, had practically no machine-building industry of her own. The few machinery plants could only do some repairs and produce such simple products as small motors and water pumps. This marked the colonial and semi-colonial character of old China's industry.

Agriculture is the foundation of China's national economy, and the fundamental way out for agriculture lies in mechanization. The farm machinery industry has made much headway since the Great Leap Forward in 1958, especially since the Cultural Revolution started in 1966.

Tractor plants and factories making motors and engines have been set up in more than 20 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. Except in some remote areas, most counties have their own farm machinery plants and repair works. In 1973 the outputs of tractors, walking tractors, pumping equipment, harvesting and threshing machines and farm and side-line produce processing machinery were from several to a dozen times the 1965 figure.

In the past few years, machine.-building workers and technicians working with the poor and lower.-middle peasants in rural areas, produced a number of advanced farming and pumping machines adapted to local methods of cultivation and terrain This further enlarged the mechanized acreage and the area under powered drainage and irrigation.

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To supply the nation's basic industries with the equipment they need, China's machine-building departments stress the production of mining and metallurgical equipment for the iron and steel industry. They now design and make equipment of different types for excavation and drivage in mines, ore dressing, sintering, transportation, smelting and steel rolling, and provide complete installations for large and medium iron and non-ferrous metal mines as well as iron and steel complexes.

In the period from 1957 to 1973 the machine-building industry supplied a large amount of rolling equipment to China's major iron and steel enterprises in Anshan, Wuhan and Paotow and so helped increase the variety of rolled steel. China now makes over 1,000 kinds of steel in more than 20,000 specifications providing the necessary varieties for making motor vehicles, tractors, heavy machinery, precision instruments and meters, for railways and other communications facilities and for the petroleum and chemical industries.

Since her founding new China has built numerous large ad medium coal shafts and reconstructed a number of old mines with whole sets of new equipment. Most of the equipment used in both cases was made in China. In the 73 years between 1876 and 1948 only about 20 coal mines were operating in pre-liberation China.

After successfully trial producing the world's first 12,000-kilowatt steam turbine generating set with inner water-cooled rotor and stator in 1958, China went on to build a 125,000-kilowatt set in 1969, which was followed by a still larger one with a capacity of 200,000 kilowatts. With the steady flow of equipment into the power industry, electric power output has gone up every year,¬

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and the country's power output in a few days at present is equivalent to the total for the whole of 1949. Not only has the power industry made tremendous advances in the coastal areas but a number of new power industry centres have been built in inland areas.

To develop the machine-building industry with greater, faster, better and more economical results and keep pace with the rapid growth of the national economy, machine-building plants in all parts of China follow the mass line and overcome engineering difficulties by boldly arousing the workers and technicians to make technical innovations. The machine-builders achieved a technological feat by evolving a process known as "ants gnawing on a bone." Its significance lies in pooling the workers' wisdom to manufacture heavy-duty machinery in the absence of large equipment by using a number of small machine tools to tackle a colossal workpiece. Large quantities of advanced heavy-duty machinery for the mining, metallurgical, petroleum and chemical industries were in this way turned out successfully.

The mass line in building new equipment also finds expression in encouraging the workers to tap the potential of existing enterprises to the full. Mutual co-ordination and a rational division of labour are practised among the various engineering trades so as to bring all positive factors into play in a concentrated effort to build particular kinds of equipment. A case in point was the building of mining and metallurgical equipment in Kiangsu Province at a time when no heavy machinery plant could be found locally. In the Cultural Revolution, the province organized co-operation among a dozen trades involving over 200 enterprises to build whole sets¬

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of mining and metallurgical equipment for the Nanking Steel Mill. As a result, 30,000 tons of mining and metallurgical equipment were produced in three years and a rolling mill with rolls 650 millimetres in diameter was completed in a year.

In designing new machines China relies on "three-in-one" combinations of technicians, workers and cadres, and of designers, users and manufacturers. By summing up correct ideas from all quarters and drawing on the advanced experience in different lines to make major improvements on the blueprints, this practice makes it possible to work out designs which meet the needs of users and facilitate serial production while saving material and labour power, cutting the cost and improving the quality of products. Many important machines and up-to-date products turned out in recent years were assigned and made through such "three-in-one" combinations. Among these are huge blast furnaces and converters, large jig boring machines, grinding machines, numerically-controlled machine tools, whole tolerance single-side meshing gear detectors, down-the-hole drills and pumps of giant sizes.

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Why China Builds Small Industrial Enterprises

THE rapid growth of small and medium industrial enterprises in China's urban and rural areas shows the great success of the Chinese policy of "walking on two legs" in industrial construction that is, the policy of building big, medium and small enterprises simultaneously. The significance of building small enterprises is shown most clearly by the important role they play today in the national economy.

In 1973 small nitrogenous fertilizer plants were producing 54 per cent of China's synthetic ammonia production of which has increased by wide margins over the past few years. Small cement works turned out more than half of her cement Small hydro-electric power stations Provided electricity for many remote regions for the first time in history.

Nearly 1,000 small nitrogenous fertilizer plants had been set up by the end of 1973. A number of new plants are expected to be completed before the end of 1974.

Eighty per cent of China's counties have established their own small cement works, which total 2,800. Since¬

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1970 the yearly increase of cement output has averaged 3 million tons.

Fifty thousand small hydro-electric power stations scattered in the vast countryside have an aggregate generating capacity surpassing the country's total at the time of liberation in 1949. These small power stations have brought many remote villages and hilly areas into the modern world electricity-wise.

Small iron and steel works have sprung up, turning out over three times as much steel in 1973 as in 1966 and over four times as much iron.

These facts show that a solid foundation of socialist industry is being laid in China state-funded big and medium modern enterprises supplemented by small enterprises.

Early in the spring of 1957 Chairman Mao said about economic construction in China: We must build up a number of large-scale modern enterprises step by step to form the mainstay of our industry, without which we shall not be able to turn our country into a strong modern industrial power within the coming decades. But the majority of our enterprises should not be built on such scale; we should set up more small and medium enterprises.

An essential part of the policy of "walking on two legs" instead of hobbling along on one is to have the local People's government at all levels and the people's communes initiate the building of small enterprises by their own efforts while the state builds large and medium modern enterprises. Experience has proved that the policy has speeded up industrialization in China.

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Construction of modern enterprises can only be undertaken by the state, as larger investment, concentrated resources, modern communications facilities fairly complex equipment and technology and a longer building period are required. Socialist China is a developing country and the economic base she took over from old China was extremely weak. Funds and equipment are limited, so that only a certain number of big enterprises can be established in a given period of time in accordance with the main needs of the national economy.

Compared with the big enterprises the small ones require much less investment and simpler equipment and take a shorter time to build. They can be set up by provinces and municipalities administrative regions and counties, and even by the people's communes and neighbourhood communities. The numerous small enterprises built so far have, in general, an investment somewhere between tens of thousands of yuan and several hundred thousand yuan each. They were built in a matter of a few months at most a year. These small plants can turn out advanced products as big modern plants do.

In Changchow a small city near Shanghai a small plant formerly producing copper mesh has succeeded in making an integrated circuit computer capable of doing 120,000 operations per second.

A small neighbourhood plant in Shanghai with 170 workers recently built a high-efficiency four-operation cold header capable of turning out 300 screw nuts of three-four mm. diameter per minute.

Many small plants now manufacture products equal in quality to those by big plants. It is the people who play the decisive role, not the equipment.

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Many of China's small enterprises have grown into medium modern enterprises after a few years' expansion. Some have become industrial centres of considerable scale.

The widespread building of small enterprises has helped to improve the geographical distribution of industry in China. All provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions today have established both heavy and light industries and both basic and processing industries, which meet in certain degree the local needs for industrial and agricultural development and the people's daily necessities. Formerly China's industries were mainly Concentrated in the big coastal cities.

Small machinery plants, chemical fertilizer plants, cement works, iron and steel mills and coal pits have been set up now in more than half of China's counties. The rest, with less favourable conditions, have built one to four such small enterprises. In the Tibet Autonomous Region around 200 industrial enterprises have been set up.

Scattered mining resources, farm produce and side line products are fully utilized in the expansion of small enterprises, which in turn play an important role in local economic development and the people's livelihood.

Hunan Province, by mobilizing the people's communes and production brigades to tap local resources, has opened many small coal pits with a small amount of investment. They turn out more than 3 million tons of coal a year, equal to the capacity of three pairs of modern shafts. This not only satisfies the local peasants' needs but also supports country-wide industrial construction.

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Peking—from Consumer City to Industrial Centre

SINCE liberation Peking has become not only the country's political and cultural centre but is beginning to be a socialist industrial base. The 1973 gross industrial output value was 111 times that of 1949, more than the national total in 1949.

Though Peking's modern industry is 102 years old counting from the establishment of the Mentoukou Coal Mine in 1872, its progress was extremely slow in the first 77 years. At the time of liberation it was still a backward, consumer city swarming with parasitic bureaucrat, comprador, landlord and feudal class elements. Even thumb-tacks, drinking glasses and tooth-paste had to be provided by other cities or foreign countries. Most of the factories and mines were handicraft shops using simple tools such as picks, bellows and treadle looms.

After liberation, under the guidance of Chairman Mao's revolutionary line and supported by the whole country, Peking workers set up a fairly complete industrial system through hard work. Now the city has a million industrial workers, one-fourth of its urban population. The ancient city walls were demolished¬

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and the urban area was expanded. Factories have gone up on land once occupied by foul ditches and grave mounds, and also in the hilly outlying areas. Many old Peking residents say that the city has changed beyond recognition.

Peking, a city with a history of many centuries, has only in the quarter-century since liberation undergone radical changes in its industry.

Before liberation Peking produced no steel and only a little pig iron. Now its annual steel output is ten times the national total of 1949, and it produces high-grade alloy steel in such form as wire of less than a hair's breadth, and steel tape thinner than paper.

A city that could not make air valve tubes for bicycles before liberation, Peking now produces many kinds of large, precision and automatic machines, such as the 30,000-ton oil-hydraulic press and hob relieving grinding machine with a tolerance of less than three-thousandth a millimetre.

Twenty-five years ago Peking could not make even the simplest electronic tube radio sets. Now its products include whole sets of high-power transmitters for radio stations and integrated circuit electronic computers that can do a million calculations per second.

In the past, Peking's chemical industry did no more than process a few kinds of sugar-coated pills and salt-petre by hand for firecrackers Now it produces acids and alkalis and has developed coking- and petro-chemical industries. Its annual output of petroleum surpasses the national total in 50 pre-liberation years.

Peking under the rule of the Kuomintang reactionaries could only produce coarse cloth, inferior-quality soap¬

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and other light industrial goods. Now more than 80 per cent of the manufactured goods for daily use on the market are made locally.

More than 400 varieties of products made in Peking, including motor vehicles, machine tools, cameras, refrigerators and pianos, are being exported to at least 90 countries and regions.

Peking's rapid industrial progress results from Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line winning against the revisionist line pushed by Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao. In the past 25 years there have been four great leaps in Peking's industrial development, each proving that the correctness or incorrectness of the ideological and political line decides everything. In 1952, workers and other sections of the people launched the movements against the "three evils" (corruption, waste and bureaucracy) and the "five evils" committed by capitalists (bribery of government workers, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on government contracts, and stealing economic information for private speculation). After the masses repulsed the desperate attacks of the bourgeoisie the total value of the city's industrial output rose in 1952 to more than four times the 1949 figure. In 1956 the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce, handicrafts and agriculture was carried out and the old relations of production were changed. The total industrial output value rose again in the year to more than twice that of 1952. In 1958, after the struggle against the bourgeois Rightists and guided by the Party's general line for building socialism, the Great Leap Forward began and the city's total industrial output value more than doubled that of 1956.

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The fourth rise in industry was most prominent. Due to the two bourgeois headquarters with Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao as their chieftains being smashed in the Cultural Revolution Chairman Mao's revolutionary line has been carried out in a more penetrating way, resulting in further marked development of the city's industry. Over two-thirds of the present industrial production capacity was achieved during the Cultural Revolution. The total industrial output value in 1973 was three times that of 1965, the year preceding the Cultural Revolution. In 1974, spurred by the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius, Peking's industrial production again showed considerable increase.

The revisionist line pushed by Liu Shao-chi before the Cultural Revolution imposed serious handicaps on the city's industrial construction. In its iron and steel industry, for example, it had to bring in iron ore from as far south as Hainan Island and have its steel bloomed in other parts of the country. Not until the Cultural Revolution began was this lopsided situation changed. The workers and staff members concentrated their efforts in building iron mines and strengthening the industrial system with complete sets of equipment. In a few years' time the city became self-sufficient in iron ore and expanded its blooming and steel rolling capacities. Now steel output is over four times that before the Cultural Revolution. The output of iron ore, pig iron and rolled steel has also increased by a wide margin, the latter being now in more than 10,000 specifications.

Other industries have also made much progress during the Cultural Revolution. The outputs of electric generators, motor vehicles, machine tools, mining and chemical¬

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equipment, walking tractors, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, wristwatches, transistor radios, dacron and other products were several to dozens of times the quantities produced before the Cultural Revolution. Quality has improved and there are more varieties. The city now produces over 200 types of machine tools as against only 20 in 1965 and over 600 electronic products as against 80.

Since the start of the Cultural Revolution the Peking workers, determined to catch up with and surpass advanced world levels, have succeeded in more than 100,000 items of technical innovations. Recently they succeeded in trial producing a great many new products, including a 40-cutter digit-controlled horizontal boring and milling machine with automatic change of cutters, a laser-controlled grating scratching 1,800 lines on one square mm. of glass and a colour television rebroadcast van.

The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history. It was under the Party's leadership, by persisting in the socialist revolution and so bringing the masses' socialist initiative into full play that Peking achieved such great success in its industry. The working people, though proud of these achievements, are still not content with them and are continuing their march forward.

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Transformation and Expansion of Shanghai's Industry

SHANGHAI, China's leading industrial city, has become a fairly comprehensive industrial, scientific and technical base as a result of its transformation and development in the past quarter-century.¬

Industrial production and construction have grown rapidly. Gross industrial output value in 1973 was 17 times that in 1949, the year of its liberation, and double the amount for 1965, the year before the Cultural Revolution. Heavy industry accounted for more than 54 per cent of the total industrial output value in 1973, as against 13.6 per cent in 1949. Steel output has increased each year. Now, Shanghai's steel output in half a day equals the whole of 1949's. It produces more than 1,200 varieties of steel in nearly 20,000 specifications. The machine-building industry has turned out a 300,000-kw. steam turbo-generating unit with inner water-cooled stator and rotor, large precision thread-grinding machines, 10,000-ton class cargo-passenger vessels as well as whole plants each with an annual output of 1.1 million tons of iron, 1.2 million tons of steel, 700,000 tons of medium plate and sheet steel, or 2.5¬

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million tons of oil. In the corresponding period, the amount of raw and other materials available to industry has rapidly increased. Over 40 new industries have been added, including new-type metals, tractors, motor vehicles, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, petro-chemicals, heavy machinery, precision machine tools, power equipment, wristwatches, cameras, television sets, chemical fibres and electronic elements and equipment.

Although old Shanghai's industry dated back more than a century, it grew slowly and had a strong colonial economic nature. Major enterprises for the supply of electricity, coal gas, tap water and transportation were controlled by the imperialists. The main equipment, raw and other materials and fuel for industry were imported. Its so-called heavy industry was for the assembly and repair of machines imported from imperialist countries. It had practically no independent machine manufacturing. The chief textile and light industries, though with a fairly good start, were still using the same old machines and backward technique. Working conditions were very poor. In collusion with the Kuomintang reactionaries, the imperialists plundered resources, exploited cheap labour power and dumped their surplus on the market. National industry was on the brink of bankruptcy. At that time Shanghai's yearly gross industrial output value was less than what is produced in 20 days at present.

The great changes in Shanghai's industrial map took place along with the sustained deep-going socialist revolution.

The establishment of proletarian political power in 1949 ousted the imperialist economic forces, confiscated¬

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bureaucrat-capitalist enterprises and set up a state economy in which the means of production are owned by the state. In accordance with the general line for the transition period formulated by Chairman Mao, the policy of using, restricting and transforming capitalist industry and commerce was adopted. Capitalist-owned undertakings were brought under socialist state ownership step by step. Measures included their acting as sales agents for the government, producing goods for the state under state plan and joint state-private ownership. Handicrafts and other individual economic units were organized into co-operatives. In this way the socialist transformation of ownership of the means of production was in the main completed and the semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature of old Shanghai's economy was changed.

Profound socialist revolutionary movements have been launched on the political and ideological fronts in the wake of this transformation. After the great rectification campaign and the anti-Rightist struggle were crowned with success, Shanghai launched its Great Leap Forward in 1958 under the guidance of the Party's general line of going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism. Total industrial output value jumped 50 per cent above the previous year and was 5.7 times that in 1949. The Cultural Revolution roused to new heights the socialist enthusiasm and initiative of the broad masses of workers and there has been a new forward leap in industrial production. Shanghai's gross industrial output for the Third Five-Year Plan period (1966-70) was 68 per cent over that for the five years before the Cultural Revolution. The current movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius¬

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has further consolidated and developed the achievements of the Cultural Revolution and promoted the expansion of production. In 1973 the city's gross industrial output value was double that in 1965, before the Cultural Revolution, while in the first three quarters of 1 974 it increased considerably over 1973.

Since liberation, in line with the principle of "full utilization and rational development," the old industrial base of Shanghai has merged a number of enterprises, transformed part of the over-concentrated and lopsidedly-developed trades and turned them into new departments urgently needed by the state. It has also moved some plants to aid new industrial centres in other parts of the country. Most of Shanghai's meters and instruments, electronics, plastics and chemical fibres factories have grown from light industrial plants and textile mills. Quite a number of factories making heavy mining machinery and metallurgical equipment began with the merging of small plants. This reduced state investment while transforming the existing industrial base and making full use of production potential.

All plants rely on the initiative and enthusiasm of the workers, cadres and technicians for technical transformation of equipment in old enterprises. Equipment is remodelled, technological processes and techniques are improved and new equipment and materials devised. A number of industries have adopted electronics, fluidic system, laser, chipless metal working and other advanced technologies and techniques. The metallurgical industry uses the oxygen steel-making process, continuous ingot casting, vacuum metallurgy, precision rolling and continuous drawing. Cotton mills have replaced the old¬

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spindles with new high-speed spindles and raised cotton yarn output per 1,000 spindle-hours to 43 kilogrammes from the early post-liberation figure of 18 kilogrammes.

Shanghai uses socialist co-ordination as an important means by which to develop its industry. An example is its remodelling of the city's 1,000 old high-coal-consumption boilers dating back to the 20s and 30s. A few specialists behind closed doors mapped out a plan prior to the Cultural Revolution for remodelling these boilers over a ten-year period. In 1969 the Shanghai Municipal Revolutionary Committee mobilized the masses to break the barrier between different trades and organized specialized plants to produce key equipment and other plants to make parts and accessories. Two hundred thousand people worked in co-operation and made 1,000 coal-saving boilers in only 80 days.

In order to develop the medical apparatus industry, more than 300 units co-operated in 1972 to trial produce 89 kinds of precision medical apparatus of fairly high quality. New techniques such as supersonics, laser, electronics and isotopes are used in making new products. This has created a new productive force that can do what a single trade cannot. Many important achievements gained in Shanghai were due to the co-operation of other units including those in other parts of the country. Shanghai develops its industry not by building a host of new plants, but mainly by making the most efficient use of the existing foundation to enlarge production capacity and accumulate funds. The city's investment in capital construction from 1949 to 1973 accounted for only 6.7 per cent of its total accumulation for the state.

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In its industrial development, Shanghai has received aid from the whole country. In turn it supplies state socialist construction with large quantities of industrial goods, technical forces and accumulated funds. Since liberation it has sent a large amount of machinery and equipment and other products to various parts of the country, transferred several hundred plants to other places and sent out nearly a million skilled workers and technicians. In addition, it has trained a large body of technical personnel for other parts of China.

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How China Achieves Self-Sufficiency in Grain

IN a quarter-century China has been turned from a country of perpetual grain shortage into one with enough to eat.

China's grain output in 1973 exceeded 250 million tons, more than double that of 1949. Though its population is now close to 800 million, the amount of grain per person has increased by more than 100 kgs compared with 1949, the year of liberation.

State grain reserves have been built up. The production teams under the people's communes and many peasant households also have their own reserves.

Hunger and poverty haunted the working people in old China, when farm production sagged under the ruthless exploitation and oppression by the reactionary rulers. Millions died of starvation in a year of crop failure. Food remained a problem that was not and could not possibly be solved at that time.

Imperialist prophets once insolently alleged that new China would not be able to solve that problem either. The social-imperialists, too, slanderously described the¬

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Chinese people as "living on wild herbs." Their shameless assertions, however, have been refuted by the fact of China's increasing farm production.

New China led by Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party is a country of which the people are the masters. Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line, the superiority of the socialist system and the collective strength of the more than 50,000 people's communes have made it possible for China to solve the grain problem step by step.

China's fundamental policy in solving this problem is to rely on the collective strength of the masses and increase farm production by making full use of domestic agricultural resources. Hundreds of millions of peasants have been mobilized in a battle to remake nature and develop agriculture according to the vastly different conditions of different areas.

One important task under this gigantic plan is to change the conditions in the traditionally disaster-ridden, low-yield and grain-deficient areas. How this was done can be seen in the example of the provinces of Hopei, Shantung and Honan and the northern parts of Kiangsu and Anhwei provinces on the Yellow River, the Huai and the Haiho, all rivers notorious in Chinese history for the damage they did to the life and property of the people. Relying on their own strength, the millions of people in these areas worked hard to improve soil, harness rivers, sink wells and build other projects and finally achieved self-sufficiency in grain. Hopei, Honan and Shantung garnered twice as much, or even more, grain in 1973 as in 1949 and all three provinces delivered surplus grain to the state as agricultural tax.¬

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The long-time dependence of the northern areas on grain supply from the south is coming to an end — a fact of great significance to the country in solving her food problem.

The Tachai Production Brigade in the Taihang Mountains, over 1,000 metres above sea level, is a national pacesetter in agriculture. It provides an example of the dauntless heroism of the peasants in the fight to re-arrange China's rural landscape under the guidance of Mao Tsetung Thought. Keeping to the socialist road and working collectively, the Tachai peasants levelled hill-tops to enlarge farmland, quarried stone to build embankments and turned hill slopes into terraced fields. Most of the farmland there now gives high and stable yields. The brigade reaps more than 7.5 tons of grain per hectare as against some 0.75 ton before.

A mass movement to emulate Tachai has swept rural China since Chairman Mao issued the call: In agriculture, learn from Tachai. Water conservancy and other farm improvement projects were built throughout the country. Alongside the big ones financed by the state, myriads of smaller ones have been completed by people's communes and production brigades.

China's irrigated area has increased enormously as a result. Rivers that used to cause serious floods have in the main been brought under control and made to benefit farming. Total forest area in the country is now more than double that at the time of liberation.

Large tracts of desert, alkaline, swampy and arid land have been transformed into fertile fields. Many counties have increased their farm output by 100 per cent or more within a short space of time.

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Where the natural conditions are more favourable, particularly in the Yangtze River valley, the commune members have worked for still higher output by farming more scientifically and tapping production potential. Relying on the strength of the collective economy and with help from the state, they have systematically increased irrigation facilities and the supply of fertilizer, improved soil and stepped up farm mechanization. They have built a number of agricultural bases that give stable high yields and provide the state with large quantities of marketable grain irrespective of drought or water-logging. Among these are the Yangtze Delta in east China and the Pearl River Delta in the south. These bases have played an important role in feeding the population and meeting the needs of national construction. There are now more than 200 counties and municipalities in China each of which provides the state with 50,000 to 350,000 tons of marketable grain annually.

Efforts have been made to increase unit yield through intensive farming and all-round implementation of the Eight-Point Charter for Agriculture (soil improvement, water control, rational application of fertilizer, improved seed strains, rational close planting, plant protection, field management and improvement of farm implements). In many areas, the people's communes have improved the cropping system according to local conditions, introduced a set of scientific methods for all kinds of farm work from levelling the land to harvesting, and increased multiple cropping and inter-planting acreage. Most of the areas in north China now reap two crops a year instead of the previous one, while triple-cropping acreage is increasing yearly in the south. A general rise in unit yield has been recorded in all parts of China.¬

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Quite a few counties and municipalities in the south have surpassed 10.5 tons in per-hectare grain yield.

Guided by the policy of taking agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading factor, Party organizations throughout the country and people of all trades and professions are lending a hand to agricultural production. Cadres at various levels often go to the countryside to take part in physical labour and help solve problems arising from the development of agriculture.

There has been a fairly rapid increase in the supply of farm machinery, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, etc. Compared with 1965, China's output of tractors increased six times in 1973 while that of internal combustion engines for irrigation and drainage increased more than seven times. Output of chemical fertilizer, electricity for rural consumption and pesticides, too, has risen by a big margin. This has provided better conditions for farming.

The state has also increased its financial support for agriculture. Its investment in agriculture in 1973 was nearly double that of 1958. On the other hand, agricultural tax is fixed irrespective of the increase in production and therefore accounts for only five per cent of farm output as against some 12 per cent in the early post-liberation years. The state also follows a price policy that greatly benefits the peasants. On many occasions it has raised the purchasing prices for farm and side-line products and lowered the prices of manufactured goods for rural use.

Chairman Mao has said: Revolution plus production can solve the problem of feeding the population. Since¬

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liberation China has carried out a series of social revolutions in the countryside, ranging from land reform and the establishment of mutual-aid teams, agricultural producers' co-operatives and then people's communes. This has ensured the advance of the countryside along the socialist road. Guided by Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line, the masses of Chinese peasants have persisted in criticizing revisionism and capitalist tendencies and gradually consolidated the positions of socialism in the countryside and developed farm production. Total increase in grain output during the eight years between 1965 and 1973 surpassed that of the 15 years (1950-65) before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Socialist China is a developing country. It has not yet attained a high level in agricultural production. But the potential is great. Today, the Chinese people are working with even greater revolutionary vigour for the further development of agriculture.

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Why China Has No Inflation

CHINA'S finances and currency have remained stable ever since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, thanks to vigorous economic development and a flourishing home market. The galloping inflation and soaring commodity prices created by the reactionary Kuomintang government ended once and for all in the first few years after new China was born.

Before liberation the reactionary Kuomintang government issued an unlimited amount of banknotes, causing devaluation of the currency and sending commodity prices soaring. Between 1937 and 1949 Kuomintang-issued banknotes inflated 140,000 million fold and commodity prices rose 8,500,000 million fold. The bureaucrat-capitalist class at the time took advantage of the inflation to fleece the people and reap fabulous profits while the exploited, labouring masses suffered.

With the establishment of the socialist system, the currency ceased to be a means of exploiting the labouring people but instead became a tool to advance their well-being. China's Renminbi (RMB) serves to help the country with socialist revolution and construction,¬

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expand the exchange of goods between town and countryside, consolidate the worker-peasant alliance and improve the life of the people step by step. The stability of Renminbi is determined by its socialist function.

No sooner had countrywide liberation been achieved than the state took a series of measures to replace the old currency with Renminbi, ban the circulation of foreign currencies and strictly prohibit speculation. All this eliminated the pernicious influence of old China's long-standing inflation and established an independent, unified and stable socialist monetary system and financial set-up. Thanks to the construction carried out in several Five-Year Plan periods under the guidance of Chairman Mao's principle of building our country independently and with the initiative in our own hands, through self-reliance, hard struggle, diligence and thrift, China's socialist economic base has been strengthened continually and her finance daily consolidated, providing a solid foundation for the stability of Renminbi.

Because of the state policy of maintaining the value of the currency, the purchasing power of Renminbi has long remained the same, without any fluctuation.

Renminbi's value is kept stable while the currencies of the capitalist countries are in a state of constant fluctuation. To carry out the principle of equality and mutual benefit in China's economic dealings with other countries, Renminbi has been used in quoting prices and settling accounts since 1968. A growing number of countries and regions now use Renminbi to quote prices and settle accounts in trade and other economic dealings with China.

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China's agriculture has constantly improved over the past 25 years. Grain output has increased to well over 250 million tons from 110 million tons in the early post-liberation period. Output of cotton, edible oils, sugar, bast fibres, tobacco, tea and other industrial crops has risen considerably. Both light and heavy industries have made big headway on the basis of the all-round development of agriculture. Food, clothing and other consumer goods have increased by large margins. Meat, fish, poultry, vegetables, fruit, cloth, paper, sugar, cigarettes, medicines, bicycles and sewing machines have increased anywhere from several to a dozen fold compared with the early post-liberation period. Reserves have increased a great deal, especially those of grain, cotton and other major commodities, and these provide a reliable material foundation for the stability of Renminbi.

Since China practises socialist public ownership of the means of production, most commodities are in the hands of the state. The products of state-owned enterprises belong to the state; the agricultural and side-line products of the rural communes and production brigades, other than those put aside for their own use, are all purchased by the state at reasonable prices. Renminbi is issued by the state in a planned way and has the powerful backing of commodities. This ensures that the currency in circulation conforms with the commodity supply and keeps Renminbi's value stable.

Commodity prices are decided by the state. The state consistently lets commodities flow into the market at stable prices, ensuring smoothness of production and construction and stability of the people's life. The prices of such daily necessities as grain, cotton cloth, table salt¬

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and coal have remained stable over the past 25 years. Those of medicines and stationery have been considerably reduced. To narrow the scissors difference between the prices of industrial and agricultural products left over from the old society, the state, on many occasions, raised the purchase prices of agricultural and side-line produce in a planned way and lowered the sales prices of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, diesel oil and other means of agricultural production. This enabled the peasants to increase their cash income and buy more manufactured goods with the same amount of money.

In socialist construction, China has kept to Chairman Mao's principle to develop the economy and ensure supplies and the policy of guaranteeing a balanced budget and monetary and financial stability. In issuing banknotes, China sees that this is done to keep pace with developed production and expanded circulation of commodities and does not permit the issuing of banknotes to increase revenue. Inflation is fundamentally avoided.

China achieves balance of revenue and expenditure in the state budget by bringing into full play the function of the planned socialist economy. China's revenue comes mainly from accumulation by the socialist enterprises, and expenditure is mainly for developing the socialist economy. The fundamental way to increase income is to rely on the industriousness and creativeness of the masses in developing production and accumulating funds. In the allocation and use of funds for construction, China's consistent policy is to build the country through diligence and thrift. Strict economy is practised, waste opposed and a minimum of money is spent to get the maximum results. State revenue has increased enormously in the¬

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past 25 years on the basis of the continuous growth of industrial and agricultural production. This has ensured the supply of funds for large-scale economic construction and kept state revenue and expenditure in balance in special circumstances, such as when natural disasters occur, adjustment is carried out in a planned way by increasing production, practising economy and relying on the state's reserves to ensure the balance. The method of issuing more banknotes is never used.

Another important reason for Renminbi's lasting stability is the state's centralized and unified management of the issuance of currency. Regulation of the release and recovery of currency is carried out in a planned way to keep it in normal circulation.

Eighty per cent of China's annual cash release is for payment of wages and purchase of farm and side-line produce. The release and recovery of this portion of the currency is arranged according to plan and kept in balance. The number of new workers and staff members to be recruited, the amount of wages and the supply of commodities are all planned. In determining the total amount of wages, the state takes into consideration its economic and financial capability beforehand and arranges the supply of commodities accordingly. In this way the currency released for wages is recovered through sales of consumer goods by the state-owned commercial departments. Similarly, to ensure the recovery of the currency that is released in the countryside through the purchase of farm and side-line produce and distribution of state appropriations and bank loans for agriculture, the state makes corresponding arrangements beforehand for the supply of consumer goods and means of agricultural production.

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Renminbi is China's sole currency. Its issuance and management is controlled by the state bank, and no region or unit has the right to issue currency. To facilitate planned management of the circulation of currency, transfer and settlement of payments beyond a stipulated limit between all enterprises, government organs, organizations and army units must be effected through banks. Bank drafts of any sort are not negotiable on the market. Unlike in capitalist society, speculative dealings in drafts are non-existent in China.

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[A photograph]

A syphon project on the Haiho River.

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[A photograph]

Bountiful grassland in southern Kansu Province.

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Revolution in Education

POPULARIZATION of education, done on an immense scale, is one of the achievements made by new China since her birth. The numbers of students enrolled in primary and middle schools have increased by many times compared with pre-liberation years. Today some 90 per cent of China's school-age children are in school. The number of university graduates by the end of 1973 was 12.3 times the total trained in 20 years before liberation. Apart from higher educational institutes and primary and middle schools there are large numbers of factory-run workers' colleges, vocational schools, part-work-part-study schools and agricultural technical schools.

Old China's more than 80 per cent illiteracy rate is no more.

New China popularizes education by "walking on two legs." That is, in addition to schools run by the state, the communes and production brigades in the rural areas have established large numbers of primary and middle schools of their own with assistance from the government.¬

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Teaching in these schools is geared to suit the characteristics of life in the farming and pastoral districts, and everything is done to make it possible for children to attend.

Education is not confined to schools. A great many workers, peasants, armymen, office workers, salesclerks and neighbourhood residents are improving their educational level or studying revolutionary theories in all sorts of study organizations, such as short-term study classes and evening political schools, during their spare time or during part of their working hours. The whole society has become one big school.

The revolution in education, started during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, is now going on throughout the country. What is being undertaken is the transformation of the old educational system together with its principles and teaching methods in the light of Chairman Mao's teachings: Education must serve proletarian politics and be combined with productive labour and our educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture.

Before the Cultural Revolution, Liu Shao-chi and his followers, who had usurped the leadership in the educational departments, worked in opposition to Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line. School education was being conducted almost as it was before liberation or according to Soviet methods. The schools were dominated by bourgeois intellectuals and the graduates were estranged from workers and peasants as well as from reality and labour. The trend was towards the¬

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creation of an intellectual elite and education becoming a tool for effecting capitalist restoration.

The revolution in education is concerned with the number of years in school, policies, teaching methods, teaching material, the enrolment system and the remoulding of teachers. Priority is given to the study of revolutionary theories so that teachers and students teach and study for the revolution, and serve the people wholeheartedly.

Before the Cultural Revolution, for a student to complete his education from primary school to university required 16 to 20 years. During these years the students were shut up in their classrooms and learned by rote. They had little idea how workers worked and peasants tilled. At graduation they still had no practice in working with their hands and lacked the feelings of workers and peasants, their heads being crammed with formulae and equations. Such students fell far short of the requirements of socialist revolution and construction.

Experimentation is now under way in completing the primary school course in five years, middle school in four to five years and the university course in two to three years. This means a cut of four to five years in schooling from primary school through university. But in this shorter period the students acquire more practical and theoretical knowledge than in the past. Superfluous subjects and redundant or useless teaching material are being discarded. More important is that the ideological education of students is strengthened and book-learning closely integrated with practical production. School education is no longer confined to the classroom. Primary and middle schools in town and country have established close links with nearby factories, people's communes¬

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and army units. Where conditions permit, primary and middle schools have opened small workshops and farms and invited workers, peasants and armymen to serve as part-time teachers. The universities have instituted a new system of combining teaching with scientific research and productive labour; besides building up regular links with factories and people's communes, they run their own factories and farms. Liberal arts students, taking the whole of society as their factory, go to the workshops, villages and trading stores to make social surveys and to learn from society at large — from the workers, peasants and soldiers. By taking part in the three great revolutionary movements of class struggle, struggle for production and scientific experiment, they bring into full play the militant role of the liberal arts.

In this way the students, in the course of receiving education, make a useful contribution to society and create wealth for the state. What is more important, while working together with workers and peasants the students begin to understand and draw near to the labouring people and learn how to work in their service.

To achieve this integration, teachers and students go together to a factory, farm or people's commune to take part in collective labour for a given period in accordance with the teaching plan. Discussion meetings are held on the spot or, if they have returned to school, in the classroom, to analyze what they have learned and raise it to a theoretical level. The old method in which the teacher spoon-fed the students has been abolished. Under the new method every encouragement is given to develop the students' initiative and bring out to the full their eagerness to think things out independently. In the uni-

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versities, lectures are printed and issued to the students in advance and the students can present their views before the class. Through discussions by the teacher and students, each makes up for the other's deficiencies, establishing between them a comradely relationship that is revolutionary, democratic and united.

In line with Chairman Mao's instruction that the teaching material should be thoroughly transformed, institutions of higher learning in China have over the past few years compiled no less than 10,000 kinds of teaching material. That for primary and middle schools has also been rewritten in the provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. The new teaching material embodies Chairman Mao's thinking and line in educational revolution and gives prominence to the ideology of serving proletarian politics, socialist revolution and construction and the training of successors to the proletarian revolutionary cause.

The old examination procedure used exams like surprise attacks, as if the students were enemies. The test questions were either odd or stated in such a way as to perplex or worry the student. Now, an open-book examination system has generally been instituted in all schools and the test questions are announced beforehand. Students are allowed to refer to books and to discuss the problems among themselves. This procedure is designed to train and test the students' ability to analyze problems and solve them.

The university enrolment system has also been changed. As a rule, universities no longer take senior middle school students in their graduation year but instead select them from among outstanding young workers, peasants and¬

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soldiers with two or more years of practical work behind them, on the recommendation by the masses and approval by the leadership of the locality or unit. Allowance is made with regard to age and educational level for veteran workers, poor and lower-middle peasants and revolutionary cadres who have rich practical experience. This does away with the "book knowledge first" criterion, which unfairly barred the labouring people and their sons and daughters from entering the universities.

With the working class taking the political centre-stage of the superstructure during the Cultural Revolution, workers' propaganda teams went into the universities and, under the unified leadership of Party committees there, provided guidance in political-ideological education, in this way altering fundamentally the former situation in which institutions of higher learning were dominated by bourgeois intellectuals. Schools in the rural districts are in the charge of the poor and lower-middle peasants. The workers and peasants, together with the revolutionary teachers and students, are carrying out Chairman Mao's instructions to transform education to meet the needs of the class struggle and of production and practice. This has brought an excellent situation in the revolution in education. A large number of workers, peasants and soldiers have become lecturers. Through tempering in the Cultural Revolution former teachers have likewise changed their mental outlook greatly, many of them making new contributions.

The educational revolution, which has already shown its great vitality, has achieved notable successes. The first batches of worker-peasant-soldier university students, enrolled during the Cultural Revolution, have¬

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graduated or are about to. Highly conscious politically they have a vocational level far above that of old university graduates. The first worker-peasant graduates of Tsinghua university, co-operating with several hundred factories and mines in a dozen provinces and municipalities, undertook more than 360 projects as their pre-graduation practice. One-third of the projects reached advanced Chinese standards and 80 per cent of them have been adopted in production.

After graduation most Chinese middle school students go to the rural areas and become peasants. Others become workers or armymen and integrate with the labouring people. Eight million of these graduates who went to the countryside after the Cultural Revolution began have become a generation of new, educated peasants with socialist consciousness. They are making an Important contribution to the building up of a socialist new countryside. Of far-reaching significance is their role in helping to sweep away the centuries-old exploiting ideas and customs of looking down on the peasantry and on labour, and also in gradually lessening the differences between workers and peasants, between town and country and between mental and manual work.

Though still in its experimental stage, the educational revolution has already achieved remarkable successes. It is aimed at preventing and opposing revisionism, training millions of successors to the proletarian revolutionary cause, speeding up socialist revolution and construction and ensuring that socialist China will not change its political colour. Spurred by the current movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius, the educational revolution is developing in depth and is bound to win still greater victories.

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New Medical Center

MARKED improvement in the health of China's close to 800 million population has been made by the People's Republic in her first quarter-century.

With the development of socialist construction and the strengthening of the collective economy of the people's communes, new China has established a medical system which serves the great majority of the people. Workers and staff of industrial and mining enterprises are provided free medical service under the Labour Insurance Regulations. Government staff and workers and college students also receive free medical care, and a co-operative medical service has been set up in the vast rural areas. In this way China has brought the security of reliable medical care to the broad masses of her people.

Smallpox, plague, cholera and venereal diseases, rampant in old China, were eliminated soon after liberation, while the incidence of other infectious diseases, local and occupational diseases has been greatly reduced or brought under strict control. With the rising living standards and growing medical service, the death rate has dropped¬

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strikingly, and the average life span of the Chinese people is much longer.

In semi-colonial and semi-feudal China the people got little or no health care. Diseases were prevalent. Medical institutions were few, and most of them were located in the cities, available to only a small number of people. The peasants, the great majority of the Chinese people, had no access to doctors or medicine.

After the birth of new China, the Communist Party and the People's Government laid down the principles for medical and health work serving the workers, peasants and soldiers, putting prevention first, bringing together doctors of traditional Chinese and Western schools, and linking medical and health work with mass movements. Foremost attention has been paid to educating medical and health workers in the spirit of wholehearted service to the great majority of the people.

Over 80 per cent of China's population is rural, so putting the medical and health work at the service of the majority of the people would be no more than an empty slogan if it failed to serve the peasants. In 1965 Chairman Mao issued the call: in medical and health work, put the stress on the rural areas, reaffirming the revolutionary line of serving the workers, peasants and soldiers, the great majority of the people. This call is the fundamental principle and important content of the revolution in health work. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius, medical and health workers along with the masses of the people sharply repudiated the revisionist line pushed by Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao which laid the stress on the cities at the expense of the countryside,¬

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ignored the prevention and treatment of and research into the common, recurrent diseases among the working people and made medical facilities available to a few people only. Criticizing this wrong line has made it possible for the principle of providing medical care for the great majority of the people to be firmly carried out and for tremendous changes to be effected in rural medical and health work. "Barefoot doctors" have come into existence and multiplied, and co-operative medical service has spread to every corner of the country.

Co-operative medical service is a new system carried out by the peasants themselves on a collective and mutual-aid basis. Commune members pay a small sum into the co-operative medical fund, generally one yuan (about half a U.S. dollar) per person annually, receiving in return free, general medical care. For more serious cases requiring transfer to hospitals above people's commune level, the co-operative medical fund covers part or all of the medical costs. "Barefoot doctors," trained to treat and prevent common, recurrent diseases among the peasants, are selected from among the peasants and middle school graduates who settle in the villages and are well acquainted with rural conditions. As part-time doctors, they work alongside the peasants in the fields. China's "barefoot doctors," now numbering over a million, together with three million part-time health workers and midwives in the villages constitute a mighty contingent of grass-roots medical workers serving the vast rural areas, and the regular or technical training they receive is provided by the commune health centres, county hospitals, anti-epidemic stations and visiting urban medical workers.

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Since the Cultural Revolution began many city medical workers have settled in the rural areas or periodically made rounds of the villages. In medical education, priority is also given to the rural areas in enrolling students in the medical schools and colleges, posting their graduates and giving in-service training to medical personnel. The prevention and treatment of common, recurrent diseases and their basic theories have become one of the main subjects in China's medical research. The state pays special attention to improving rural medical service, providing material and financial aid and producing more medicine, medical apparatus and biological products suited to the needs of the countryside. Medicine prices have also been reduced by wide margins, averaging only a fifth what they were in the early post-liberation period. Before liberation most medicines, medical apparatus and biological products were imported. Today all these are domestically produced in sufficient quantities to meet home requirements, and many items in sufficient quantities for export.

Hospitals have been set up in all counties; health centres, in the people's communes; clinics, in the production brigades. This network of grass-roots medical and health institutions is being expanded and consolidated in China's vast rural areas.

By the end of 1973 the number of the country's hospital beds was more than 20 times that before liberation. The number of highly qualified medical personnel trained since the founding of new China is some 27 times that in the 20 pre-liberation years. The hospital beds and personnel in the county-run medical institutions, or levels below, account for more than half of the national totals.

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Medical and health work in industrial and mining areas and cities has also steadily improved. Working conditions in industrial and mining enterprises have greatly improved and measures for labour protection have been strengthened. In addition to receiving free medical care the workers and staff benefit from state-financed labour insurance. Their dependents are reimbursed for half of their medical bills. Workers' hospitals are run in industrial and mining districts and in large factories and mines. Medium and small factories and mines have their own clinics. Institutes for research in preventing and treating occupational diseases and sanatoria for industrial workers operate in some provinces and municipalities Urban hospitals have steadily advanced medical service and disease prevention in their districts so as to serve the workers and local residents better.

In recent years, in accordance with the needs of the planned, proportionate development of the national socialist economy, vigorous efforts have been made to popularize family planning, and this has shown good results.

In the thinly populated minority nationality areas the People's Government has taken appropriate measures to encourage population growth. The Mongolian population in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, for example, has increased by over 100 per cent since liberation. The state pays special attention to the protection of women's and children's health. The health of Chinese women has greatly improved in the 25 years since liberation and women have become an important force in industrial and agricultural production. New China's¬

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children are heavier and taller than those of pre-liberation days.

The patriotic mass health campaign initiated by Chairman Mao himself has become the common regular work not only of the medical and health departments but of everyone. The masses of the people have been mobilized in the campaign to combat diseases and insanitary habits and to wipe out the "four pests" (mosquitoes, flies, bedbugs and rats). The campaign, launched from time to time since liberation, encourages the revolutionary spirit of the people, helping them to change old, undesirable customs and habits and to transform nature. it makes sanitary habits public practice, greatly reducing the number of disease-carrying agents and radically cutting down disease incidence. To eliminate snail fever (schistosomiasis), a parasitic disease once rampant over vast areas south of the Yangtze River and doing tremendous harm to the population, the People's Government mobilized the masses to wipe out snails, the disease-carrying agent. This as done by destroying snail breeding grounds while cutting new irrigation channels and by improving the management of water sources and the disposal of human and animal waste. At the same time, corps of medical workers were organized to give effective treatment to snail fever patients. Today the disease is controlled, areas where odd cases of snail fever still crop up being rapidly reduced. The patriotic health campaign has given great impetus to the work of safeguarding the people's health by Preventing and wiping out disease.

The combination of traditional Chinese medicine with Western medicine is advancing medical science and technique in China. Through this combination,¬

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traditional Chinese medicine and pharmacology with a history of several thousand years have gained wide application and fuller development. Acupuncture anaesthesia, a new method of anaesthetization, was worked out by using modern scientific methods to study and sum up practical work in traditional Chinese medicine, and has already found wide application. Analgesia, obtained by inserting one or more needles at a certain point or points on the body, permits operative procedure while the patient is fully conscious. This method ensures safe surgery on many parts of the body without the side-effects produced by drug anaesthetics. For patients with poor liver, kidney or lung function, or those seriously ill, debilitated or prone to shock or hypersensitivity to anaesthetics, acupuncture anaesthesia is often preferred. Similarly, by combining the methods of traditional and Western medicine, successes have been achieved in shortening the healing time in bone fractures, in non-surgical treatment of acute abdominal conditions, in curing a serious burn case affecting 98 per cent of the body area (88 per cent of which were third degree burns), in dealing with difficult cases of rejoining severed limbs and fingers, and in autoplastic transplantation of a severed limb. These achievements open up a wide vista for still greater advances in Chinese medical science and technique.

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Minority Nationalities—Now and Before

IN the quarter-century since the birth of new China the minority nationalities living in remote border areas have crossed into socialist society directly from feudal or slave Society or even one with traces of primitive communes, covering a course which might have taken them one or several centuries to complete. The minority nationality regions are thriving, as are those peopled mainly by the Han nationality.

China adheres to a policy of equality for all nationalities. The people of all 55 nationalities, big or small, help one another and co-operate to achieve a common progress. This has radically changed the picture in pre-liberation days when the people of all nationalities were subjected to ruthless exploitation and oppression by the imperialists, Kuomintang reactionaries and local ruling classes.

The Tulung nationality, one of China's smallest, used to lead a primitive life in the Tulung River valley in Southwest China's Kaolikung Mountains. Today they enjoy a happy life in a people's commune under socialism. They have abolished the slash-and-burn farming method and made marked progress in agriculture. In sharp¬

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contrast with the days when they kept records by tying knots and carving signs on wood, the Tulung people have primary schools and a middle school staffed by their own teachers. Without a single doctor, they begged for the mercy of gods when they fell ill in the old days. Today there is a co-operative medical service in every production brigade and a clinic in the commune. The state sent them doctors and medicines, and everybody receives free medical care.

Discriminating against minority nationalities, the Kuomintang reactionaries treated the Tulung people as savages. Today the people of Tulung and all other nationalities are masters of the country and take part in managing state affairs on an equal footing. Representatives of minority peoples hold leading posts in Party and state organs and some are members of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee, members of the Party Central Committee, secretaries of Party committees of provinces and autonomous regions, and vice-chairmen of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the supreme organ of state power. More than 14 per cent of the deputies to the successive National People's Congresses have come from minority nationality peoples, who account for only six per cent of the country's population.

The minority peoples enjoy the right to manage affairs concerning their respective nationalities in areas where they live in compact community. In other words, they have the right to national regional autonomy In China there are now five autonomous regions equivalent to provinces, 29 autonomous chou or leagues equivalent to administrative regions, each covering a number of coun-

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ties, and 69 autonomous counties or banners The five autonomous regions are the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the Kwangsi Chuang Autonomous Region, the Ningsia Hui Autonomous Region and the Tibet Autonomous Region. The autonomous organs at all levels exercise certain rights of under the centralized unified leadership of the Central People's Government This means they are entitled to manage local finances within the scope prescribed by law and enact specific rules and regulations according to the political, economic and cultural characteristics of their own nationalities.

The minority nationality people distributed over various other parts of China enjoy the same democratic rights as the local inhabitants and receive special consideration for their living, customs and habits.

New China pays much attention to selecting and training cadres from among minority nationalities In the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region there are now some 84,000 cadres from the Uighur and other minority nationalities, more than 20 times the early post-liberation figure. Women account for 19 per cent of the total. In the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, cadres of minority nationalities numbered some 20,000 in 1973, and many held leading posts on Party committees and revolutionary committees in leagues, municipalities and banners.

After the birth of new China the People's Government led the people of all minority nationalities in carrying out democratic reform and socialist transformation. The socialist system was established and productive forces were emancipated opening up wide avenues for the¬

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minority peoples to proceed with socialist economic construction. Modern industry went up and agriculture and animal husbandry made much headway throughout the minority areas — a far cry from their days of backward farming and livestock breeding and the total absence of industry. Communication and transport facilities were improved greatly in outlying or secluded areas. Now the people's living standards are rising; the market is thriving.

After the democratic reform of 1959 in Tibet which overthrew feudal serfdom, one of the darkest and most barbarous systems in history, a million serfs embarked on the road of collectivization. People's communes were set up in most pastoral and farming areas. In the spirit of hard work and self-reliance, the emancipated serfs and slaves developed production quickly by improving the natural conditions and introducing scientific farming. Winter wheat and paddy rice are being planted extensively and giving good yields on the Tibetan Plateau, once considered unsuitable for their cultivation. Both the total grain output and number of livestock in Tibet in 1973 were more than double those of 1958, the year before the democratic reform started. The region now boasts of some 200 small and medium industrial enterprises, including coal mining, power generation, cement, farm tools, tanning, woollen textiles, motor vehicle repairs, timber processing and sugar refining. An increasing number of former serfs and slaves are joining the ranks of the working class. Tibetan workers and staff now account for more than 46 per cent of the total.

In northeast China, the Olunchun people, one of China's smallest nationalities, used to be hunters in dense forests of the Greater and Lesser Khingan Mountains in northeast¬

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Heilungkiang Province, wearing animal skins, sleeping under birch bark and warming themselves by campfires. They have now settled down in village houses built with state assistance and developed agriculture. Their population has increased to 2,700, doubling the early post-liberation figure.

Some minority peoples who once kept records by tying knots in rope or had no language of their own have now created written languages for themselves with state aid. Books, newspapers and periodicals are published in great quantities in the Mongolian, Tibetan and other minority languages. Institutes for nationalities and universities and colleges have been set up in leading minority nationality areas. Each nationality, however small, has its own college graduates. The Tibet Autonomous Region now has an institute for nationalities, a teachers' school, seven middle schools and over 2,500 primary schools.

Before liberation, rampant diseases decimated the population of some minority peoples. Now hospitals and clinics have been set up in counties and communes. Mobile medical teams from major cities make regular rounds of minority areas. In Tibet, free medical care is enjoyed by the people throughout the region. Better health has resulted in a steady growth of minority populations. Since liberation the population of Mongolians has increased by 3.27 times, Uighurs in Sinkiang by 42 per cent, and Tibetans by 200,000.

The Kuomintang reactionaries carried out a policy of discrimination against minority nationalities and, in collusion with imperialism, bled their areas white, causing their backwardness. After the founding of new China, the People's Government gave special attention and¬

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assistance to the economic and cultural development in the minority areas to promote a faster rate of progress there than in predominantly Han-populated areas. A series of policies and measures were adopted towards that end, including greater investments in construction, financial subsidies, tax reduction or exemption, provision of large quantities of supplies and specially needed commodities. Skilled workers, experienced farmers, doctors and teachers were sent to the minority areas. State investments and financial subsidies for the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region totalled 9,320 million yuan over the past 25 years. Financial subsidies to the Tibet Autonomous Region have covered the greater part of its expenditure since 1960.

The tremendous changes in the minority areas have been effected by the people of all nationalities who, guided by Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line, have united with and helped one another and brought their socialist initiative into full play in an arduous struggle to build up the country.

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[A photograph]

Students at Tsinghua University in their chemistry laboratory.

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[A photograph]

A workers' sanatorium in Liaoning Province.

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Women in Socialist New China

WOMEN carry half of heaven on their shoulders" is a saying popular in China in describing the role played by Chinese women in socialist revolution and construction.

Over the past 25 years the masses of Chinese women have contributed their share alongside the men in transforming a semi-feudal, semi-colonial old China into a socialist country with initial prosperity.

Women make up half of China's population. A considerable number of outstanding women came to the fore during the various historical periods of the national-democratic revolution and socialist revolution, in the course of the revolutionary wars and other revolutionary struggles. For example, quite a number of advanced women were in the ranks of the famous 12,500-km. Long March made by the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in 1934-35.

Since the founding of new China, large numbers of women cadres have been brought up by the Communist Party and the People's Government. Many women of outstanding ability are emerging as never before in socialist revolution and construction. Large numbers of¬

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advanced women have been admitted into the Communist Party. Women made up 20 per cent of the delegates to the Tenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party held in 1973 and 12 per cent of the members and alternate members of the Tenth Party Central Committee.

Today, many outstanding women hold leading posts in organizations ranging from the Party and government's central and local bodies down to factories, communes, stores and schools. Textile worker Wu Kuei-hsien, who courageously rallied and led the masses in combating revisionism in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, is now an alternate member of the Party Central Political Bureau and Vice-Premier of the State Council. Women members of the Party Central Committee include Wei Feng-ying, an engineer trained from among the ranks of punch operators; Li Su-wen, a former grocery saleswoman; Pasang, an emancipated Tibetan serf; Pao-jihletai, a Mongolian cadre of a pastoral area whose unit is cited for outstanding work; Lu Yu-lan and Hsing Yen-tzu, outstanding educated youth who settled in rural areas to build a socialist new countryside. Among the alternate members of the Party Central Committee are airwoman Chu Hui-fen, deputy political commissar of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China; Yang Po-lan, an advanced textile worker, and Kao Shu-lan, a gas welder. Most of them have been elected Vice-Chairman or members of the Standing Committee of the Fourth National People's Congress.

Working women suffered grievously in old China. Not only were they, like the men, exploited and oppressed under foreign imperialist and domestic reactionary rule, but they were also made to suffer from the 2,000-year-old Confucian-Mencian ideology that "men are superior to¬

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women." They were deprived of the right to take part in political and social activities, even in certain fields of productive work. In the home, dominated by the clan authority and the authority of the husband, they were in a degraded position. Their marriages were arbitrarily arranged by their parents and they could be bought and sold like commodities.

The oppression of working women is primarily class oppression inasmuch as inequality between the sexes stems from class inequality.

When the People's Republic was founded in 1949 Chairman Mao called on the women of the whole country: Unite and take part in production and political activity to improve the economic and political status of women. The Party and the People's Government, in the state constitution, laws and a series of policies, ensure and promote women's equal rights with men in political, economic, cultural, social and family life. For instance, the Marriage Law promulgated in 1950 abolished the feudal marriage system based on arbitrary and compulsory arrangements and put into effect a system of freedom of marriage. The Labour Insurance Regulations issued in 1951 carry special provisions to safeguard the interests of women and children. Again, the Decisions on the Development of Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives adopted by the Party Central Committee in 1953 stipulate: "Equal pay for equal work should be the rule for both men and women, based on the amount and quality of their work. . . . However, in the assignment of work, it is necessary to give due consideration to the special physiological difficulties of women." The Electorial Law promulgated in the same year states: "Women shall have the¬

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right to elect and to be elected on equal terms with men."

With the rapid development of the socialist economic and cultural construction, more and more women are taking part in productive labour as well as in Political and cultural activities, and more types of work steadily open for them Housewives by their collective strength make a considerable contribution to socialist construction by setting up various kinds of neighbourhood factories turning out many useful products including such advanced items as equipment for the electronics industry. The No. 1 Transistor Equipment Factory set up by housewives in the western district of Peking is producing automatically controlled diffusion furnaces for over a score of provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the country. While creating material wealth for society, Chinese women change their economic subordination and mental outlook.

Times have changed, and today men and women are equal. Whatever men comrades can accomplish women comrades can too. This teaching of Chairman Mao's has been a profound education to the people of new China and tremendously encouraged Chinese women. Large numbers of women now work in the spheres of industry, agriculture, education, science and health in all fields and every kind of work except that unsuited for women physically All services and trades Open their doors to women, and discrimination against them is impermissible

At the Taching Oilfield, national pacesetter in industry, there are large numbers of women workers cadres and technicians doing extraction, refining and other jobs. Displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and hard¬

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struggle like the men, they have contributed to opening and running the oilfield. An oil extraction team of young momen formed in September 1970 is known for its outstanding work as "The Iron Girls' Team."

Women make up 20 per cent of the workers and staff at the February 7 Rolling Stock Plant in Peking. It had practically no women workers before liberation. The women workers there do all kinds of work and are found among the leading cadres in units from the plant Party Committee down to the workshops teams and shifts.

Women account for half the farm work done each year in Shansi's Tachai Production Brigade, national pacesetter in agriculture. Outstanding among them is Kuo Feng-lien, former leader of Tachai's "Iron Girls' Team" formed in 1963 and now secretary of the brigade Party branch. Her team worked hard together with the men on Tachai's Tiger Head Hill and transformed its rugged, pitted slopes into terraced fields that give high, stable yields. The women's team also played an active role in wresting a good harvest in 1973 after a 17-month-long drought.

On the well-known Red Flag Canal project in Linhsien County, Honan Province, women alongside men took part in blasting cliffs, driving tunnels and building bridges, hewing out a waterway on the rugged Taihang Mountains.

More than a fifth of the country's medical personnel are women. There is in addition a large Contingent of women "barefoot doctors," a new entity of the Cultural Revolution which began in 1966. Almost all medical personnel in maternity and child care work in villages and factories are women.

To protect women's health and help free them from household drudgery there have been set up in growing¬

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numbers in various parts of the country community dining rooms, nurseries, kindergartens, maternity and child care organizations. In family life, it is encouraged that men and women share the housework equally so that women can take equal part in political and productive activity.

The millions of working women in China are now taking an active part in the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius, condemning the contempt for women and girls and other exploiting-class ideas of Confucius and Mencius. This is of far-reaching significance to the thorough emancipation of Chinese women.

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Changes at the Anshan Iron and Steel Company

GUIDED by the brilliant Charter of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company as promulgated on the recommendation of Chairman Mao, this largest of China's iron and steel complexes has been making significant progress along the socialist road and ever greater contributions to the country's socialist revolution and construction.

In the Cultural Revolution Anshan's workers and cadres, conscientiously implementing the Charter, launched a movement to learn from Taching. With Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought as ideological weapon, they criticize the bourgeoisie, revisionism and the thinking of all exploiting classes. A greater revolutionary enthusiasm has brought about much change in the over-all appearance of the enterprise and steady improvement in production technique. Outputs of steel, rolled steel, pig iron and iron ore in 1973 were 37-90 per cent more than in 1965, or 57-124 times those of 1949. Production capacity was further raised in 1974. In the last few years the company produced about 100 new varieties of steel and 1,000 new varieties of rolled steel, filling blanks in the country's metallurgical industry. The funds¬

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accumulated over the years are sufficient to build another iron and steel complex of Anshan's size.

Keeping to the Correct Orientation

Influenced by the revisionist line before the Cultural Revolution, certain leading personnel in some of the company's plants or mines focussed attention on the material aspect and neglected the human factor. Stressing production, they failed to grasp class struggle and struggle between the two lines, consequently leading the enterprise along a wrong path for a time. Through revolutionary criticism and struggle during the Cultural Revolution the cadres and workers came to see that only with the Party's basic line as guide and a firm grasp of class and two-line struggles, and with revolution commanding production, could the enterprise advance along the road of socialism and production develop rapidly.

Personal experience has impressed this fact on the workers and