Mao's Boomerang
WU, F. K.
After letting a hundred schools of thought contend,' Chinese Communist chief finds most of them hostile Maos Boomerang By F. K. Wu Hong Kong The "rectification" campaign launched by Chinese...
...Chu An-ping, editor of a newspaper published by the Democratic League, pointed out that the three non-Communists who held Vice Chairmanships in the first Peking government have since been dropped from positions of power...
...Among the expenditures slated for curtailment are those for engineering projects, railroad-building, irrigation and forestry...
...Canton and elsewhere, which were reported in the official Party paper, the Peking People's Daily...
...The unexpected outburst which followed his hesitant move toward free speech suggests that popular opposition to the regime may be too deep to be allayed by minor concessions...
...The curtailment of these ambitious plans reflects a recent drop in Chinese national income...
...After letting a hundred schools of thought contend,' Chinese Communist chief finds most of them hostile Maos Boomerang By F. K. Wu Hong Kong The "rectification" campaign launched by Chinese Communist chief Mao Tse-tung in his February 27 speech (NL, June 17) seems to be boomeranging...
...Mao has already begun to react to the mounting chorus of dissatisfaction, warning that the recent attacks struck at the very foundations of the regime and could not be tolerated...
...The outlays for 1958, the first year of the new Five-Year Plan, are to be slashed still more drastically, even though the new Plan originally envisaged doubling its predecessor's allotments for large-scale construction projects...
...At the same time, he is moving to appease his critics in the economic realm by reducing the targets in the grandiose Second Five-Year Plan and cutting back "socialist construction" for 1957 and 1958...
...Since the imposition of collective farming a year ago, which compelled peasants to work longer hours for the same or less compensation, agricultural production has fallen off...
...this has been a serious blow to Peking's economic planning...
...Equally disturbing have been the industrial strikes in Shanghai...
...Whether he will succeed remains to be seen...
...the present State Council (Cabinet) has twelve Vice Premiers, all of them Communists...
...A lecturer at the People's University in Peking, Ke Pei-chi, was reported as declaring that "China will survive but Communism is bound to fall...
...Paotou and Hankow...
...Since 80 per cent of the population is agricultural...
...At the price of curtailing heavy industry (and, consequently, armaments), he is offering the people more consumer goods in the hope of dulling memories of the past eight years of regimentation, austerity and high taxation...
...And, in Canton, one Lo I-chun asserted that, contrary to all official claims, the peasants were on the brink of starvation...
...These outbreaks have been attributed to the workers' resentment at management's failure to keep promises...
...Mao Tse-tung's much-publicized program for completing within fifteen years the basic construction needed to transform China from an agricultural to an industrial nation has clearly been reversed...
...An intellectual named Yang Yu-ching demanded that the Communist leaders "get away from the footlights...
...Instead, he has touched off a wave of attacks on the Peking regime itself and the basic principles of Communism...
...By inviting criticism of bureaucratic excesses under the now-famous slogan "Let all flowers bloom, let all schools contend," Mao had hoped to channel popular discontent against the lower-level Party workers with whom the population has the greatest direct contact...
...While no absolute appropriations figures have been released, the monthly Planned Economy, published by the National Planning Council, reveals that only 38.3 per cent of the national income is earmarked for construction this year as against 46.7 per cent in 1956...
...Other critics have been Chang Po-chun, Lo Lung-chi and Chang Nai-chi, the non-Communist Ministers of Communications, Forestry and Food...
...The State Council has announced that heavy industry will be cut back at the expense of light...
...In the forest areas of Kwangsi, Hunan and Kwei-chow provinces, where large amounts of timber have been hauled away for shipment to the Soviet Union, outraged peasants have set fire to their trees rather than turn them over to the authorities...
...In particular, this will affect the iron and steel works at Anshan...
...The harshest criticism has come from the fellow-traveling intellectuals who embraced Communism only recently out of disenchantment with Chiang Kai-shek...
...These are some of the "contradictions" between the Chinese people and their Communist government which Mao is trying so desperately to "rectify...
...In the various Government departments, he said, the Communists call the tune...
Vol. 40 • July 1957 • No. 28
