Thunder

In Hunan and Kwangsi, China's sadly famed domains of hunger, 16 million people last week were suffering from what UNRRA experts termed "sudden and acute starvation."

In Washington, B.C., UNRRA Chief Fiorello H. LaGuardia, with a sudden and acute stroke of his bristling pen, halted all but emergency shipments to China.

On the face of it, that did not make sense. But behind the tragic discrepancy of the two stern facts loomed an old, notorious situation; since November 1945, UNRRA had poured $132,250,000 worth of food, machinery and various relief supplies, from fishing boats to water buffalo, into the country. But only a trickle had got where they were needed most. The bulk of the supplies piled up in warehouses, filtered down into the depths of the black market, enriched the morass of government corruption and "squeeze" (China's term for "honest graft").

The task of getting the supplies from the ports where UNRRA delivered them to the starving interior was up to China's own CNRRA (Chinese National Relief & Rehabilitation Administration). But CNRRA was paralyzed not only by transportation shortages, but by towering inefficiency, "squeeze" and partisanship. Samples: in Kwangsi Province, 13 junks loaded with medical supplies for Mme. Sun Yat-sen's "Peace Hospital," inside the Communist lines, were diverted to the Nationalists. Flour supplied free by UNRRA was being sold far above the average Chinese's means. UNRRA Ford trucks were selling at $3,750 (gold). The Chinese people, starving almost within the dreamlike sight of rich rice and yellow wheat, hardly protested: they were too accustomed to inefficiency and graft. Nevertheless, dawning anger at their plight came like thunder out of China last week. Over 200 local UNRRA officials sent a cable to their boss in Washington: "We have come from many places in the world [to make] UNRRA's goal a reality [but] it is our considered judgment that UNRRA supplies and services are being improperly handled. . . ."

LaGuardia himself had sent a bluntly pleading cable to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek ("it might not be couched in diplomatic language, but I tried to make it so he would understand") demanding "personal and prompt" action about CNRRA. "[UNRRA's] purpose," cabled the Little Flower, "is to help the rehabilitation of China and not the financial rehabilitation of warehouses."

Chinese officials winced under the storm, complained that the Americans just did not understand China. Wrote Shih Shih Hsin Pao, former Finance Minister H. H. Kung's own paper, in a painful flash of introspection:

"In foreign countries work for the public is regarded as a great honor. In China to be a government official is to find out the best way to enrich oneself. People in other countries call their officials public servants, but [in China] to become an official is the quickest way to make money."

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