INSIDE RED CHINA

On the Economic Front

Like Communists everywhere, Red China's rulers try to shield themselves from the view of the non-Communist world. Yet week by week; news flows out of Red China--from the 1,500 Chinese who arrive every day in Hong Kong, from foreigners leaving the country, from letters, from Communist newspapers and radio. To sift, compare, and report this news, TIME placed Correspondent Robert Neville in Hong Kong. On this page is a week's grist from the Hong Kong bureau's mill.

Red China's press glowed last week (as it did almost every week) with reports of a booming industrial economy. Rubber output in 1950, for example, was up 13.5%. In Manchuria, the supply of consumer goods had risen 126%. And so on, in invariably mounting production percentages, but with no basic output figures.

Two Achievements. Propaganda aside, what has been the Communists' economic score in almost two years' control of most of China's mainland? Their greatest achievement has been to check inflation, for a while at least. By heavy taxation and by what amounted to capital levies, the Communists balanced the budget; for weeks the jen min piao, or people's banknotes, stood unusually firm at the official rate of 3,880 to $1 Hong Kong. About a month ago, however, the rate jumped on the black market to 4,600 J.M.P. to $1 Hong Kong. This 20% increase is attributed to the costs of the Korean war and the effects of the U.S. embargo on shipments of strategic goods to China.

Another Red success, as spectacular as Benito Mussolini's in the '20s, was to make China's trains run on time. Travelers on the Shanghai-Canton and Hankow-Canton runs also speak of clean sleeping berths, cheap, well-cooked meals, diners decorated with portraits of Stalin. The Communists have rebuilt the main lines destroyed between 1946 and 1949, are completing such new links as the long-planned railway from Chungking to Chengtu.

In their occupation of Manchuria during late 1945 and early 1946, the Russians took from China about $2 billion worth of Japanese-built heavy industrial equipment--rolling mills, hearth furnaces, synthetic gasoline plants, steel plants, etc. Last January, Peking announced that the Russians had begun to replace some of the machinery. At about the same time, a 1951 production target rate was announced; it will probably bring the Manchurian output to about 50% of the rate during the Japanese occupation.

Failures & Competitions. In the rest of China, economic gains have been spotty. The Government's Committee on Finance & Economics, working toward a planned economy, has confused both private and public enterprises with its numerous decrees. Price fixing has been erratic. Taxation has been uneven. To step up output, the regime has sponsored a "Patriotic Emulation Drive," an imitation of the Russian Stakhanovite methods.

Factories, mines, farms all have "model brigades" which challenge other brigades in a race of production. The Ma Heng-chang lathe brigade of machine-tool Factory No. 5 in Mukden has gained fame by reducing the time for producing a spiral roller-bearing from two hours to 15 minutes. Coalminer Lo Yung-chin of the Fengfeng pit in Huainan colliery holds the title in his class, with 254 tons dug during a one-man shift of 6 1/2 hours.

In quite another way, the imported Soviet technicians are contributing to Red China's productive effort. Soon after the Reds took over Shanghai, a large Soviet colony was established in the residential area of Hungjao. At first the Russians kept to themselves. Now they spread themselves on Bubbling Well Road, Avenue Joffre and Nanking Road, doing what Other foreign taipans used to do--buy, buy, buy. The average Russian technician in China gets roughly $750 U.S. a month. The newly rich comrades have been buying up watches, jewelry, furs, woolens, jade, and electric refrigerators. Especially admired by the Russian customers: American products.

"Such Trash as Love"

In the new China, love is a dialectical dissertation. Wrote a Communist student recently to a Hong Kong newspaper: "We are so busy studying, we have no time for such trash as love. On mountain slopes, in fields at dawn among the flowers, under the trees on a moonlit night, small groups of schoolmates argue serious problems. You will never see a boy and a girl pair off to look at the moon or whisper to each other in typical petty bourgeois manner. If enemy special agents try to lure us to engage in amatory affairs . . . they are quickly rebuffed."

The student was echoing the party line, as laid down in a new series of pamphlets concerned with "Problems of Love & Marriage." Peking's propagandists assert that love, like society, has passed through a few historical stages. In "feudalistic love," the relation between the sexes is "the master-slave relation, with the woman always listening to the man and sticking to him like a piece of property." In "capitalistic love," affection is bought & sold: "The woman sells her beauty, youth and flesh for luxury and comfort offered by the man." Finally comes the new "democratic [i.e., Communist] love": "Man and woman have no mercenary relations, and therefore, the highest form of love is reached . . . This love is somber, intellectual and definitely revolutionary."

The Red propagandists continue: "When choosing a life mate, the Communist youth should look first for correct political thoughts, and only afterward for education, temperament, health and good looks." Triangles among comrades are to be handled coolly: "Don't look at it as too serious a situation. As for situations involving more than three, that is a game of the old society ... [It is] undesirable, and involves unhealthy emotions."

Peking claims that its new concept of love and marriage has greatly reduced (from 71% to 33% in the past year) marriage arrangements made by parents for their children, and the old practice of concubinage. A new freedom of divorce has also been at work. There were no overall statistics, but in one city alone, Tunghsien in Kiangsu province, the Communists gleefully announced that 931 "feudalistic" marriages have been dissolved in one year of Red rule. Basic grounds for divorce: proof that one party has been reactionary, counterrevolutionary, backward in thinking.

Lynch Law

The Chinese Communists have always been fond of "people's justice" (another name for it is lynching). As they overran China's countryside, they used to assemble villagers in mass meetings at which "landlords" and other "enemies of the people" were denounced, fined, deprived of their property and otherwise punished. From the Red Chinese press last week, it was plain that "people's justice" has now come to the cities. Reported the (Communist) New China News Agency:

In Peking, 25 people charged with counter-revolutionary activities were hauled up on a stage, to face a howling mob of 5,500 "people's representatives." Wang Pei-shuan, director of the capital's military tribunal, proclaimed: "The military tribunal has completed the trials of these arch-revolutionary criminals, and has all the evidence in hand. Because it is a big case, we want to talk it over with you."

Then Peking's Mayor Peng Chen took over. He had 17 supposed victims come to the stage and point their fingers at the 25 prisoners, accusing them of crimes ranging from the machine-gunning of innocent workers to arson, robbery and revolt. Roared Peng to the crowd, as the accusers walked offstage: "You have heard about these unspeakable, evil people. Comrades, how shall we deal with them?"

Screamed the mob: "Shoot them!"

Peng: "Should we not still be lenient with these people?"

Mob: "No! No!"

Peng: "Don't you think it's too cruel to shoot these special agents, ruffians, bandit leaders and reactionary religious leaders?"

Mob: "No! It's not cruel!"

Peng: "Of course it's not cruel. Instead, it's merciful. Comrades, who is right, they or we?"

Mob: "We are right!"

Peng: "Comrades, thanks for your trust. We promise to act according to your will. Our main shortcoming has been too great mercy and too reluctant suppression."

Mob (cheering): "Hail the People's Government! Long live Chairman Mao!"

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