The Chilly Season

Red China's masses last week had much in common with the subjects of the famous fairy-tale emperor: everybody was talking about new clothes, but nobody could actually see them. After three years of bad cotton crops, the annual cloth ration has shrunk to as little as 2 1/2 ft. per person in some regions--"just enough," said one refugee, "to patch our rags." So severe is the shortage, according to the official Peking People's Daily, that "clothes hospitals" are making "short-sleeved shirts out of long-sleeved shirts, a vest out of a short-sleeved shirt, and underwear out of a vest."

In timeworn style, Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung's lieutenants blame drought, hailstorms and insect blights for cutting the ration from a manageable 20.65 ft. in 1957 to its present handkerchief size. But Red China's frayed look also owes much to a deliberate decision by its leaders. "When the bad crops began in 1959," explains one Western expert in Hong Kong, "cotton and cloth was one place where you could squeeze the people." Peking squeezed hard, cutting back cotton acreage at least 20% so that every spare clod of earth could be sown to grains. The result: China's 1962 grain harvest was up 10% to 182 million metric tons, while the cotton crop may have fallen to as low as 1,200,000 metric tons, down one-third from 1958. Further aggravating the situation at home, Peking sold huge amounts of cotton abroad to earn foreign exchange. With the onset of the chilly season, even the cloth wrapping on gift parcels from relatives abroad is used to patch threadbare garments. Said one refugee in Hong Kong: "We are used to getting cold in the winter."

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