Foreign News: The Numbers Game

Latest figures on the Communists, from the Communists' own sources, as given in the World Today, published by Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs:

¶China's Communist Party (12 million) is the world's largest, followed by Russia's "nearly 8,000,000." Of the world's 33 million Communists, 84% belong to Communist Parties that are in power.

¶Four countries in the free world—Italy, Indonesia, France and India—together concentrate four-fifths of the Communists outside the Soviet bloc.

¶The 13 states where Communists are in power embrace 26% of the world's land surface, nearly 35% of the world's population, and about one-third of the world's industrial output.

¶Of the 63 Communist Parties outside the Iron Curtain, more than 30, according to the Communists' own count, are illegal. In the Middle East they are legal only in Israel and, until recently, in Syria and Lebanon.

¶Four Communist Parties were unrepresented at the most recent gathering of the clan in Moscow, either because of inability to "preserve their organization in the face of repressions (e.g., Iran, the Philippines and the Union of South Africa), or through lack of even minimum support (e.g., Ireland)."