Man Of The Year: Visionary of a New China

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have got a person imprisoned or executed a few years ago. One of the first essentials has been to deprogram the deeply rooted suspicion of things foreign. Hence the Kwangming Daily's recent line: "It is completely un-Marxist to adopt the foolish attitude of being complacent and arrogant and of uncritically excluding foreign science, technology and culture. We advocate learning from the strong points of all nations."

Another movement under way is the rehabilitation of persons considered "bourgeois." Kwangtung Radio announced that at Canton's Rubber Plant No. 7, "six former bourgeois owners" discharged during the Cultural Revolution have been rehired and assigned to administrative and production jobs. This is a clear application of Teng's pragmatism: it is a person's technical knowledge that the new China wants, not his political purity.

The Chinese emphasis on efficiency and competence can sometimes sound like an American political campaign against Big Government interference. The provincial radio station in Kansu complained in November: "There are too many inspection groups at company, bureau, municipal and provincial levels." The station objected that the number of slogan banners displayed at factories is often used as the criterion for judging whether the plant is doing well. In addition, "there are too many meetings."

A call has gone out for correct bookkeeping. During the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath, said the People's Daily, leaders were interested only in "political accounts, not economic accounts. As a result, accounting work was greatly weakened and financial management was very confused."

Management of the highest order will be needed to achieve the Four Modernizations. Of these, agriculture probably has the highest priority; it is also the most difficult. The Peking leadership has set a goal of producing 400 million tons of wheat, rice and other grains by 1985 and for achieving substantial agricultural mechanization by 1980. Both goals seem too ambitious. Though land in China is intensively cultivated and Chinese farmers are known for their innovation and diligence, yields lag far behind those of other countries. Peking has conferred with foreign farm experts, including U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland, about new seed varieties, the use of insecticides and the exchange of specialists. While the Chinese have made some progress toward mechanization, they need more than 1 million additional tractors, 320,000 trucks, at least 3 million combine harvesters, new drainage and irrigation machinery and 700,000 technicians for machinery repair and maintenance. The hardware will be difficult to get, since farm equipment is normally bought with surplus capital, which China must ordinarily use to purchase grain from abroad. Result: China is likely to remain a net importer of grain, and the rationing of edible oils and other staples will probably continue.

Foreign investment and technical aid will go far in bringing China's industrial capacity into the 20th century, the goal of the second modernization. Imitating such developing countries as Singapore and South Korea, the People's Republic has invited foreign companies to establish assembly and processing plants inside China. The Chinese work cheap—at about $25 a month, one-fifth of the average