RED CHINA: Leap Forward, Drop Back

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According to the Red Chinese themselves, 1958 was a bumper year down on the communal farm: 375 million tons of grain produced, more than double the 1957 output. The farmers of Yunnan province were reported floundering in grain. With storehouses bulging, tubs of wheat had to be crammed inside peasants' homes.

The rejoicing over this "great leap forward" could hardly be heard last week in Red China's cities. Reason: city dwellers had just been told that, despite the talk of a record yield, their grain rations had been cut. A "very heavy worker" in Peking, who used to get the maximum of 20.6 lbs. of wheat flour a month, will now get only twelve. Similar cuts hit the smaller rations of white-collar workers, shopkeepers and children.

From Peking, the Agence France Presse correspondent reported through censorship "lively discontent . . . The man on the street has difficulty understanding why he is being sacrificed for the benefit of the peasants." Observers offered a number of reasons: Red China is exporting about 2,000,000 tons of grain a year; China's archaic and anarchic transportation system, being rebuilt by the Reds, is bogged down lugging pig iron for the nation's new steel industry; the bureaucracy is making a mess of distribution. Last month the people of Canton, who live next to a sea of fish, could get no fish; Shanghai residents had to take half of their rice ration in sweet potatoes.

But one Westerner recently returned from Peking suggests another reason for the paradox of record crops and ration cuts. He reported that the citizens of Peking, fearing the day when they will be herded into people's communes, have started hoarding food and gorging themselves in the city's renowned restaurants. By withholding food, the Reds are squeezing the city dweller into the communal mess hall. "When the private food hoards are gone and people cannot buy much on the local markets," the Western visitor reported, "they will be forced to eat in the community kitchens."