Red China: The Loss of Man

RED CHINA

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Red China last week was like a ravenous giant. From the snowy plains of Manchuria to the humid bamboo forests of Yunnan, from the sky-merging grasslands of Central Asia to the dimly neon-lit waterfront of Shanghai, there was only one totally absorbing subject—food.

At Wuhan, where the steel mills have slowed to part-time operation, a month's rice ration lasts barely three days, sugar is issued only four times a year, and housewives try to thicken watery gruel by adding grass. Hungry people from Tientsin sneak into the fields at night to steal corn from the stalks, and Kwangtung villagers are reportedly eating bark from the trees. Among the fantastic mountain shapes of Kweilin spread even more fantastic rumors: the sour-tasting new soy sauce is said to be made from human hair. In Peking, when the first fish to arrive in weeks proved rotten, enraged women beat up a Communist official. Everywhere the traditional Chinese greeting "Have you eaten?" has turned bitter.

At night, the wide boulevards of Peking are dim and ghostly; because of the shortage of electric power, only one in every nine street lamps is lit. Two years ago, Chinese in Hong Kong shipped 870,000 food parcels annually to their relatives in China. This year, in answer to desperate appeals, they have already shipped 9,000,000. Refugees stream into Hong Kong and Macao, escaping any way they can. To avoid feeding those unable to work, Red China is now giving exit visas to the aged and infirm. One Hong Kong resident had gone to China in 1958 because "I wanted to work for my country"; last week he fled back to Hong Kong and reported, "There was no meat, and fish only once a week. You had to get up at 2 and 3 in the morning to stand in line for your ration of rice, fruit, vegetables, and cigarettes made from mulberry leaves—and even then they were not always available. A man is not a machine. If he has no food, he has no interest in working."

An 18-year-old girl refugee from Chekiang province said that only once this year had she been able to buy "shoes, stockings, washcloths and a tube of toothpaste. We got only eight feet of cotton cloth annually." Another woman refugee burst into tears when she spoke of friends "still suffering night and day back there."

The Paradox. Is this the true picture of China today? Not according to Communist films and propaganda. They show happy, husky children gamboling in village nurseries, smiling Kazakh herdsmen shearing fat sheep on the Altinshoki steppes, clear-eyed workmen scrambling among the wooden scaffolding of a thousand construction sites. Important guests are dazzled by the enormous parades sweeping into Peking's Tien An Men square with a swirling of scarlet flags, the cheerful explosion of strings of firecrackers whirled on poles, the rhythmic thunder of drums and cymbals. Healthy, pig-tailed girls dance by in a flutter of pastel scarves; fit-looking soldiers march past in cadenced columns; phalanxes of workers with banners roar out slogans extolling the greatness of Communism and hatred of "American imperialism." Here, evidently, is all the panoplied might of a confident and messianic power.

Internationally, Red China seeks to match that picture. At the U.N. the Communist countries and some neutrals are once again about to press for