Accelerating Advance

It is not easy to appreciate the pace of China's industrialisation. It took Britain 35 years to expand steel production from 5.1 to 10 million tons; China achieved this in one year. It took 75 years to push coal production from 120 to 200 million tons; last year China more than doubled coal production, achieving an annual output of 270 million tons. 1958 was for China "The Year of the Great! Leap Forward" and as the months passed, the pace of industrialisation increased.

The value of industrial production in January, 1958, was 14 percent, above that of January, 1957; the value of September's output was 117 per cent, above that of September, 1957. This accelerating advance can be explained, partly by the pressure exerted by a developing agriculture, and partly by the skill with which Chinese planners have integrated the efforts of small, medium and large-scale enterprises.

The transformation of the countryside, the beginnings of agricultural modernisation, have created an insatiable demand for industrial products. The expansion of irrigation, for example, will demand vast quantities of irrigation machinery; mechanisation of farming, even in its initial stages, will call for half a million tractors and 20 million tractor-drawn implements.

If the machine-building industry is to meet the needs of a swiftly-evolving agriculture rapid expansion is essential. Several scientists with whom I discussed this topic were of the opinion that, rapid though this expansion had been. It had still not succeeded in keeping pace with the communes demand for more and more mechanical equipment.

The many-fronted advance of industry is one of the distinctive features of China's industrial revolution. Existing plants are being used to capacity and extended; new large and medium-scale factories are being established; the productive capacity of peasant or "native-style" industry is used to the full. The traveller sees examples of this multiple advance in every comer of the country; the industry which best illustrates it is the iron and steel industry.