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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 21, No. 2. March 27, 1958

Increasing Production

Increasing Production

The first five-year plan that ended in 1956 brought a 60 per cent. increase in industrial and agricultural production. The next five-year plan calls for a 75 per cent. rise on the production levels of 1957. All of this is being achieved by sheer hard work. Work that is normally done in the West by machines or animals is done in China by the sweat of the human brow. There is no forty-hour week; many workers and peasants work week in and week out. More than 400,000,000 have been herded into collectives and co-operatives in an effort to make cultivation easier and more productive. Collectivisation has in some cases been rewarding, but in many cases it has met with severe setbacks. Mao himself has reported that 70 per cent. of the Chinese co-operatives are facing bankruptcy. In the cities the picture must be somewhat different as the Chinese have now got to the stage where they can produce their own motor-cars. The first of these be built in the next five-year plan in Changchun. In some parts of China there is a starvation problem, as for example in Tientsin in northern China. Flooding has not made things any easier. The Formosan Government's Consul-General in New Zealand has pointed out that more than 7,000,000 acres had been inundated last year when the Yellow River burst its banks. Takon on the whole China is prospering; production is soaring, even "baby production". We cannot forget that today one baby in three is a Chinaman and that China's population is rising by twelve million a year.