Himalayan Times (1962)

Six

Himalayan Times December 23, 3.962

"EAT THE MOUNTAIN" IS THE NEW SLOGAN

Chinese Up Against Food Shortages

Recently the noted
traveller-journalist, Robert
Guillain, has given some
more facts about Chinese
agriculture.

According to him, in
February 1961, a word never
before printed, a word never
heard in the mouth of
Peking officials, appeared
in an article written by the
Minister for Agriculture
It was published in ' Red
Flag', the mouthpiece of
the. Central Committee of
Communist Party. The word
was 'FAMINE.'

It has now been subs-
tituted by another word.
Members of the Chinese
Government can use it
without risk of error. The
word is 'DEARTH '

Long ago, in the rural
districts, the famished Chi-
nese used to eat the bark
ot trees and grass. Today,
things in China are not as
bad as that

Last year, the Com-
munist Party, organised a
svsternaiic quest for wild
fruits, mountain and marsh-
land plants that could assuage
hunger, as a peking news-
paper put it.

From Manchuria in the
Ko-th to the Kwangsi in
the South, hundreds of
peasants from the communes
went into the wilderness

to look for their food; wild
game from the forests,
fish from the ponds and
lakes, and edible wild
plants "Eat the Mountain"
is now a slogan in Szechuan,
which was once a granary
of China.

It has been an open
question how much of this
was caused by narure and
how much more by the
folly of the Chinese rulers.

Propaganda tends to
impute to had weather much
of China's troubles But
this, according to Robert
Guillain, is not the whole
truth.

The Peking regime itse'r
does not go so r as ;' ■•:
and at least for local con-
Pumntion always uses a
ritual formula. The succes-
sive disasters were due "o
"calamities and certain in-
adequacies in cur pol'cv

Liu Shao Chi. Presi-
dent of the Peo-'e's Re-
public, in a speech deHvered
in Julv 1061, to celebrate
the Party's annlversarv,
even reversed the official
formula into ' many inade-
quacies and two disastrous
years." He weighed his
words. The errors we' e
named first, and for good
reasons.

The first error, and
the one which had most

severe consequence, was
famous "statistics error.'1

Towards the end of
1958, Peking triumphantly
announced, to the bewilder-
ment of Asia, that thanks
to new cultivation methods
the cereal crops had rea-
ched the record figure of
375 million tons. '1 hat is
nearly twice the 1957 figure.
More fantastic still, the
target for 1959 was 525
million tons.

It seems certain today,
however surprising it may
be, that Mao Pse-tung
himself and his team were
the victims of their own
Utopian dreams. In trying
to deceive the world, they
too were deceived by the
figures supplied at every
level of their organisation
by the rank and file. The
greatest disorder prevailed
in s*atistical computation.
To announce record figvjres
seemed a duty to the par-
triots in the communes.

Moit than t'x momrs
!;,:er, in ndgus- >959 a
cruel confession was mare.
THE FIGURES ANNOUN-
CED WERE FALSE.

The true figures for
cereals were 250 million
tons. This meant an error
of 170 million tons

The target for 1959
was subsequently reduced
from to 270 million

tons. EVEN 1 HEN IT
WAS NOT REACHED.
(Cour t sy-AU India Radio.)