October 31, 1963
Page 268
FAR EASTERN The Successors
ECONOMIC REVIEW
Hongkong Volume XLII
216 221
October 31, 1963 Number 5
Contents
Far Eastern Round-up Traveller's Tales, by Mus Afir Asian Commentary (Slow
Please!), by Daniel Wolfstone
Down, 223
Regional Affairs
China (Some Successes
Dougall)
Colina
Mac- 217
ning)
Philippines (Bully for Bears?
Ronquillo)
Indonesia (Ports for Free)
Ceylon (Water for Kandy
H. E. R. Abaya-
sekara)
Europe (Flattery
or Insult?
Subhan)
219 Malcolm 219 222
Malaysia (Ants May Bite? -- K. G. Tregon- 218 Bernardino 218 219
Japan (British Links-V. Wolpert) Russia (More with Moscow - V. Wolpert) 223
Special Articles
Vietnam's Emerging Forces, by P. H. M.
Jones
225
The Malaysian Purse, by Peter
Polomka
227
Supplement
Japan into Affluence (A 40-Page Special
Survey)
Business – Survey
229
Grains (Jolly Millers; The Wheat War) 269
270
270
Machinery (Brother Branches)
270
Electronics (Look or Listen?)
271
Rubber (Malayan Mission in Moscow)
271
Power (Samchok's Second)
271
Economic Indicators
272
Shipping (Term of Profit)
273
Aviation (The Supersonics; China
Buys
Tridents?)
274
Tokyo Telegram
275
Hongkong Affairs
Functional Democracy, Hilton Cheong-Leen 277 Buses in a Crowd, by R. II. Leary
F.E.FR. Share Index
Other Contents
279
283
283
215
THERE HAS been no abatement in the campaign for "class struggle" which has been waged in China since the Party's Central Committee meeting in September 1962. This is symptomatic of the uncasiness which seems to pervade Chinese political thinking at home: by the middle of last year the leadership seems to have had realised that not in its lifetime would Communism be realised, and that the torch would have to be handed on to the younger generation. Difficulties were staring the Government in the face; the Sino-Soviet split abroad, the bourgeois tendencies at home, which showed up all too vividly that vigilance is needed to preserve the Communist doctrine and system uncorrupted.
The "class struggle" is a propaganda war. To many people in China it is a puzzling term. Why do we need class struggle, they ask, when the landlords and peasants are now both members of the com- munes, and the capitalists in the cities have been expropriated? Το which the Party replies: landlords and reactionaries still exist, and, though their teeth have been drawn, it will take a long, long time to reform them. They are on the watch all the time to corrupt the cadres and even to seize power.
THE WAR HAS been waged by lectures, exhibitions, meetings, newspapers. Students are carried off by the thousand to the country to speak to peasants to learn about conditions before 1949. Peking children have been sent to special institutes during the summer vacation to watch puppet shows and lantern slides with "class education" themes. Commercial workers have been told horrifying tales of service under the old merchants. Old peasants have recalled their hardships under the
landlords.
A very telling excerpt from Liu Shao-chi's How to be a Good Communist was quoted by a Canton paper which explains the reasons for the class struggle: "why are there still such bad things in the splendid organisation of our Party?.... Although in general our Party members are generally the best Chinese men and women, the vanguard of the Chinese proletariat, they come, however, from every stratum of Chinese society and are still living in this society which is replete with the influences of the exploiters." This doctrine the Party has applied not only to itself but to the whole country, to rationalise in a way which accords with Marxist belief the fact that people do undoubtedly work harder for themselves than for that abstract notion, the state. Even the Government has been forced to make concessions in allowing private plots to the peasant (and so boosting considerably the economy) and dividends to the former capitalists, China's only pool of managerial experience.
THE CHINESE leaders must be asking themselves how long they will have to compromise. However much they disapprove of the Soviet Government, they must have been struck by the Russian need, after so many years of collective agriculture, to import huge amounts of wheat. In addition to these practical difficulties, and the uncertainty they must now feel about living to see the Communist revolution completely accomplished, they seem to lack confidence in the next generation of Chinese, who have grown up almost entirely under the Mao Tse-tung Government, and take its peace and stability and basic reforms for granted. But it is precisely these people who, more realistic, more experienced and pragmatic, could set the Chinese economy on its feet.
Page
DON'T ENTER THE EASTERN MARKET BLIND FOLDED
Far Better Consult the people who know - The Hong Kong Bank Group. Advice on importers and exporters interested in specific merchandise is one of the invalu- able services available from The Trade Enquiries and Opinions Department of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in Hong Kong. It is the best-informed of its kind. The Hong Kong Bank Group, with its vast resources and knowledge of Eastern affairs, can help you, in many ways, to discover profitable trade with the East.
TRADE ADVICE CAN ALSO BE GIVEN AT ANY BRANCH OF THE HONG KONG BANK GROUP.
THE HONGKONG AND SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION
Page 268
Head office: Hong Kong. London office: 9 Gracechurch Street, E.C.3,
THE BRITISH BANK OF THE MIDDLE EAST
Head office: 7 King William Street, London E. C. 4,
MERCANTILE BANK LIMITED
Head office: 15 Gracechurch Street, London, E. C. 3.
Tin (Indonesian Decline)
Oil (A 34% Yield?)
216