CONFIDENTIAL
G
· 3 -
Certainly in the factories I visited, nobody was working particularly hard. Many machines were idle. So were a good many people. And no one seemed in a hurry to remove finished products once they had been made.
Individual managers seemed to be very anxious about implementing NPC decisions too quickly. I sensed that there was some feeling that those who moved too quickly might be caught out in the wrong direction if there was a change. In this sense I suppose they were showing their own cautious reaction to the non-advancement of Teng Hsiao-ping.
J
C. I re-read the "Economist" articles while looking directly at the Chinese countryside from the train. The Macrae article seemed even further removed from reality than it had seemed in London the figure of a trouserless peasant directly manuring the fields in full view of the train against a backdrop of thatched houses without brick walls somehow seemed more typical than Macrae's lyrical description of village Keynesianism and educational dynamism. Emily MacFarquhar's article, however, seemed much more to the point.
d. My guide in Shanghai found it hard enough to believe that a system could exist where even occasionally people got more when they were out of work than when they were in work. But he was most horrified to hear that the British Government subsidized nationalised industries - "The Government earns no money itself; so how does it give away money to one section of the community? It must be stealing from the people to do so; why don't they object?" Whether this meant that he favoured capitalism Yugoslav communism I never discovered.
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