Suchergebnisse

Economists have come to depend on reports to the National People's Congress for details on China's past performance and future expectations. On the eve of the third five-year plan the National People's Congress did not meet, as had been the case in the previous year. Something seems to have gone wrong with the time-table, if not the substance, of political decisions.

Recently reports have filled the columns of the world Press suggesting that malnutrition or even starvation is widespread in the most populous country in the world. This is clearly a matter of far-reaching implications and no longer a subject for discussion only among scientists. The evidence available is scanty and far from conclusive. Reports remain conflicting, but they seem to indicate that malnutrition is not a general feature of the Chinese scene. Whereas Western observers have tended to conclude from sparse reports emanating from China that malnutrition may be widespread, the Chinese authorities have denied these reports and have rejected all offers of relief by voluntary organisations as based on misconceptions.

Communist China is entering yet another year of calamities of major proportions. They stem chiefly from its unbalanced fanning industry and affect every sector of its economy.Chinese and Western analysts have come full circle in their assessment within the last three years. In China the exuberance of the Great Leap Forward has given way to the gloom of austerity programmes and emergency regulations. Abroad, the voices praising the miracles of 1958 have been displaced by those reporting disaster and starvation. Those advising caution and moderation in the face of obvious Chinese exaggerations tend to be dismissed now as they were then.

Throughout Asia agriculture is still the largest single economic sector and the village is the principal form of human society. Outside Japan on the Pacific and Israel on the Mediterranean shores of the Asian continent the villages provide the homestead and determine the way of life of three-quarters to four-fifths of the population, and as a rule two-thirds to three-quarters of the working people are engaged in agricultural pursuits. Villagers not occupied in this way usually earn their living by processing, financing and trading the products of their communities. The town dwellers, rapidly increasing in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the total population, are rarely far removed geographically and in their mental make-up from their ancestors. As much as two-thirds of their personal expenditure is spent on foodstuffs and thus a substantial portion of urban incomes flows back to the countryside.