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4 Contemporary China; A Reference Digest  [i] (1944-1945)

handle is hein.cow/cchinred0004 and id is 1 raw text is: Sec. 562 P. L. & R. U. S. POSTAGE PAI D NEW YORK, N.Y. PERMIT NO. 8383 CONTEMPORARY CHINA A Reference Digest Published Fortnightly by Chinese, News Service, An Agency of the Chinese Government 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York 20, N. Y. Vol. IV, No. 1 May 29, 1944 China's Economic Future* Here in this country, wherever you go, you are sur- rounded with machines - in your factories, in your offices, in your homes, and on your roads. Because machines are so common you think nothing of them. Sometimes the more sensitive natures among you wish that you could get away from the machines, or even dream of the good old days when men lived close to nature without the noise, smoke, and lurry of the machines. In China the picture is totally different. We are just beginning to use machines. When we see squadrons of enemy planes come in to raid our cities, as they did in the last seven years, every Chinese wishes that China had the necessary machines to meet the enemy in the sky and to drive him away. But as late as two years ago we did not have the machines, so that we had to watch the enemy planes come in without any opposition in the air and drop the bombs wherever the enemy chose. When we watch our laborers carrying one hundred pounds on their shoulders and walking 20 or 25 miles a day under the burning sun or in dripping rain, we wish we had the necessary railways, ships, and trucks to relieve the human carrier of his burden and to speed the transport of goods or passengers. When we see our village women spinning cotton, thread by thread, or weaving cloth by hand at the rate of 10 or 12 feet a day, we wish we had the mechanical spindles and looms that could increase production one hundred-fold. In all fields of production we are desperately in need of machines. We have made up our minds to get the machines after the war. The conviction of the necessity and efficiency of machines has come to us gradually. One hundred years ago we thought that the machines brought to China by Americans and Europeans were all unneces- sary playful gadgets which the people of the West were fond of, just as children are fond of toys. In 1870 some foreign merchants built a railway about ten miles in length, near Shanghai, just as a demonstration of the *Speech by Dr. T. F. Tsiang, China's delegate to UNRRA, before the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. efficiency of mechanical transport. That railway aroused so much popular opposition that the Government had to buy it and tear up its tracks. In the seventies and eighties of the last century there was heated debate on these questions: whether the telegraph was beneficial; whether steamships did not do more harm than good; whether spinning and weaving machinery did not create unemployment. By the end of the last century and the beginning of the present century that debate was ended. People all over China had come to the conclusion that science and technology were both necessary and desirable. But then came the revolution and after the revolution twenty odd years of civil war. During that period of political instability no large scheme of industrialization could be carried out. With this war, the bitter experience of having to meet the enemy's machines 'with only flesh and blood, the conviction that machines are an absolute necessity is driven home. Now, for the first time in history, both the Government and the people of China are completely convinced that the first and the most important task before China is industrialization. We think that industrialization will solve for us two problems at once-the problem of national defense and the problem of mass poverty. Fields of Industry Industrialization will cover many fields. First and fore- most, industrialization means to us mechanical transport. We will build more railways and more highways. We will improve our rivers for navigation and put on the rivers more steam or oil driven ships. We will complete a network for air transport covering all parts of China. Probably air transport will render a service to China big- ger than it can render to this country. Secondly, our industrialization program means electrification. We must provide power, cheap power, for our industries, and if possible even for our farms. Equipment for steam power and hydro-electric power will be in large demand. Third- ly, industrialization will include the building of steel Reproduction by Permnmission of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Buffalo, NY

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