Foreign reports describe the "National People's Congress" as the "parliament" of the Chinese Communist regime.
Nothing could be more misleading. No parliament of any country meets only once a year at the whim of the regime, and then only for ten days to make speeches and does hardly anything else.
The status of the "National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference" is even stranger. Nothing quite like it exists in a democratic country. It does not even have any nominal power or function. Carried over from the days when the Chinese Communists were still pretending to put up a "united front," its sole purpose today is that of a garbage can for Peiping to dump those from the so-called "democratic parties and groups" who are no longer of use to the regime.
These two rubber-stamping bodies met simultaneously in Peiping from the end of March to early April. Some economy-minded Red bureaucrat had a grand idea. He asked himself, or probably his colleagues, that since neither would be doing any real work, why couldn't these two conferences be held together to save some expenses. Apparently, no one objected or felt it necessary to object. The "parliament" itself had no say in such things. Thus the show came on, like a double feature for the price of one in a movie house of a "decadent" capitalist country.
The Second Conference of the "Third National Committee of CPPCC" began on March 29 and adjourned on April 11, attended by 851 "delegates." The Second Conference of the Second NPC, with 1,072 "deputies" reporting for the session, opened on March 30 and ended on April 10.
The tune was called, and the puppets danced obediently. The leaders of the regime and the Chinese Communist Party lent their presence to the opening and closing sessions of the NPC: Mao Tse-tung, Liu Shao-chi, Soong Ching-ling, Tung Pi-wu, Chu Teh, Chou En-Iai and a whole platoon of "vice premiers and ministers." As "chairman" of CPPCC, Chou presided over its separate meetings with Kuo Mo-jo, Shen Chun-ju, Huang Yen-pei, Li Wei-han, Li Ssu-kuang, Chen Shu-tung, Chen Yi, Pebala Cholieh-Namje and Ngapo Ngawang-Jigme.
Somehow, the meetings lacked the luster and make-believe that surrounded their previous sessions. A look at the agenda of the "National People's Congress" showed why.
Only three reports were made at the NPC: Li Fu-chun, "vice premier and chairman of the State Planning Commission," on the draft "National Economic Plan for 1960"; Li Hsien-nien, "vice premier and minister of finance," on the final accounts for 1959 and draft "State budget" for 1960; and Tan Chen-lin, also a "vice premier," on the draft "National Program for Agricultural Development, 1956-1967."
If Mao Tse-tung or Liu Shao-chi spoke at all in the NPC and CPPCC meetings, their words were not reported. Even Chou En-lai skipped his usual "report on the work of the government." As a matter of fact, although 464 "deputies" and 50 "government cadres" spoke at the NPC session which lasted 11 days, not a single one of them touched on any subject of political significance.
Why this sudden reticence on the part of Peiping's bosses? Was it because of any change of plan which cancelled the political reports? Did it signify any theoretical difference between the Chinese Communists and their master in the Kremlin?
The answer has yet to be found.
Sparrows to Bedbugs
The conspicuous lack of any political announcement of significance in the NPC and CPPCC conferences was the only notable feature of these meetings. Otherwise, there was absolutely nothing new.
The NPC, as expected, approved the "National Economic Plan for 1960," the "Final State Accounts for 1959," and the "State Budget for 1960." Not a decimal figure was changed. The resolution adopting these documents, in fact, read more like a propaganda article than any parliamentary act. It said:
"The Congress considers it as a great victory to continue the big leap forward in 1959 following the big leap forward in the national economy in 1958 and to fulfill the major targets of the Second Five-Year Plan three years ahead of schedule. This victory is a proof that the general line—building socialism with more, faster, better and more economical results by exerting utmost efforts and pressing ahead consistently—and the 'simultaneous development' policy laid down by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao Tse-tung are the only correct road to fast realization of the aim of making our country rich and strong and furthering the well-being of our people. This victory testifies to the invincible great strength of Mao Tse-tung's thinking which integrates the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution and construction.
"The National Economic Plan for 1960 is a plan for continued leap forward and the financial budget for 1960 is commensurate with the growth of the national economy. Both the plan and the budget are forward-looking and reliable. Realization of this plan and budget will make it possible for us to catch up with and overtake Britain in the output of major industrial products in less than ten years and to realize the 1956-1967 National Program for Agricultural Development two or three years ahead of schedule."
The "National Program for Agricultural Development, 1956-1967" was originally published in 1956 and revised in 1957. The NPC changed only one word in the entire pro gram-the definition of "four pests" were changed from rats, sparrows, flies and mosquitoes to rats, bedbugs, flies and mosquitoes. It was probably because most sparrows on the mainland were eaten by the hungry masses.
The CPPCC, however, provided an interesting sidelight. Chen Shu-tung, its "vice chairman," reporting on the work of the standing committee, revealed that its principal duty now was indoctrination of so-called "democratic personages." The CPPCC not only operated the "Institute of Socialism of Peiping," into which such famous "rightist opportunists" as Chang Po-chun and Lo Lun-chi were sent for "thought remolding," but its local committees were running a total of 274 "Political Schools" and "Institutes of Socialism" with 50,000 former "rightists" receiving brainwashing therein.
Chen also promised that the CPPCC would in the future:
"(1) Continue to carry out the policy of long-term coexistence and mutual supervision between the Chinese Communist Party and the various democratic parties and groups ...
"(2) Continue to urge personages of all circles to participate actively in the technical revolution, cultural revolution, and the mass campaign for increasing production and practicing economy ....
"(3) Intensify political and theoretical studies, and carry out a campaign for studying Chairman Mao Tse-tung's works ...
"(4) Make arrangements for members of the National Committee of CPPCC, members of the central committees of the various democratic parties and groups, and democratic personages of various circles to participate in physical labor training programs ...
"(5) Continue our resolute struggle against our enemies at home and abroad for the liberation of Taiwan, and expose and oppose the false peace and the insidious war schemes advanced by the imperialist bloc headed by the United States."
Urban Communes
As reported in this column last month, the Chinese Communists began "organizing the economic life of the people" in all cities on the mainland almost immediately after the New Year. The outside world took notice of it only from Li Fu-chun's report to the NPC on March 20. Reported by the New China News Agency, Li said:
"Now, all the cities are setting up people's communes in a big way, there is a big growth in neighborhood industry, in suburban farming, in public welfare services and community dining-rooms, thus extensively organizing the economic life of the residents, further organizing the city dwellers and emancipating millions of housewives from household chores so that they can take part in social labor. All this not only helps the development of production and construction, but also helps the thorough transformation of the life of urban society."
There was evidence that the Peiping regime was pushing full speed ahead the urban communes, and was expected to complete the drive before the end of the year.
Five "deputies" to NPC, representing Peiping, Shanghai, Tientsin, Wuhan and Canton separately, presented a "joint speech" at the NPC meeting on April 9. They boasted that: "Practice over the past year and more has proved that this organizational form, i.e., people's communes, is also completely suitable for major cities and that, like the rural people's communes, urban people's communes have demonstrated its greats superiority and are warmly received by the people."
They quoted the resolution of the 6th plenary session of the CCP 8th Central Committee which promised that the urban communes will "become a means for transforming the old cities and building up socialist new cities, and provide overall organization for production, exchange, distribution, and welfare of the people."
Their speech gave the process of communalization of the cities as 'follows: "In the mass campaign to organize the urban people's communes, we should adopt an active attitude to guide the progress of the campaign. Our five cities are now planning, first of all, to perfect management of those people's communes organized on the basis of streets, and, at the same time, to perfect, step by step, the management of those people's communes organized with mines, plants, government agencies, and schools as their core, thus aiming at extensive establishment, by steps and groups, of people's communes throughout the cities."
When that is achieved, there will not be a single person on the Chinese mainland left out of the regime's tentacles of regimentation and control.
According to the New China News Agency, already 500,000 people in Shanghai are eating in the 2,000 neighborhood mess halls established by April 7. Even the aged, pregnant women, children and the sick could not take their meals at home. In the Linliho Cement Plant near Peiping, 90 percent of the workers' wives were working either in the workshops or in so-called welfare establishments, including "full time" nurseries as distinguished from "day" nurseries only. The official People's Daily was preaching the practice of "readjusting staff and workers' dormitories according to production units," in other words, herding those who work in the same unit to live in the same dormitory. The same process of breaking up families was being repeated in the cities.
There were, however, two differences between the present urban commune movement and the rural commune campaign of 1958. The urban communes do not as yet follow the same organizational structure of rural communes, i. e., combining industry, agriculture, trade, education and military affairs, and integrating government administration and commune management. Furthermore, mindful of the opposition met in the initial stage of the establishing of rural communes, the Communists took this time a comparatively mild and gradual approach. But the purposes remain the same—complete domination of the population and thorough exploitation of their labor.
Trade With USSR
On March 29, Peiping concluded the "Protocol on Exchange of Goods for 1960" with Moscow. Yeh Chi-chuang, "minister of foreign trade," signed in the presence of Li Hsien-nien, "vice premier," while Nikolai Semenovich Patolichev, Soviet minister of foreign trade, crawled his signature on the document which Moscow dictated.
As usual, the amount of trade provided by the instrument was not disclosed. The communique said mysteriously: "The protocol provides that the volume of trade between China and the Soviet Union in 1960 will be 10 percent bigger than that provided in the Protocol on the Exchange of Goods between China and the Soviet Union for 1959." Soviet Russia, it said, would supply the Chinese Communists with metal cutting machine tools, forging and pressing equipment, motor vehicles, tractors, ferrous and non ferrous metals, cables, petroleum and products, and chemical products, in exchange for Chinese tin, molybdenum ore, tungsten ore, woolen textiles, silk textiles, raw silk, sheep's wool, carpets, knit-wear, tobacco leaves, soya beans, rice, tea, fruit and other items.
For those western countries which still dream of regaining their trade with the Chinese mainland, the following information should serve to illustrate complete Chinese Communist dependence on Soviet Russia in matters of trade and economy. They were taken from an article written by Lin Hai-yun, "vice minister of foreign trade," published in No. 18 of Shih Chieh Chih Shih (World Knowledge).
"China's trade with the Soviet Union and other socialist nations is the principal form of economic cooperation and mutual assistance between fraternal nations; it constitutes the reliable foundation and the major part of China's foreign trade. In the past 10 years, China's trade with the fraternal countries has been systematically developed along the principle of close cooperation, equality and mutual benefit, in the spirit of nationalism, and internationalism, and on the basis of mutual needs and possibilities.
"The total value of China's imports and exports in 1958 with fraternal countries increased by five times, compared with 1950. The value of China's import and export trade with socialist countries accounted for 75 percent of the total value of her foreign trade, and it is, therefore, natural that her trade with socialist countries constitutes the main part of her foreign trade."
While it did not speak in detailed statistics, the article revealed that:
—Of the 166 large projects which Soviet Russia promised to build for Peiping during the First Five-Year Plan which was supposedly overfulfilld by 1957, only 113 of them were completely or partly finished by the end of 1958.
—In 1958, Soviet Russia again pledged to build or expand 47 projects on the Chinese mainland, and in 1959, 78 projects. None of these were completed yet.
—Also during the period of the First Five-Year Plan, the European satellites, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria, agreed to build 68 mining and industrial enterprises for Peiping. Only 44 of the 68 were completed by the end of 1958, when the Second Five-Year Plan was well underway.
—From 1950 to 1958, the lathes supplied Peiping by Soviet Russsia and the European satellites accounted for 77.9 percent of all import of lathe; diesel engines, 21.4 percent; drilling machines, 84.5 percent; motor vehicles, 92.1 percent; locomotives, 99.5 percent; precision and testing instruments and apparatus, 74.7 percent; petroleum, 96.6 percent; and non-ferrous metals, 57 percent.
—During the same nine-year period, the Chinese Communists sold 79.7 percent of its export soya beans to Soviet Russia and her other satellites; edible oil, 76,7 percent; tungsten ore, 100 percent; tin, 96.4 percent; frozen pork, 99.5 percent; canned goods, 86.8 percent; apples, 89 percent; silk, 74.8 percent; and woolen fabrics, 96 percent.
Latin American Week
Ten thousand persons gathered in Peiping on March 19 in an "enthusiastic, militant rally" in response to an appeal for a "Support Latin American Peoples Week" and in celebration of the establishment of the "China-Latin America Friendship Association," the newest Chinese Communist "united front" organization to spearhead its infiltration and subversion activities in the western hemisphere.
Chou En-lai, the puppet "premier," Peng Chen, "vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee," and Chen Yi "vice premier and foreign minister," all showed up at the rally. Kuo Mo-jo, "vice chairman of the CPPCC National Committee" and head of the "China Peace Committee," delivered the keynote address at the Communist-staged meeting.
"The Chinese people have always regarded the struggle of the Latin American people as our own struggles, their victories as our own victories," he screamed. "The enemy of the Chinese people and the enemy of the Latin American peoples is one and the same imperialism. The criminals who are occupying Taiwan and who are bombing Cuba's cane fields both come from the same place." He attacked President Dwight D. Eisenhower's recent Latin American tour as intended at "nothing other than to break up the unity of the Latin American people, to isolate and weaken the Cuban resolution and to dismember and suppress Latin America's national and democratic movement, in the hope' of buttressing up U. S. imperialism's collapsing rule in Latin America."
With the founding of the "China-Latin America Friendship Association" earlier on March 16, Peiping's efforts to stretch a sinister hand across the South Pacific registered a new peak. The Association was sponsored by 15 of the regime's front organizations, from the "Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries" to the "Federation of Literary and Art Circles." Chu Tu-nan was elected its president, and Hu Yu-chih, Chi Chao-ting, Wu Leng-hsi, Yao Tsou, Tung Chun-tsai and Chou Erh-fu its vice presidents.
Peiping invited a good number of Latin Americans earlier, timing their visits in such a way as to coincide with the inauguration of the Association and the mass rally, thus using them to its own propaganda advantage. Among the guests so lured to the Chinese mainland in March were:
—Ismerio Vivas, representative of the University Students' Federation and general secretary of the Medical Students' Association of Cuba;
—Guillermo Estevez Boero, president of the University Students' Federation of Argentina;
—Joaquim Olinto Meirelles, vice president of the National Union of University Students of Brazil;
—Augusto Figueroa, secretary of the Office of Latin American Students Relations and representative of the Federation of University Students of Venezuela;
—Mario Raul Pinto, general secretary of the University Students Federation of Honduras;
—Yalanda Bedregal de Conitzer, heading the "Bolivian Women's Delegation";
—Arnaldo Estrella, Brazilian pianist, and his wife, Mari vccia Iscovino, violinist;
—Dr. Damid Fairman and his wife of Argentina; and
—Jose Venturelli, vice secretary general of the Peace Liaison Committee of the Asian and Pacific Regions, a Chilean fellow traveller.