President John F. Kennedy, in an address delivered at Columbus, Ohio, on January 6, declared that while the free world was gaining strength in alliance, the Communists' world domain had begun to crack as a result of the continuing disputes between the Chinese Communists and the Soviet Union over tactics for further aggression. Commenting on the subject, the Los Angeles Times said on January 9: "President Kennedy surely does not set much store by the theory that Communism will lose its bite through its internal feuds and contradictions. This theory has been proposed again and again during the period in which we have been having more and more trouble with the Communist empire.
"Perhaps Mr. Kennedy was reaching for what cheer he could find to offer his audience in Columbus, O., when he said 'an important split has developed in the association of Communist nations and specifically mentioned the moving away of Red China from the Russian center.
"This kind of reassurance could be mischievous, and the President ought to qualify it. There are certainly differences of opinion between the two major Communist states, based for the most part on the clash of personalities of Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung. But security requires us to believe that the Communists will continue to cooperate in pressing forward on all fronts toward their goal of world domination.
"The Library of Congress has just published a study of the Moscow-Peiping feud and finds little comfort in it. The Russians and Chinese 'continue to mobilize manpower, brain power and immense resources to conquer the globe and to bury us and other free peoples.'
"The conclusions of the study are worth remembering:
" 'Quite obviously (the feuding leaders) agree on the following: That the Communist revolution is sweeping forward relentlessly, "destined by history" to engulf the whole world; and that capitalism is receding, "weakened by its own contradictions," and its failure to suppress the discount and revolutionary surge of the underprivileged masses.'
" 'On the basis of their common philosophy, therefore, the two Red partners are equally anxious to accelerate the triumph.' And their contentions arise from the desire of each partner 'to earn for himself the reputation of being the superior strategist in this 'holy war against imperialism' and, hence, more qualified for the role of ruler of the 'entire Communist camp.'
"This does not appear to be the kind of split on which the Western powers can base their policy or find their hope. The old joke about the quarreling man and wife who joined forces against the intruding neighbor has meaning for those who look for an advantage by intervening in the Communist quarrel."
Turning to War
George E. Sokolsky, a noted columnist, said the intensification of the conflict between Soviet Russia and the Peiping regime is in a large measure due to Russia's inability or unwillingness to help while the latter is suffering a serious food shortage. Predicting that the situation might lead to a new Chinese Communist aggression in Southeast Asia, the columnist wrote in the Washington Post on January 11: "The food problem in China has always been a matter of serious politics. Famines have led to revolution and to the overthrow of dynasties. China, during the past few years, has suffered from severe famines. The only solution the Red Chinese have found has been the purchase of wheat from Canada and Australia, which has left Red China without adequate foreign exchange.
"The principal solution has been war-war against the countries to the south of China which are rich rice lands, but if China imported rice from Siam, and all the countries which were formerly called French Indo-China, there would still not be enough of this food.
"The principal advantage of war is the accumulation of rice without paying for it. In a word, the production of rice by slave labor. Thus far, this has not been successful.
"This winter has been a very difficult one, and although Canada and Australia have helped some, their aid has been insufficient and too costly. The Red Chinese have turned from economics to war and the intensification of the conflict between Soviet Russia and Red China is in a large measure due to Russia's inability or unwillingness to help.
"Whatever the population of China is, the food supply is inadequate. Without an adequate food supply, the Communists cannot keep their people under control. The history of the country shows that hunger has led to revolution and to change of government. Furthermore, whenever China has faced famine, there has been an outpouring of the population in all directions, thus disturbing the status quo in East Asia. This is the situation now, and it will cause trouble."
Starvation & Cold
Reporting the current situation on the Chinese mainland, the Daily Telegraph of London said on January 2: "Thousands of people will die in Communist China this winter from hunger and cold. This grim prediction has been made by specialists after a careful sifting of evidence gathered from regular travelers between Hongkong and China, from refugees, and from Western businessmen and diplomats."
The paper said: "Last winter was the hardest since the Communists conquered the mainland in 1949. Grain production may have improved slightly this year, but the general situation is worse because clothing and firewood are unobtainable in many areas. Where cloth is available, the ration is sufficient only for patching old garments.
"The food ration has declined steadily over the last three years as a result of agricultural disasters. A recent cut brought the rice ration in Shanghai down to 18 lbs. the lowest level since the last world war. Vegetables and fish appear on the market only sporadically and meat is rarely available.
"Cities are better off than the countryside. It is reported that in some remote areas where supplies are dependent upon the overloaded transportation system, people are forced to hunt for edible wild plants. Reprinted from New York Journal- American
"A refugee doctor from Shanghai declares that the people's resistance to illness is extremely low."
Success Story
In contrast to the starvation and cold on the Chinese mainland, Robert P. Martin said, "a real success story is being written on the island of Taiwan, or Formosa."
He wrote in the U.S. News & World Report on January 1: "The standard of living in Formosa today is one of the highest in Asia, exceeded only by Japan and Malaya.
"Here, on this rich, semitropical island slightly larger than Maryland, you find 11 million people who are not only genuinely anti-Communist but are willing to defend themselves.
"You find a government that is authoritarian in many ways, but benevolent in others. It has made tremendous progress, economically and socially.
"Most spectacular Nationalist success has been in land reform and agricultural development.
"Starting out with a ceiling on rents and a guarantee of land tenure, the program subsequently developed into a scheme that gave tenant farmers and thousands of demobilized over-age soldiers a chance to buy land from the government and from landlords, whose holdings were limited by law to 7.5 acres.
"Landlords were well compensated. Terms for new owners were reasonable. The land reform benefited three fourths of the island's farmers, giving each family an average holding of three acres. Today, only 14 percent of the agricultural families are tenant farmers.
"Right now, agriculture in Formosa is more intensive and scientific than anywhere else in Asia with the possible exception of Japan. Results have been sensational. Rice production almost doubled between 1949 and 1961. Wheat output doubled in the same period, and sugar production remained stable despite a sizable cutback in sugar-planting acreage.
"Less spectacular - but equally important-is Formosa's industrialization. Food processing and textiles are the most important industries, but it also produces electric appliances, glass, synthetics, paper, cement and fertilizers. It has a small truck and automobile industry, shipbuilding yards and an oil refinery.
"Industrial output of Formosa, excluding sugar processing, has more than doubled in eight years.
"Formosa has land, water, electric power, industry, modern agriculture and -for the present-sufficiency in food."
"3-7-5 Wives"
Stuart Griffin described in the January 5 issue of the Christian Science Monitor what he has seen in Taiwan: "A group of smiling young farmers' wives paused in their work and politely put their tanned hands over their mouths in the traditional Asian gesture of demureness. Then the oldest, a woman in her early 30's explained through an interpreter why she and all the other young women were called '3-7-5 wives.'
"It all goes back to a land-reform program started by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's government in 1949. That year, the authorities devised a scheme of reducing the farm rents. They set a ceiling of 37.5 per cent of the annual main crop, according to a standard rate for each grade of farmland, from the scanty to the abundantly productive.
"That standard yield is not necessarily the actual harvest. It is, instead, closely related to soil fertility and productivity, figured on the basis of paddy fields and dry land.
"With the amount of farm rent payable by each tenant definitely established, all surplus food that the farmer could produce - and certainly he was given great new incentive so to grow-accrued to him as profit.
"He could afford to get married and his bride thus became known as a '3-7-5 wife.' The nuptials had been made possible by that 37.5 per cent reduction and ceiling.
"But this was far from all the government did to bolster a beneficial farm program of land reform and the '3-7-5' women were not the sole beneficiaries of a wise and far-sighted policy and project.
"As a result of this vast land-reform program, out of the 320,000 land buyers 40 per cent built 100,000 new farmhouses and repaired 320,000 old ones; 40 per cent also bought 140,000 water buffaloes; 13 per cent installed pumps, dug wells, constructed reservoirs, and planted windbreak forests and 40 per cent purchased thrashers, cleaners, cultivators, improved plows, and similar farm-use equipment.
"Tenant-farmers have become landowners and landlords have become shareholders. The Taiwanese economy has thus grown—agriculture and industry—in balance, diversity, and production value.
"No wonder the '3-7-5 wives' who go down to their paddy fields with the menfolk smile and chatter so happily among themselves. The men, too, are pleased and prosperous."
Red Coexistence
Commenting on a recent report that the Chinese Communists have set up more military posts across the Sino-Indian border, the Scotsman pointed out on December 28, 1961, that coexistence with the Peiping regime is possible only when a state does what the Peiping wants. If it cavils, it quickly falls into disgrace.
The paper said: "The Chinese Communists came to power determined to redress the balance on the Sino-Indian border, and to do so they had to deal, not with British imperialism, but with an independent, neutralist India. On the one hand China wanted to exact wide territorial concessions from the Indians; on the other she was inevitably engaged in an operation to entice India further away from the imperialist camp.
"In 1959, the Tibetan revolt, the flight of the Dalai Lama to India, and clashes between Chinese and Indian border guards on the MacMahon Line led to Chinese mass demonstrations at which Mr. Nehru was vilified as an 'Indian expansionist' and a stooge of the West. The reaction, even if artificially encouraged, was comprehensible. The old bogey of British India has been succeeded in Chinese eyes by an India led, as Mao Tse-tung had warned in 1949, by a 'collaborator of imperialism' backed by not only Britain but also the United States.
"The weakness in Chinese foreign policy is that it is often unreasoningly egoistical. Coexistence is possible with a state which does what China wants. If it cavils, it quickly falls into disgrace.
"This Victorian paternalism is not always appreciated in the neutralist world. However, in Imperial China the Emperor granted vassals his 'tender regard' if they behaved, and they were to be 'reasoned with if they proved recalcitrant. Only thereafter were they liable to be punished for their faults.
"The 'tender regard' period being over in 1959, Chou En-lai resorted to 'reasoning' with India. The Chinese Premier, who had earlier given Mr. Nehru the impression that he tacitly accepted the MacMahon Line, wrote to New Delhi denouncing it as 'a product of British aggression which had aroused the indignation of the Chinese people.' Later in the year, he referred to 'India's unexpected demand that China formally recognize conditions created by the application of British aggression.' India was told that if she opened a 'second front' against China on the border, she would be playing the game of the U.S."