CURRENT INTELLIGENCE STAFF STUDY CHINESE POPULATION INCREASE: THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS (REFERENCE TITLE: POLOVIII-60)

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• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 61
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 4, 2010
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: June 21, 1960
• Content Type: IS

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21 June 1960
OCI No. 2928/60
Copy "'0' 12'.1,
CURRENT INTELLIGENCE STAFF STUDY
CHINESE POPULATION. INCREASE: THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS
(Reference Title: POLO VIII-60)
Office of Current Intelligence
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
THIS MATERIAL CONTAINS INFORMATION AFFECT-
ING THE NATIONAL DEFENSE OF THE UNITED STATES
WITHIN THE MEANING OF THE ESPIONAGE LAWS,
TITLE 18, USC, SECTIONS 793 AND 794, THE TRANSMIS-
SION OR REVELATION OF WHICH IN ANY MANNER TO
AN UNAUTHORIZED PERSON IS PROHIBITED BY LAW.
ILLEGIB
ON-FILE DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE RELEASE
INSTRUCTIONS APPLY
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CUItItENT IN T1,I,LLGENCI: STAFF STUDY
Ch.inust_.rPc:pt~ Tb.u Political Implications
This is t wo:?lt+nl, paper, reflecting; information available
through May 1960.
The Slno-Soviet Studies Group would welcome either written
or oral comment on this paper.
The writer desires to acknowledge the valuable assistance
given by analysts in other officers. Special mention must be
made of the Foreign Manpower Rasea.;ch Office of the Bureau of
the Census, which provided many source and bibliographic ma-
terials for this study.
A contribution which saved weeks of spade work was the
draft of a manuscript on Chinese population policy prepared by
John Aird of the Foreign Manpower Research Office. Apart from
the cogent presentation of issues in Mr. Aird's work, his
voluminous footnotes directed attention to source material that
would otherwise have been missed. Later, he a.nd
the Office of Research and Reports-- con-
cerned with population issues in Communist China--reviewed this
study in detail. As a result of their suggestions, portions of
the original text were revised.
25X1
25X1
The generosity must also be acknowledged of Leo A. Orleans
of the Air Research Division in the Library of Congress, who
furnished copies both of his published articles and of a manu-
script still in draft. The manuscript will appear as an article,
"Birth Control in China," in the summer 1960 issue of China
Quarterly.
the Office of Research and Reports went
over the text and was part4.cularly helpful on the subject of
Chinese agriculture.
25X1
the Office 25X11
of Research and Reports also went over the text and made important
corrections in the section on China's economic prospects.
Although the suggestions of these analysts have in general
been incorporated into the study, they do not share responsibility
for all the views expressed. The conclussions are those of the writer.
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CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY i
I. THE DEMOGRAPHIC SETTING 1
Census and vital figures. . . . . . . . . . . 1
The population outlook. . . . . . . . . . . . 2
II. THE ECONOMIC PROSPECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The food outlook . . . in . . . . 5
Lines of probable development n agriculture. 6
Industrial outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
III. BIRTH CONTROL IN CHINA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11'
The attitude in the"early years . . . . . . . 11
The campaign begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The campaign under way. . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Hundred Flowers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Turnabout . . . . . . , , , . . . . , . . 18
Effectiveness of the birth control campaign . 20
Leap Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
IV. POSITIONS OF THE PARTY LEADERS. . . . . . . . . 25
Mao Tse-tung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Liu Shao-chi . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . 27
Chou En-lai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Others of the inner circle. . . . . . . . . . 29
Other politburo members . . . . . . . . . . . 32
The line-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
V. POPULATION DOCTRINE AND THE SINO-SOVIET
RELATIONSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Marx and Malthus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
The Soviet viewpoint. . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
The East European experience. . . . . . . . . 42
VI. THE GEOPOLITICAL CONSIDERATION. . . . . . . . . 45
Chinese internal migration. . . . . . . . . . 45
The Siberian "vacant lot" . . . . . . . . . . 47
The balance of forces . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
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Sf:CRL t
IMODUCT ION AND SUMMARY
This study is addressed to the political developments
attending rapid population incroase in Communist China. The
survey is not exhaustive but rather directed to two main
areas of examination., (1) the varying attitudes of the Chi-
nose Communist leaders, ;and (2) the impact of China's popu-
lation problem on the Si.rno-Soviet relationship. Although
these terms of reference are political, the study opens with
a review of the Chinese demographic setting and its economic
correlates. This review presents the projections that eco-
nomic intelligence currently accepts as authoritative or
reasonable.
It is possible to demonstrate mathematically that, at
the current rate of population growth, the Chinese would
number some eight billion persons a hundred years from now--
more than 2.5 times the present population of the earth. For
three reasons, a look so far into the future is not attempted
in this study. First, economic and other circumstances will
probably limit population growth long before China becomes
this coTwded. Second, population projections beyond a few
decades are notably unreliable. Third, the immediate intel-
ligence need is for a shorter-term study.
However, the compass of a study on population should be
longer than the five years or so customary to strategic esti-
mates. For the moment at least, economic progress in Commu-
nist China is keeping pace with and in some sectors running
ahead of population growth. But demographic factors, like
those disabilities which do not diminish the talents of ath-
letes in their py ime, are persistent and long range. Thus
this study looks forward 25 years to 1985.
The prospect for continued Communist domination in China
rests to a large extent on the regime's ability to cope with
the economic problems that Population pressure will generate.
While the economic aspect of the problem is not central to
this study, it is pertinent; the political analyst should ap-
preciate that China's (economic growth may well be adequate to
the task of sustaining the rapidly expanding population. The
judgment is admittedly qualified, simply because the demo-
graphic and economic projections discussed in Sections I and II
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arc not firm. But if the projoctions are accoptod as reason-
ablo working hypotheses, it follows that the resource/popula-
tion ratio in itself will not necessarily be so unsatisfactory
as to topplo the Communist regime in the period under review.
It may, however, be a persuasive factor in politburo discus-
sl.ons and eventuate in a more forceful birth control program
than the Communists have so far considered.
The political analysis proper begins in Section III,
which discusses the regime's irresolute measures to popular-
ize birth control in China. There is evidence that the Com-
munists were troubled by the difficulties of reconciling
Marxist dogma and economic logic, and it appears likely that
the advisability of birth control was debated in the party
hierarchy from the politburo down. The differences were not
so serious, however, as to lead to irreconcilable divergencies
among the most important leaders. Mao Tse-tung and the likely
rivals for the succession, Liu Shao-chi and Chou En-lai, have
all shown interest in birth control, although Mao and Liu may
have been a bit more scrupulous than Chou in clinging to Marx-
ist and anti-Malthusian standpoints.
The possibilities of doctrinal divergencies between the
Chinese and Soviet Communists on the issue of population lim-
itation are examined next. The dominant strain in Communist
polemics on population is a vitriolic hostility to Malthusian
arguments. The Communists tolerate no suggestions that the
escape from mass poverty is blocked ultimately by biologic
rather than institutional barriers. It is shown, however,
that the orthodox texts are not entirely devoid of indications
that policies to limit population size are acceptable in cer-
tain stages of development. If the Chinese party is at all
scrupulous in its doctrinal formulations on the population
question (and it has spoken with due care so far), the Soviet
leaders may have their private reservations but will be reluc-
tant to take open issue. This judgment is buttressed by Soviet
taciturnity to date, not only with respect to China's popula-
tion policy, but in connection also with birth control programs
adopted in Eastern Europe. The Russians themselves, moreover,
have gone on record since Stalin's death in favor of easing re-
strictions against abortions and contraception.
The geopolitical as distinct from the doctrinal aspect is
examined in the final section. It is concluded that the danger
to the Soviet Union of land-hungry Chinese seeking lebensraum
in the Siberian "vacant lot" is minimal within the next 25 years.
China's large population nevertheless remains a major element
in its strategic stature; as the spokesman of most of the people
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SrECTTi;T
In the Communist camp, Peiping is accorded due hearing and
deference in bloc councils. It now speaks for two-thirds
of the population. By 1985, the proportion will be closer
to three-fourths, and Soviet loaders may view with misgiv-
ings the effect on the balance of forces within the bloc.
Soviet loaders publicly dismiss as provocative any sug-
gestions that Chinese hordes pose a long-range threat to the
USSR. The Russian man in the street has been franker to voice
his misgivings, and there is evidence that his expressions of
apprehension reflect influential viewpoints, however impo-
litic it may be to express such viewpoints officially. To
many thoughtful persons in the USSR, the ever-swelling num-
ber of Chinese is stirring up a cloud from the east that must
progressively darken the prospects for harmony in the Sino-
Soviet relationship.
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Communist China is by far the most populous country in
the world. Its rate of population increase, moreover, is one
of the world's fastest.'
Census and vital figures
According to Communist statistics, the population of
mainland China as of 30 June 1953 was about 533,000,000 peo-
ple. The figure--some 100,000,000 higher than most estimates
at the time--now is generally, if not universally, accepted as
reasonably accurate. Although Peiping had to settle on esti-
mates for some of the ethnic minorities in remote areas, it
claims that 574,000,000 people were counted by direct enumera-
tion in the 1953 census; errors for the relatively few not
reached by the census takers should not affect the general re-
liability of the count.
While the difficulties of enumeration in an area like
China preclude the degree of accuracy possible in Western cen-
suses, the schedules and procedures used indicate that Peiping
made an earnest effort to conduct the country's first nation-
wide count by modern methods. As a check on the reliability
of the census, the Communists resurveyed some 9 percent of the
people. This sample survey yielded relatively small discrep-
ancies from the census count.
In the absence of good vital statistics, the Communists
conducted a special enumeration of 30 million persons during
the census in an effort to come up with reliable figures on
births and deaths. The Chinese birth rate, according to the
results of this enumeration, was 37 per thousand (37 babies born
annually for every thousand people in the population); the death
rate was given as 17 per thousand. These figures, in contrast
to the over-all population total, are suspect. An analysis of
the census tabulation of children under five years of age indi-
cates that 37 per thousand is a considerable understatement of
the birth rate. It has been suggested that both the birth and
death rates given by the sample survey err on the low side.
However, the difference between the two rates--20 per thous-
and or 2 percent compounded annually--may be a fair approxima-
tion of the rate of population increase in the early 1950s. It
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is on the order of twice previous estimates, but not out
of lino with demonstrated achievements after World War II
in other Asian areas. Starting out with very high birth
and death rates, these areas have effected sharp reductions
in death rates attendant upon dramatic progress in sanita-
tion and public health. The sharpest cuts seem to have been
made in infant mortality. "About two million more infants,"
claims Peiping, "survive annually than in pro-liberation days,
as a result of the wide application of modern midwifery."
The Communists themselves show no disposition to dis-
count the 2-percent growth rate. On the basis presumably of
the more and more nearly complete birth and death registra-
tions in their regimented society, the Communists have in fact
steadily raised the figure. In their most recent statements,
a 2.5-percent rate of natural increase has been mentioned. On
the basis of a 2- to 2.5-percent rate of increase since the
1953 census, China's population today (1960) is estimated at
possibly 690 million. By way of comparison with the next-
ranking countries of the world in population size, mainland
China has 1.7 times as many people as India, some 3.2 times
as many as the USSR, and 3.8 times as many as the United
States. And with its higher rate of natural increase, China
leaves the others farther behind every year.
The population outlook
A growth rate of 2 percent confronts the Chinese Com-
munists with the necessity of developing resources to support
well over a billion people by the year 1935. If the growth
rate is taken as 2.5 percent, the population will number some
1-1/4 billion in 1985.
These figures are not to be taken as forecasts. No mat-
ter how fast water levels may be rising, they will go only so
high unless the dikes too are being built up. The population
levels given for 1985 suggest what can happen only if economic
output in China is adequate to support the number of peepl a
postulated by the projections. If such is not the case and
the birth rate continues high, a situation analogous to water
spill-over will obtain. Famine, deficiency diseases, and the
other correlates of deepening goverty will raise the death
rate and stabilize the population at a level that the economy
can support.
The alternatives presented to the Chinese Communists then
are: expand economic output or cut. the birth rate. (The two
choices are of course not mutually exclusive.) The economic
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)II\L I
outlook is discussed in the next section. Inso:tar as the birth
rate is concerned, the following factors a: re likely to be gov-
orning up to 1985:
1. Birth control is neither widely approved no:. prac-
ticed. Even if the Communists revive and intensify earlier
efforts to popularize contraception, the results should take
years to become evident. A particular handicap is the pre-
dominantly rural character of the Chinese population; unre-
sponsive as China's urban residents showed themselves to
birth control propaganda, the countryside is even more re-
sistant. Judgments here, however have to be qualified by
reservations relating to changes now under way in the social
organization of Chinese rural society. On a priori grounds,
extension of the "free supply" system of payments or partial
payments by the communes on the basis of need would seem pro-
natalist in effect, relieving heads of large families from
many economic anxieties. On the other hand, the family sys-
tem has been the institutional basis of high birth rates in
China, and the breakdown of old values is one of the declared
purposes of the communes. If regimentation in the countryside
takes forms envisaged by the more extreme elements in the party,
there will be some additional disorganization of family units
as a result of communal messes, rearing of children away from
their parents, separation of aged from their relatives, and
mobilization of man for work on distant projects. As Commu-
nist administration reaches deeper into rural life, the old
adage "Heaven is high and the Emperor far away" will lose more
~_?rd more of its force. With a blurring of the lines differ-
entiating peasant from urban worker, both may become almost
equally responsive to official and general social pressures
making for lower birth rates.
2. Projections of the Chinese population by age groups
have not been worked out for the next 25 years, but when com-
pleted, they may show a downward force on birth rates during
some of the period because of a falling proportion of females
of child-bearing age. On the other hand, there has probably
been a rather precipitate decline in infant mortality recently,
and this should increase the proportion of females of child-
bearing age in the 1970s. However effective birth control
propaganda and other social pressures are in cutting into
family size, they may have to work against n, mericu.l fac-
tors tending to keep up the birth rate during at least some
of the years in the period under purview.
3. Even if the birth rate should decline, the total
Chinese population will probably still increase rapidly. The
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reason is that the death rate is oxpect3d to decline too. Re-
cent experience in other Asian countries is indicative of po-
toatialitles that may well be realized during the next two
riacades, if not sooner, in Conuiiun:ist China through the spread
of inoculations, wider applications of Insecticides, and other
advances in public health. Average death rates for 1'335-39
in Ceylon, Taiwan, Malaya, and Singapore (the only four non-
Communist areas of the Far East where official death regis-
trations approaci completion) ranged from 20 to about 25 per
thousand. Fifteen years later, the death rates for these four
areas ranged from 10 to 14 per thousand; they are still less
today. While the Chinese birth rate may eventually move close
to the falling death rate, the experience of other countries
suggests a time lag. The expectation is for no closing of the
gap sufficient to prevent a large increase in the population
within the n(,xt 25 years.
The a priori judgments implicit in this presentation of
the demographic vectors are numerous. Events may not work out
as the mathematics foretell; indeeed demographic projections
constructed in recent years have proved embarrassingly wide of
tho mark. The error, however, is as likely as not to be an
underestimate of later population growth. A billion-man China
is an unsettling thought, but the burden of evidence indicates
it to be a likely eventuality if the fore^s now at work con-
tinue to be operative.
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II. THE ECONOMIC PROSPECT
While economies like Japan's have been able to sustain
larger populations than agricultural resources permitted, the
Chinese are apparently determined to stay self-sufficient in
food. The decision is neither arbitrary nor irrational. De-
pendence on food imports to feed as little as 10 percent of
China's present population would requx,e about $2 billion in
foreign exchange outlays, equal to the value of all the in-
dustrial equipment and other goods the regime now buys abroad.
To date, the-Communist record in keeping pace with popu-
lation growth has been creditable. Taking over an economy
that was a net importer of food, the regime has turned the
country into a net exporter, although per capita consumption
remains at subsistence levels. The First Five-Year Plan ended
in 1957 with the amount of food available per capita as high as
or barely higher than it was in 1952. The "leap forward" of
1958 increased production of food grains by about 15 percent
over 1957, but there may have been a 10-percent drop back in
1959.
a)
The food outlook
The Chinese are clearly counting on further successes in
expanding food output. A 12-year plan of agricultural devel-
opment drafted in 1956 contained no specific goals, but polit-
buro member Chen Po-ta said that agricultural output could be
doubled in teat years. In the same vein, economic planner Li
Fu-chun in October 1959 urged the technical modernization of
Chinese agriculture within some ten years. "In this way," he
concluded, "we shall be able to doubla and redouble our agri- lJ
cultura.L production under conditions where, agricultural lp.bor
productivity is enormously increased while the total manpower
used on agricultural production is substantially reduced."
The ?roj actions of economic intelligence and Western agri-
cultural analysts are more sober. The shock efforts of 1958
produced impressive results, but the inability to proceed to
higher levels the next year demonstrates the very real limits
imposed by weather, by the scarcity of arable land, and by
technological backwardness. The expectation is that food pro-
duction will go up by possibly 3 percent a year over the next
decade. This would be somewhat bette;' than the rate of popu-
lation
growth and perhaps barely enough to provide for the
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~.' 1'' /1 Y) ,,T'
changes in consumption patterns asL,aciated with increasing
urbanization of societyf. It would not afford much margin
for the incentives needed to kindle the best production ef-
forts of peasants and workers; and the regime would have
compelling reasons for implementing and considerably strength-
ening its declared policy of encouraging, birth control in China.
The rose.rvatic :s expressed in, the preceding section with
rospect to the predictive value of denograp,phic projections ap-
ply with still greater force to projections of food production.
The variables are so many as to discourage extension of the
3-percent ?-per-year projection down to 1985. A groat deal de-
pends on decisions the regime will make with respect to the
distribution of new investments between industry and agricul-
ture. Apart from the direct investments in agriculture, par-
ticular importance will attach to funds allocated for the ex-
pansion of such support industries as chemical fertilizer,
farm machinery, electric power. Decisions relating to the
distribution of consumer goods between town and country may
also be important.
Perhaps the factor of overriding significance will be the
stage of China's industrialization after 1970--a state of ad-
vance that will permit the regime far greater latitude to in-
crease investments in, say, chemical fertilizer plants than it
enjoys today. The concluding pages of this section discuss the
prospects for the industrial sector of the economy; it suffices
here to note that some extraordinary advances are projected by
economic intelligence. China's annual electric power produc-
tion, for example, is estimated to go as high as 315 billion
kilowatt-hours by 1970, about 15 percent above the current
level in the USSR. There are grounds for estimating, there-
fore, that the regime will be able to increase substantially
the allocations to agriculture and agricultural support indus-
tries after 1970 and that the subsequent expansion of food pro-
duction for some years thereafter will be at a rate of growth
higher than that achieved in the 1960s. Daeprooted convictions
on the point are not justified, ho x.:giver, since higher alloca-
tions to agriculture may be called for merely to maintain the
earlier growth rate.
Lines of probable development in aR?rlculture
When the Communists consider themselves in a batter posi-
tion to direct more funds to agriculture, the expansion of
crop acreage is a likely developmen't'. Only 11 percent of Chi-
na's land is now under cultivation. Expansion of acreage to
13-15 percent of the area is considered economically practical
in conservative calculations; much of the remaining land area
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It . W'.1
is doomed entirely unsuitt.d for cultivation barring a major
revolution in agricultural technology. In thu frontier areas,
Manchuria is regarded as pa-ticularly promising. The com-
plotion of the railroad through Sinkiang in 1961 will open
up now lands in the far West as well. Closer to home, there
are economic possibilities in the reclamation of denuded hilly
lands. The investment outlays required for expanding acreage
are considerable however; in the competition for limitoc' cap-
ital, the Communists will be disinclined in 'the next few years
to give highest priority to a now-lands effort. Farm spokes-
man Tong Tzu-hui intimatad in 1957 that better returns on
capital were for the present obtainable from other programs.
"It can be mentioned here," he observed, "that some difficul-
ties have been encountered in the :Largo-scalp wasteland recla-
mation program in our country as a whole."
China's most important recourse, oven before acreage is
expanded toward its outer limits, is to increase yiolds. Con-
siderable progress has already been made along lines recom-
mended by Nationalist technicians working with US advisers
after the end of World War II:
1. Extension of multiple cropping areas. The Communists
claim that 40 percent of the farm land now yields more than
one harvest. Further progress is promised.
2. Improvements in irrigation and flood control. Ambi-
tious water conservancy projects now under way involve con-
struction of some of the world's largest dams in the Yellow,
Yangtse, and other major riverways. On a smaller scale, local
government units are financing the construction of numerous
wells, ponds, and irrigation works.
3. Control of animal and plant diseases and insect pests.
Prewar losses from insects, destructive birds, and other an-
imals were serious; 12,000,000 tons were lost from damage by
insects 41one. The Chinese at present do not have sufficient
quantitites of cheap insecticide.; and fungicides and equipment
for applying these materials on a massive scale.
4. Improvements in seed strains and livestock breeding.
The Nationalists introduced new varieties of cotton, wheat,
rice, and tobacco and conducted some promising research in
soybeans, millet, kaoliang, and potatoes. The Communists are
carrying on this work with a view to developing strains which
are quicker maturing, larger yielding, and more resistant to
disease. Communist research activities are also directed to
the problem of infectious diseases in animals, which before
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VYot?id War .II ki:l:lad off sum - 25 ~,:i.t'coat of the hogs and GO
l)orcont of -the poultry over, ,year.
5. Inc.roasod officiuncy of labor. Un:!.iromployment? foa-
turos the rural ocono;ny most of the year. Dut at, peak soa:,ons,
labor shortages often dovoiop; failure to complete plowing,
harrowing, and sowing within a few days ai':or rain in certain
aroas can "reduce yields appreciably. The doanands of harvest
time and need for quick irrigation of fields during dry spells
also occasion labor shorta;;ns that may seriously impair yiolds.
In the col:loctivo and later the eowfwane forms of organization,
the Communists claim to have organizod .rural labor much more
efficiently than was possible in "pre-liberation" years and
thereby minimized losses from temporary labor shortages.
6. Ex,ansion of fertilizer production. Projected in-
creases in food production to keep pace with probable popula-
tion growth over the next decade would boost annual require-
ments of chemical fertilizer to perhaps 25,000,000 tons. By
contrast, present applications total about 3,000,000 tons.
However, the Communists are planning to turn out as much as
7,000,000 tons in 1962, and are looking forward to 20,000,000 tons by 1969. There is some doubt that this last figure will
be reached, but if domestic production is supplemented by some \ (J
imports, fertilizer availability may come within the general
range of estimated requirements.
The over-all picture is one of Communist vigor and determi-
nation to expand food production at least as fast as population
growth in the coming decade. In a sense, the Communists will
be conducting a holding operation in agriculture during these
ten years, throwing their greatest energies into the heavy in-
dustry sector. In the 1970s and 1980s, they will not be able
to put off progressively larger investments to increase agri-
cultural output (e.g. in fertilizer plants); but `heir record
so far and their prospective industrial capabilities as de-
scribed below suggest that the Communists may well make the
decisions to increase the outlays when necessary. Since the
authorities seem disposed to defer such decisions, they will
presumably continue to view with some favor the idea of a
curb on population growth. Possible technological break-
throughs (hydroponics, unicellular plant organisms, harvest-
ing of the sea, solar energy for irrigation purposes, or
other lines of advance conjectured by anti-Malthusian opti-
mists) would of course facilitate matters for the regime and
weaken the pressures for implementing a population limitation
LJ ulicy.
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? t..r
Industrial outlook
Food supplies constitute a limit oii population size, but
techniques of cultivation and levels of investment in agri-
culture are closely rolatod to the state oU industrial tech-
nology. It is the industrial societies (even those that are
self-sufficient in food production) that can support large
population densities comfortably, and it is in the industrial
sector that the Chinese Communists have made their most im-
pressive achievements. Steel ingot production, which stood at
1-1/3 million tons in 1952 before the First Five-Year Plan,
came to over 13,000,000 in 1959. Electric power output rose
from 7 billion kilowatt-hours to 39 billion. Railway trans-
portation, coal mining, cement, machine tools, all made giant
strides. Over-all industrial production went up on an average
of 20 percent per annum.
The rapid industrial growth has contributed to a rate of
increase in gross national product that comes to 9 percent
since 1952, well above the 2- or 2.5-percent rate of popula-
tion increase. The channeling of national product into in-
vestment funds has kept standards of living very low for most
of the people but is sustaining a development that is likely
to make China the dominant industrial power in Asia well be-
fore 1985.
The high percentage increases in China are not altogether
attributable to the low absolute levels on which the calcula-
tions are based. In key segments of the industrial sector
(steel, coal, electric power), the Chinese have for several
years now been past the line from which the USSR started in
1928. The Chinese continue to expand production as fast as
or faster than did the USSR.
The thesis has been advanced that the need to meet the
bare subsistence requirements of a rapidly expanding popula-
tion will eventually force the regime to cut back on new in-
vestments and stifle further industrial growth. Whatever the
ultimate validity of this viewpoint, the accepted projections
do not bear it out for the shorter term. Investments in Com-
munist China, which ran around 17 percent of gross national
product under the First Five-Year Plan, now come to about 33
percent. In 1970, the regime is expected to allocate 40 per-
cent of the gross national product to investments.
As the dynamics work out, gross national product will go up
by about 8 percent a year over the next decade. Industrial
production will increase 14 percent per annum. By 1970, steel
C,
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production in China is expected to go above 40,000,000 tons,
the level of Soviet production in 1954; electric power at 315
billion kilowatt-hours will exceed today's level of Soviet
output; petroleum production at 36,000,000 tons will come close
to the Soviet level of 1950. The structure of the industrial
economy in the 1970s and 1980s is more difficult to foresee;
the consensus, however, is that industry in China will not be
the limiting factor on population growth during this period and
,that industry will be, in an increasingly good position to sup-
port the agricultural sector with supplies of fertilizer, irri-
gation machinery, tractors, other farm equipment, construction
materials, and pesticides.
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S,`11' C 1? "' T
III. 131 1TH CONTROL IN CHINA
The Chinese Communists, wrote Liu Shao-chi in October
1959, have been "flexibly applying the general principles of
Marxism-Leninism in the light of the concrete conditions in
China." As a characterization of Peiping's approach to the
population question, the statement could be improved by sub-
stituting the word "irresolutely" for "flexibly." The rea-
son is in large part reluctance to admit previous error. The
"concrete conditions" of high population pressure had al-
ways been articulated in greatest detail by non-Communists,
men whose formulations did not place on capitalism and im-
perialism the prime responsibility for mass pauperism in
China. In the orthodox tradition that flowed from Marx's
origia%n1 fulminations against Malthus, the Communists re-
torted'that a recast social order would release society's
productive energies and provide amply for China's millions.
The definition of position was vehement, so that the Commu-
nists were left with only limited room for doctrinal maneuver
when the responsibilities of office forced them to examine
the issue anew.
The attitude in the early years
It took several years of office for the "concrete con-
ditions" to impress themselves on Chinese Communist thinking.
The early statements reflected official confidence that the
size of the population was a major ingredient of national
strength rather than weakness. With pride and no trace of
misgiving, Mao referred to China in 1949 as "forming one-
quarter of mankind." The official New China News Agency af-
firmed at this time that China's population was a "very good
thing." The Communists could cope with a population many
times the present size. "All pessimistic statments are ground-
less." As late as April 1952, the official party newspaper
People's Daily, denounced birth control as a "means of kill-
ing off the Chinese people."
The arithmetic of national accounting probably had an
all-important influence in modifying official thinking. De-
termined to maximize capital accumulation, the Communists had
nevertheless to allow some part of the national product for
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th
e most favorable milieu for birth control programs.
After the middle of 1953, the economic as compared with
strictly military rationale became more persuasive. In
August 1953, the Government Administration Council headed
by Premier Chou En-lai (the present State Council) issued
a directive that the Ministry of Public Health "help the
masses excercise birth control." The directive expressed
ing
the
tion
to contraception and abortion. Only four months earlier,
local authorities in Canton had prohibited the importa-
of contraceptives, even those prescribed by physicians.
L`)
The authorities may have been newly impressed by the
economic arguments, but they moved with caution. There had
been no effort as yet to reconcile the contradictions with
previously expressed positions on the virtue of a large popu-
lation, and the directive to the Ministry of Public Health
was given no publicity. In fact, it was not until 1957--four
years later--that the public media made any reference to the
directive.
The re-examination of traditional viewpoints on birth
control received fresh impetus when the results of the 1953
census was tabulated in 1954. The public commentary on the
census results hailed the totals and used the occasion for
attacks in the old vein against defeatist Malthusians. But
with the total population now revealed as 100,000,000 above
the previous estimates and increasing by 12,000,000 or so
every year, the demographic-economic calculus apparently
persuaded all but the extreme doctrinaires that a campaign
to limit births was in order.
current consumption. In the predominantly agricultural set-
ting characterized by much rural underemployment, the national
product seemed a derivative more of acres cultivated than
of numbers of persons working. Total consumption, on the
other hand, depended on population size. At the current
stage of national development, the economic planners may
well have concluded that fewer people would not,reduce
national product but would cut total consumption and there-
by permit a lamer amount for capital accumulation.
This line of reasoning would have car.,.?ied the greatest
conviction after the end of the Korean fighting. Wartime,
when national security seems closely related to the size
of armies that can be mustered, does not generally provide
approval of the Ministry's relaxation of regulations relat-
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The Campaign begins
The party moved gingerly; it was prepared, if reluctant,
to encourage birth control, but it was by no means willing
to concede any merit to Malthusian viewpoints. When British
Labor party loader Clement Aitlee visited China in the sum-
mer of 1954, Mao is said to have acknowledged the dbsirabil .
ity of birth control after the population reached 7'10,000,000.
But in the meantime there was no ostensible disposition to
question the value of rapid population growth. The Chinese
reaction to mention of the problem by any member of the Brit-
ish delegation was to shrug it off indifferently.
The first public appeal for birth control was in the
nature of a trial balloon. The party still shied from espous-
ing population limitation. The call was sounded by Shao Li-
tzu, a non-Communist "democratic personage," in September
1954 at the First National People's Congress and again in a
newspaper article the following December. Shao tried man-
fully to show that there was no contradiction between birth
control practice and anti-Malthusian doctrine.
Its extensive territory and huge population, said Shao,'
made China a powerful nation. But the past had left a legacy
of backwardness which would take years to overcome. In the
meantime, there was a lack of educational facilities, and too
many children meant that too many went without schooling. A
further consideration was the danger to the health of mothers
weakened by frequent childbirth. Shao reached out for what-
ever support he could find in the sacred texts and in Soviet
practice. Lenin, he observed, favored the annulment. of
legislation that penalized the dissemination of birth control
information. And in the USSR, the sale of drugs for birth
control "is not prohibited."
In the China that had not yet experimented with "hundred
flowers," it is probable that Shao Li-tzu made his proposals
only after prior assurances from the authorities. The un-
publicized. 1953 directive to the Ministry of Public Health
cited above showed the turn official thought was taking. And
Shao disclosed that in July 1954, prior to his own public
remarks, the Ministry had already submitted some birth con-
trol proposals for approval by the Government Administration
Council.
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The malt response to Shao Li-tzu's remarks was not uni-
Cormly favorable. It is pnssil)1.e that the pro and con dis-
cussions which wore' allowed in 1954, and indeed in the years
that followed, reflected uncertainties and disagreements at
the top'leddership: There was the customary display of mass
participation in the attainment of consensus decided in the
final analysis by the leadership, but there was considerable
inconstancy in the characterization of correct and incorrect
standpoints. Shao originally opposed raising the age of mar-
riage, for example; he later espoused the idea. There were
similar turnabouts before reaching settled positions on abor-
tion and sterilization.
Pending a crystallization of official doctrine, the par-
ty continued to stay aloof from the issue. Liu Shao-chi '
called a symposium on birth control in December 1954, and it
was agreed that research groups on the subject would be or-
ganized under the State Council. But it was not until 1957
that Liu's convocation of the symposium and the subsequent
organization of the research groups were mentioned in the
press. In March 1955, a national party conference expressed
the party's endorsement of birth control "to a certain ex-
tent," but again the Communists did not publicize their action
at the time. Undecided on its interests in the matter, the
leadership may have awaited general reaction at home, (and
perhaps official reaction in Moscow) before definitely arti-
culating its own stand.
Throughout most of this period, events went little beyond
the examination and discussion of issues. Beginning in 1955,
however, instructional articles on contraceptive techniques
appeared in party and semi-official journals. The educational
effort fell far short of a mass propaganda campaign, for the
authorities still felt constrained to establish first the
doctrinal legitimacy of population control. Those who sought
invariable guidance in Soviet practice were enjoined in Feb-
ruary 1955 by China Youth (organ of the Young Communist League)
to note that the USSR ecognized the practice of contracep-
tion as a democratic right." After the socialist economy had
developed, the USSR had indeed "found it possible to...en?.
courage the breeding of mo-e people," but even so, the Kremlin
authorities did not ban contraception.
Above all, the Communists were anxious to avoid the
least imputation that they were borrowing from Malthus.
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f, C P, I'
The theoretical journal Study addressed itself with charac-
teristic venom in October 3W 55 to unregenerates who now said,
Kook. The Communists too need Malthus no less than they
need Marx." Birth control, affirmed the journal, "has nothing
ht all in common with Malthus." Personal and family consid-
erations rather than the broader interests of state and society
were emphasized as the reasons for smaller families.
The c,tinpaign under way
The campaign seemed unusually long in the making--re-
flecting perhaps the indecision at the top--but by August
1956, it was well under way. The Ministry of Public Health'
in that month issued a directive calling for technical guid-
ance, training of cadres, and establishment of birth control
clinics. And at the eighth party congress in September, speak-
ers came out unequivocally in support of family limitation. The
old saws about protecting women. and children were repeated, but
these probably never gave full satisfaction to the Communist
ideologists, whose terms of reference were really social rather
than individual. Premier Chou En-lai indicated the nature of
the social interest in his Report on the Proposals for the
Second Five-Year Plan for Development of the National Economy.
"We must understand," he said, "that in a country like ours
where the economy is backward and the population is large,
shortages of materials will occur frequently for a long time
to come, whereas any surplus will be transient." The'surplus
that Chou sought was necessary for capital accumulation. The
thesis had long been expressed in non-Communist circles; its
invective against Malthus notwithdtanding, the party could
only come up with a formulation that was cast pretty much in
terms that were later to be characterized as neo-Malthusian.
The ideology was unsatisfying but the bureaucracy was
energized. In the later months of 1956 and in 1957, the
activists at local levels got into gear with promotional
activities to popularize' birth control. Illustrative posters
and .Modd~ls,,?'-embatragsingly -graphic to some Western observers,
illustrated contraceptive techniques. Apothecaries featured
large displays of birth control devices to the public. Dis-
cussion meetings, lantern slides, all the customary vehicles
of mass propaganda were employed to bring the message to the
people. Training programs in birth control were set up for
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111, U
cadres. Clinics to furnish information on the subject were
established. The method was persuasion; it was not politic
,it this stage to incorporate the elements of coercion commom
to other nass movements. But it was clear enough that popu-
latt:ion limitation had become official policy.
Hundred Flowers
In the :first half of 1957, the birth control advocates
in China advanced to highly exposed tin-Marxist positions--a
development best understood in the context of the post-Stalin
liberalization which Mao Tse-tung characteristically modified
with his own Chinese accents. In the spring of 1956, Mao is-
sued his appeal to "let a hundred flowers bloom together, let
a hundred schools of thought contend." Communist commentary
in the weeks that followed endeavored to convince the wary in-
of permissible debate, if not of
acceptable doctrine, would be sustantially enlarged. True,
freedom of thought would be confined "inside the camp of the
people"; "only dialectical materialism is the truth," and de-
bates would lead to the truth. But the authorities seemed
genuinely interested in evoking at least the display of more
vigorous discussions. The role of puppet parties in voicing
the interests of the nonproletarian classes was emphasized.
Intellectuals were assured that any fresh formulations in the
natural sciences would not be labeled with the epithets feudal
or capitalistic. University curricula were broadened to al-
low lectures on the philosophies of Hegel and Bertrand Russel,
on Anglo-American law, on Keynesian economics.
The intellectuals--cowed by earlier campaigns against
nonconformity--at first declined the invitation to bare their
necks. Mao re-extended the invitation in his February 1957
"secret" speech on contradictions, which distinguished be-
tween antagonistic and nonantagonistic contradictions. He
stressed the nonantagonistic character of contradictions in
present-day China and urged that these were best resolved by
free discussion, not terror. The edited version of the speech,
which the Communists published in June, contained reservations
which were not in the original; the effect of the original re-
marks and of the extensive propaganda that followed was to
elicit livelier debate than the authorities had counted on, A
heated literary controversy attended the publication of a
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short novel. Young Newcomer to the Organization Department, a
Chinese coon rpart o1: 1
7( inks v "so by 1. -id_Alone.-'Tn
the discussions on population, the proponents ofbirth con-
trol, both in and out of the party, were finally emboldened
to elaborate their arguments along lines that were awkwardly
near to Malthusian propositions. The humanitarian grounds
of mother and family welfare gave way to frankly economic
considerations.
The new tenor of the discussions was evident in the re-
marks of ethnologist Wu Ching-ohao at a meeting of labor cadres
in Peiping on 15 February. The growth of population, said Wu,
was outstripping the gains in employment. There were 12,000,-
000 more people in the population every year, some 6,000,000
more in the labor force. Only a million was being absorbed
by industry. It "as impossible to open up enough new land
to absorb the remainder in agriculture.
Carrying the discussion to other ground, but with clear
if unconscious affinity for neo-Malthusian logic, the China
Youth Daily on 23 February observed that food production had
increased 5 percent annually since 1949. About a third of the
increase, however, had gone simply to maintain existing stand-
ards of consumption. It was further noted that it had been
necessary to divert output to such nonproductive outlays as
creches, schools, and other facilities to care for the young.
A symposium on birth-control convened by the authorities
in Peiping on 20 February indicated the topic that would en-
gross many of the delegates to the Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference in March. The health of mothers re-
ceived scant attention at the conference sessions; speakers
dwelt rather on the need for birth control to cope with em-
ployment problems, shortages of investment funds, and other
economic difficulties. Chung Hui-lan, :superintendent of the
Central People's Hospital in Peiping, sought to appall the
delegates by the projection of a l0-billion-man China in 144
years if the population increased by 2 percent annually; at
3 percent, he warned, it would take only 96 years. He dis-
puted the view that virgin lands could take care of the pop-
ulation increase. He urged research to ascertain an optimum
population size and an optimum rate of population growth for
China. It was clear in any event, he went on to say, that
the population was growing too fast, and the birth rate should
be brought down to the level of the death rate. By 1972, he
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hoped that the population could be stabilize?:i at around 700
nml.1.1ion,
Chung Ilui-lap's views apparently reflected influential
opinion in the party and government. When the Minister of
Public Irijalth addressed the delegates, she acknowledged that
China was indeed an "overpopulated country." Without birth con-
trol, the country! Could not quickly becomer prosperous find string.
The ministry, she said, Would relax earlier restraints on
induced abortion and sterilization. This announcement she
made "with the greatest reluctance," in view of popular feel-
ings on the subject. In the milieu of "hundred flowers," a
later speaker felt bold enough to voice his continued opposi-
tion to abortion and sterili.,,,ation practices.
Malthus' "moral restrain" against early marriage had an
obvious appeal to some of the delegates. The Marriage Law of
1950 had set the minimum age of marriage for females at 18
years of age, for males at 20 years. (The comparable figures
under the Nationalists had been 16 and 18.) Li Chien-sheng
expressed the conviction that "society should be made to fa-
`or late marriages... the young boys should thus be ideolo ical-
ly indoctrinated." g
Within and outside the sessions of the conference, the
refrain "we are not Malthusians" was recurrent. As the offi-
cial People's Daily explained it in March, "pzoper" birth con-
trol was iame7trically opposed to Malthusianism; the Commu-
nists wanted to accelerate the improvement of living standards
not prevent their deterioration. The admission that popula-
tion increase had a depressant influence on living standards
was in fact in the Maithusian rather than Marxian tradition.
Yet (or perhaps on that account), the disclaimers of Malthusian
sympathies were vehement.
Turnabout
Liberation in China was over by the summer of 1957. In
hindsight, the intellectuals who took seriously the invitation
to "let a hundred schools of thought contend" seem naive indeed.
They had been wary enough at first, but once they found their
tongues they began to let loose what Peiping was to describe
as "frantic attacks" on the Communist system. The Communist
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S LIQ11;"1
party was accused of being a privileged group which ruled
China as a private empire, enjoying, luxury and power while
the people suffered. Artists and writers demanded freedom,
from supervision by ignorant party members. One instructor
rat People's University in Peiping warned of niass uprisings,
said the party's attitude of "I am the state" was intolerable
Disaffection at some schools culminatcd in student demonstra-
tions and riots.
The memory of Hungary was still fresh, and the regime
felt impelled to launch a "life-and-death struggle" against
the rightists." Criticism, the press affirmed, was a priv-
ilege reserved to the people, not to enemies of the people.
On the population question, the Malthusian cast of some of
the recent utterances was roundly condemned. The category of
"rightists," it was made clear, included all those who took
the stand that a huge population meant a low rate of economic
growth. It was not admissible to sow such doubts about the
possibility of building China into a strong socialist power.
One research worker had gone so far, the indignant Communists
averred, as to envision a situation in which China's burgeon-
ing population brought a deterioration in well-being, whole-
sale rioting by mothers, storming Of schools whose facilities
were insufficient to accommodate all would-be entrants, and
a desertiou of the land by rural youth frustrated by over-
crowding.
The changed climate discouraged further free examination
and discussion of the population issue. There could be no
sympathy, according to an article published the Peoples Daily
in October 1957, with those who took advantage of the popula-
tion problem to bring assaults on the party and on socialism.
The theory that overpopulation was a fundamental problem of
society was an enemy weapon "to paralyze the revolutionary
consciousness of the working class." However, an editorial
in another issue of the paper that month came out with a
strong defense of birth control. The editorial this time
based its logic on the old familiar ground of family welfare.
Evidently considering that this ground alone did not make for
an entirely convincing argument, the daily acknowledged on
1 February 1958 that population policy was based also on the
limited capabilities of the national economy. It was empha-
sized, however, that these limitations- were transitory. A
large population in itself was by no means "absolutely a bad
thing."
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` `~~':R1 T
J A.. J
The apprehensions about the resource-population balance
which had induced the Communists to accept a birth control
campaign in the beginning were evidently still strong. These
antedated the period of "hundred flowers" and continued to
suggest the wisdom of pursuing policies to curtail population
growth. It was too early for figures of the 1957 harvest, but
the outlook in grains was for no significant increase over the
previous year.
So the discussion was pulled back from advanced stand-
points, but the frank anatomical models remained on exhibi-
tion. Pictorial pamphlets on birth control were printed in
quantity. The cooperatives, women organizations, trade un-
ions, and medical associations were all enlisted in the cam-
paign to get the word to the masses. At the Pugwash Confer-'
ence in Nova Scotia in the spring of 1958, the Chinese Com-
munist delegate presented a paper in which he expressed con-
fidence that "within a reasonably short period our c la-
tion will become stationer .?'
Effectiveness of the birth control campaign
The difficulty in clarifying their theoretical position
probably reflected the real reluctance with which the Commu-
nists had approached the issue of population control in the
first place. Their promise had been to release productive
energies that were stifled under the old society, It was dis-
appointing to have to admit--even with the excuse that the
situation was temporary--that the release of energies would
not quite cope with the consumption needs of a growing pop-
ulation. It is likely that the leadership was generally hope-
ful that a surge forward in the economy would soon take place
to vindicate Communist theses and permit progress under posi-
tive rather than negative slogans.
Perhaps because of this attitude, the Communists seem to
have pushed the birth control bandwagon with something less
than a full heart. In 1956, birth control advocate Shao Li-
tzu charged the propaganda was inadequate, and officials of
the Ministry of Public ri,'alth made the same point. In 1957,
demographer Chen Ta declared, "I have great respect for the
V
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Coinmunist party for publicizing this problom...but so far (.J
nothing has been done." In 1958, progress reports submitted
to tho P~linistry of Public Health indicated that the cadres ~3)
were not giving serious attention to birth control. propaganda.
Whether a more forceful campaign would have elicited a
much more positive response from the people is uncertain. As
it happened, the campaign seems to have had no significant ll
effect on the birth rate. Shao Li-tzu in 1956 commented on
the widespread ignorance of birth control techniques that he
found during an inspection trip in the countryside. In 1957, another writer observed that the use of contrace
tiv
eth
d
p
e m
o
s
was still mainly limited to government workers. A People's
Daily editorial at this time acknowledged, "Of course, we
have to take fully into consideration the fact that the propaga-
tion of birth control among the masses may meet with many dif-
fi
"
culties.
A European who visited China in September 1957
had a difficult time finding a birth control clinic in the
countryside. At one collective farm, he asked the peasants
whether they had heard anything about birth control; he was
answered with uncomprehending states. There is evidence that
the Communists did get around eventually to bringing the mes-
sa-e to much of the countryside, where contraceptives were
offerer, or sale. "Very few people used them," was the typical
remark of peasants to Western interviewers.
Leap forward
Given the anti-Malthusian tradition and the Communist
faith in the high productive potential of a socialist society,
it was perhaps inevitable that the birth control campaign
would slacken once the faith seemed close to vindication. By
the summer of 1958, the "leap forward" was in full trajectory,
and the leadership was confident that the extraordinarily am-
bitious economic targets it had set for the country would be
realized in the main. As it turned out, they were generally
realized in industry while falling far short of realization
in agriculture. But in both sectors, there was indeed a
genuine leap not merely in the economic aggregates but in
per capita achievements as well.
The leap forward movement set out to demonstrate that
miracles of production could be achieved if China's manpower
U
v
c trT? 1:'T
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wore properly organized and inspired. What amounted to labor
armies were sot lip for water conservancy and other :.'oral proj-
ects. In the countryside, primitive industrial plants were
introduced that would, with a minimum of capital investment,
occupy the vast pool of underemployed peasantry. The newly
organized communes enlarged the size and areas of akricultural
enterprises and permitted the ready transfer of farm labor
from project to project with a minimum of idle time. Beth in
city and on farm, the hortatory slogans (e.g. "Catch up with
Britain in 15 years") aimed to raise the popular tolerance for
long overtime hours and speed-up techniques.
Not all the energy was transformed into matter. But de-
termined to get all hands occupied, the Communists at times
found an insufficiency of hands for all the :-.activites they
introduced--deep plowing, sparrow killing, backyard steel
furnaces. The apparent labor shortages were sometimes cited
in support of the thesis that China needed more Ltather than
fewer people. "Because of careful cultivation and tilling,
the need for manpower has been doubled," averred the People's
Daily.
The objective of Communist planning during the leap for-
ward year of 1958 was "to bring into play the activism and
creativeness of the broad working masses." The theoretical
journal Study in Mar
h 1958
c
published Po I-po's strictures
against the 'rreverse effects" induced by conservatism in plan-
ning, by uncourageous striving for "b9lance." The times were
no longer encouraging for those who were still concerned with
the population-resource-balance. Birth control advocates had
to guard against the "reverse effects" of their cautionary
statements. They must on no account depress the modd of the
Peking University students, whose wall newspapers affirmed
that "if they are adequately mobilized and organized, the 600,-
000,000 people will emit inexhaustible light and heat such as
are released during a nuclear explosion...a large population
is net a stumbling stone to the progress of science, but on
the contrary, a tremendous force." -
What followed was not so much an about face in the re-
gime's birth control policy as a decision to h
ld
o
the cam-
paign in abeyance at least while the party line emphasized
the value of hi v hn++o l I ^"-
China is a country of campaigns--family planning, literacy,
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hygiene, political study. When a campaign is under way, you
are not allowed to forget it for an hour. All the mass media
harn;ner the point away unkelentingly. "But this was not now
the case with family planning." The poster exhibitions had a
neglected appearance; the crowds were uninterested. The re-
sponse of those Chinese he queried was, "Of course the campaign
continues, but it has not been a great success."
As the ideologists worked it out, the proper standpoint
now was one which stressed that the population problem in
China was not basic, that the economy could in fact support
ma'.zy times the present 650,000,000, but that birth control
was nevertheless an appropriate policy for a planned society.
The position was most explicitly set forth by Shu hung, writ-
ing:in People's Daily on 6 June 1958 and in the July Peking
Review. ~e Fater~of population increase in our country,"
said Shu proudly, "is the highest..in the world, and itsipop-
ulation is also the largest in the world." By the end of the
Second Five-Year Plan in 1962, he foresaw a Chinese population
in excess of 700,000,000. Five years later, it would approach
800,000,000. But the hlalthusians were being disproved by
events; industry and agriculture were being developed at un-
precedentec; speed.
This does not mean, continued Shu, that the regime would
allow population to grow "in a blind, uncontrolled way." On
the contrary, population increase would be planned just like
the other variables; of the economy. In time, Shu was con-
fident, the populace would be highly responsi?'e to the demo-
graphic ?cargets set by the regime. "With culture and scienti-
fic knov,ledge spreading on a mass scale, the prospect is that
planned birth will be progressively understood and accepted
by the people."
As the matter stands now, the practice of bi,tth control
has official sanction. The means are available to those who
want them and can afford to buy them. But the leadership,
exhilarated by the agricultural and industrial advances of the
last two years, is apparently unwilling to return to birth
control as an active propaganda theme until the economic growth
curve shows : signs of flattening.
Lt)
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The treatment accorded 80-year-old Ma Yin-chu for his
article in the November 1959 issue of New Construction is
:indicative of today's restraints on the- Tir th contr`ol 'ad-
vocates, The heart of Ma's argument, advanced with unique
courage on several occasions after "hundred flowers" had
withered in mid-1957, was that population growth is a seri-
ous obstacle to capital accumulation in China. Chou En-
lai himself had implied as much as the eighth party congress
in September 1956. But no emphasis on this line of argument
had been tolerated for over two years.
To the invective that followed the publication of his
thesis, Ma repl2ed in the January 1960 issue of New Construc-
tion, "I will accept the challenge single-handed and will fight until I die. I will never capitulate to these critics
who are set on bringing others to submission by force and not
by reasoning." There was an element of the extraordinary in
the whole debate that possibly reflected indecision is influ-
ential circles; the US Consulate General in Hong Kong com-
mented that the "really curious imponderable here" was not
Ma's defense of his beliefs but rather that they were pub- C3
lished by the Communists. The evidence, while inconclusive,
is consistent with the surmise that Ma had patrons in the
party who favored an active birth control progr= to cope
with the population problem. The old gentleman was simply
too outspoken, however. In April 1960, he was dismissed from
his post as president of Peking University.
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IV. POSITIONS OF TIII PARTY LEADERS
Chinose Communist statements, about population have been
hi,;?hly, although not perfectly, correlated with the character
of economic, programs in force or under consideration. The
::~tcp-up of birth control propaganda from late 1956 to mid-1957
coincided with a osriod of concern over the strains attending
tho 1956 "u?psurge" and with the subsequent "ebb tide" in 1957.
Conversely, the slackening of birth control propagnda since
1958 has been associated with "leap forward" targeting in
agriculture and inudstry. On a priori grounds, it seems prob-
able that advocates of comparatively moderate economic programs
(e.g., Chen YUn, Li Fu-chun, perhaps Po I-po) would be most
disposed to favor measures to limit population increase. Those
who are more congenial to ambitious targeting (e.g., Liu Shao-
ch:i, Tong I-Isiao-ping, Tan Chen-lin) would, on the same ground,
seem likely to prefor a muting of birth control propaganda and
a stress on the economy's ability to advance faster than the
rate of population growth.
The record bears out the a priori judgment broadly, but
not perfectly. The record is complicated by the fact that
leaders in both groups have shown some appreciation of the
population problem, speaking out with varying degrees of frank-
ness on some occasions but inclining generally to silence on
the subject since 1958. The review of individual positions
presented below suggests that there may indeed have been some
debates on the population question within the politburo but
that all the Communists at this level approached the issue
discreetly. If a split should occur eventually in the leader-
ship, it is possible indeed that the contending group will
cite "errors" of viewpoint on the population question. It
seems likely, however, that the charges and countercharges will
revolve primarily around issues on which the Chinese leaders
have spoken out with more conviction than on population.
Mao Tse-tung
The utterances of Mao on the population question are re-
flective of the party's generally ambivalent attitude on the
subject--reluctance to appear defeatist about the economy's
ability to keep pace with population increase, coupled with
uneasiness at the magnitudes that 2.5 percent compounded an-
nually ultimately come to. As the undisputed leader of the
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S E' CR I:i'
party, Mao could readily have squelched the regime's birth
control propaganda that had its beginnings in 1954, that
reached its full flower in 1957, and that reappears occasionally
even in i:he period of leap forward. Clearly he condoned if
lie did not endorse the propaganda. His own public statements
evidence an evolution of attitude that has not yet fully formed.
He has of course been unequivocally hostile to sugges-
tions that the Communists Might prove unequal to the task of
supporting the over-expanding population. A Red Flag article
in June 1958 recalled Mao's reaction in 1049 to Dean Acheson's
allusions to overpopulation in China. "Among all things on
earth," said Mao, "man is the most precious. Under the leader-
ship of 'he Communist party, all miracles can be created so
long as there are men. We refute Acheson's reactionary theory.
We believe that revolution can change all things. A new
China with a vast population, rich rescurces, well-off liveli-
hood, and flourish. culture will materialize before long.
All pessimistic views are utterly groundless."
In the liberalization period of early 1957, Mao apparently
took a more definitive stand, but again the evidence is not
firsthand. Birth control proponent Chung Hui-Ian, speaking
at the sessions of the Chinesee People's Political Consultative
Conference in March 1957, alluded to "the wise directive of
Chairman Mao concerning the need of planned birth control to
regulate the population of China." The details of the direc-
tive were not described, and Mao himself apparently recoiled
from the spotlight.
The reference to Mao"s "wise directive" may be an allu-
sion to remarks made ii his "secret speech" on contradictions
in February 1957. A version of the speech which circulated
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in Warsaw had it that Mao onlarged upon the problems that at-
tended too rapid population growth and that he strongly
advocated limitations on the size of families. The edited
version of the speech released in June, after liberalization
had run its course, omitted this and other statements which
Polish revisionists had found so appealing. As the official
version of the speech put it, Mao made no statement favoring
birth control. He did concede that China's large population
gave rise to some "difficulties," but he was critical of those
who resisted efforts to turn "negative factors into positive
ones." More explicitly, he chided those who argued that "the
fewer the people...the better."
As far as the open record goes then, Mao (and the party
along with him) has shied from close identification with the
proponents of population limitation. His off-the-record re-
marks reflect some awarenenss of demographic realities, but'
he does not seem fully persuaded that an all-out birth control
campaign would be opportune now, however necessary it may
become later.
Liu Shao-chi
During "hundred flowers" in early 1957, the Chinese press
divulged the fact that I,iu Shao-chi had convened a symposium
on birth control back in December 1954. He has thus evinced
an interest in the question of population limitation, but he
is not on record as supporting birth conrtol in public state-
ments. The issue is possibly one that is not fully resolved
i
hi
n
s own mind and on which differences of view within the
party are admissible in accordance with the principles set
forth in his 1941 article on ",C?onflicts in the Party." As Liu
stated it, if after full discussion "a minority of comrades
still have different views. they have the ri ht t
o
g
preserve
their views, on condition that they absolutely obey the majority
in matt
r
f di
e
s o
e
sciplin
and action."
As one of the chief doctrinaires, he has probably been
most concerned about maintaining the purity of the party's
position against Malthus and neo-Malthusians. At the second
session of the eighth party congress in May 1958, Liu leveled
his sharpest criticism at the pessimistic scholars who "argued
that as the population grows, consumption will increase. and
there won't be much of an increase in accumulation." Their
views, said liu, "go counter to Marxism-Leninism." The great
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forward leap "has not only completely knocked the bottom out
of their contention that agriculture cannot make quick progress
but also blown sky high their argument that a big population :i.
impedes accumulation."
The plausible surmise is that Liu, along with Mao and
probably the majority of the leaders, is appreciative of the
race between economic growth and population increase. Deep-
rooted Communist that he is, he has a strong predilection for
emphasis on methods that promise to accelerate economic growth.
But, to borrow a slogan that the rgime now employs in another
context, Liu would acknowledge that it is best to advance by
"walking on two legs" and would not reject out of hand ap of--
fort to curb the birth rate. He would simply disavow formula-
tions on the population issue that call into question the poten-
tial for economic growth or seem likely to dampen the popular
ardor to realize this potential. If forced to the choice, he
would perhaps say that it is better to leap forward on one leg
than limp forward on two.
trol clinics which were being established throughout the country.
first assured that China had no intention of seek-
ing lebensraum beyond its own borders. The Chinese Government
did appreciate the fact that there was a population problem,*
said Chou, and pinned great hopes on bringing presently barren
regions into cultivation. Chou also mentioned the birth con-
Chou En-lai
25X1
In contrast to Liu Shao-chi, Premier Chou En-lai has been
interviewed on numerous occasions Ting foreigners, and 25X1
he has several times made remarks favorin b
control. The population question was brought up
in the fall of 1955. Chou 25X1
25X1
Peiping were in the same vein. Population was a problem but
one which the Communists were confident they could handle.
Again, Chou alluded to the reclamation of waste lands and the
actvities to promote birth control.
Interviewed by a Indian visitor in the summer of 1956,
Chou is said to have used the word "overpopulated" in dis-
cussing the bond of common interests between India and China.
A few months -later, he told that China
today needed more contraceptives. 25X1
Chou?s remarks about this time in
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..~ ,ta L. t t L. 1
At the eighth party congress in September 1956, Chou
spoke in favor of a "reasonable amount" of birth contrcl. He
declared that there must be frequent shortages of materials
and only transient surpluses in a backward economy like China's
where "the population is large"--a presentation from which a
more meticulous ideologist like Liu Shao-chi would probably
have shied as bordering on un-Marxist pessimism. It is poste
sible that Chou at this time was indeed more susceptible than
Liu to the influences of Ma Yin-chu and other neo-Malthusians
(by Communist designation), who belabored the paint that rapid
population growth impeded the accumulation of surpluses for
capital investment. Ma has alluded to a personal friendship
with Chou, and it was through Chou's influence that Ma is said
to have obtained release from a Nationalist jail duriL,g World
War II.
It would be easy to overanalyze the differences between
Chou En-lai and Liu Shao-chi on the population issue. Chou
has been somewhat less guarded in his remarks, but these were
made in a period when the regime's interest in birth control
was more avowed than it is today. When he spoke, it was in
the general tenor of the party line at the time, which Mao
and Liu may have had more to do with setting than Chou. He
is not on record recently as speaking in the vein of 1956.
On population, as well as other issues generally, Chou seems
to fall in gracefully with the party line of the moment.
Others of the inner circle
In addition to the three discussed above, the topmost
echelon known as the Standing Committee of the Politburo in-
cludes Chu Te, Chen Yun, Lin Piao, and Teng Hsiao-ping.
.Evidence on the attitudes of these men is-scanty. As a
group, they presumably approved the regime's birth control
propaganda. Individually, they adhered to a circumspect
taciturnity in their public comments, however vocal some may
have been in the secret Standing Committee discussions.
The record of Chu Te on the subject is a blank. If he
has any convictions at all, they would possibly be shaped by
his military bent; Chinese military doctrine still attaches
great.importance to size of armies. As Chief of Staff Su Yu
worded it in 1957, "It must be admitted that nuclear weapons
have the destructive power to kill huge numbers of people, but
they cannot achieve the object of occupation and less still
Dt
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.!t_ ?i t
the object of subjugation....In the end, the deciding factor
wi'Ll still be the land army composed mainly of infantry."
It is plausible to deduce that the Chinese marshals, like
their military counterparts the world over, are uneasy about
programs to limit the population. Framing their values in
terms of national power rather than individual welfare, military
man tend to associate declining populations with social decadence
and expanding populations with national vigor. In this line of
-thinking the marshals are of course not alone, but are in agree-.
merit with many civilian statesmen who aspire to great power
status for their countries. Sun Yat Sen (whose position on
thrr population issue was not consistent over the years) took
alarm on one occasion when estimates seemed to show that China's
population was declining. Apprehensive that such a develop-
ment would lessen the chances for China's restoration to
great power standi:.g, he declared:
About', century Ago, France,-: acting on?,thes:belief
that she had already reached the blalthusian limit,
began to practice family limitation. Today, the
French people are reaping the painful effects of
a declining population and are encouraging the in--
crease of numbers to ensure France's permanent place
among the nations of the world. Nowadays in China,
some young men are also influenced by Malthusianism
and commence to control births.
The other marshal in the Standing Committee, Lin Piao,
made only rare appearances (probably because of illness) between
1953 and 1959. There is thus no record of his attitude during
the years when the Chinese Communists were frankest on the
birth control issue. A man whose outlook is decidedly military,
he pr-,-sumably shares with Chu Te and other marshals some
sense of disquiet about measures to limit population s:ze.
This is a judgment, however, which rests wholly on grounds of
plausibility rather than evidence.
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+VJ %iJ J
Clion Yun, who has loaned to comparative moderation in
economic planning, attaches considerable importance to the
maintenance of living standards. A statement ascribed to him
in June 1957 had it that "we must first make arrangements for
the people's livelihood, second those for production, and
las t those for capital construction." The aprangeinents for
the people's livelihood he evidently thought would be compli-
cated by too rapid population growth, for his report on the
state of the economy in March 1957 included the observation
that "a large population and a high rate 'of consumption are
the diffiuclties in our economic life."
His most explicit statement on birth control was made in
September 1957 before the Third National Congress of Chinese
Women:'
In order to protect the health of women and children,
to improve conditions for the rearing of children,
to improve family.;life, and to speed up socialist
construction, we will continue the promotion pf planned
childbirth on a nationwide scale--excluding areas
of the national minorities. This implies promotion
for the ddoption of planned childbirth among the
broad masses of people according to their own wishes
and circumstances.
Chen's phrasing was in harmony with that of the Corm unists
generally at the time. He may in private have gone further
and conceded validity to the formulations of Ma Yin-chu and
the other "neo-Malthusians," but the point is speculative.
Some of his comments in December 1956--supporting trade in
"free markets" and production by private enterprise in "secret
workshops"--do suggest a susceptibility to economic as distinct
from purely doctrinaire arguments.
The seventh man of the standing Committee, Secretary
General Teng Hsiao-ping, delivered the preliminary report on
the completion of the census to the Governmqnt Administration
Counbil in 1954. He offered no interpreti?a commentary apart
from expressions of pride in the quality of the census work.
He has taken positions clearly opposed to Chen Yun's on economic
issues such as free markets and blandestine factories, and the
inference--but not firm conclusion--would be that Teng has
stronger reservations about birth control than Chen. A man
whose record shows a partiality to "upsurge" and "leap for-
ward," Teng would share something of Liu Shao-chi's attitude:
grudgingly accepting perhaps that population limitation was
necessary in practice but seeing a deleterious negativism in
the birth control arguments.
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,.;:.:,1.i'1. L', j
Other politburo members
In the case of 'host other politburo members, there are
no public statements to indicate how they feel on the popu-
lation issue. Inferential judgments of their positions can
bo drawn on the basis of their group affiliations or gen+Dral
social outlooks (as was done with Chu To, Lin Piao, and Teng
Usiao-ping above). The remarks that follow will be confined
to. the few individuals on whom the evidence is direct or
reasonably circumstantial.
Li Fu-chun, Chairman of the State Planning Commission, is
credited with a sober appreciation of the economic realities.
He is also, however, alive to the political realities, and his
views on the population question have been car~?fully phrased
to accord with the prevailing party line.
Insofar as personal associations are indicative, it might
be noted in passing that Li's wife, Tsai Chang, is a fairly
high-ranking party official in her own right (head of the
Women's Work Committee of the Central Committee) and is on
record as saying in September 1955 that the party favored
birth control "to a certain extent." Li himself, speaking to
the All-China Congress of Trade Unions in December 1957, called
China'?s population a great asset but acknowledged that "of
course there are bound to be difficulties." As he put it,
"With a big population... there will be certain limitations on
the growth of our financial and material resources for some
years."
In his Red Flag article of October 1959 "On 'the Big
Leap Forward, Lj's emphasis was entirely the other way. Man,
as he now explained, is society's most precious asset. With
the elimination of capita.ist exploitation, it had become
possible to bring into full play the strength of more than 600,-
000,000 people. He criticized those with "right opportunist"
ideas who looked on China's big population as a heavy burden
which prevented rapid economic advance.
Financial expert Li Hs.ien-nien is cast in pretty much the
same mold as Li Fu-chun. In September 1957, Li Hsien-nien was
sufficiently impressed with the population problem to observe
that "agricultural production falls behind the people's needs."
In February 1958, on the other hand, he of course saw leap for-
ward as "entirely possible." The two Lis are obviously both
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:71:, (.?; 1
practical politicians, and their inner convictions are only
imperfectly reflected in their public statements. Experts in
economic arithmetic, the two seem reasonably sensitive to the
problem of population growth in China.
Tan Chen-lin has in recent years replaced the more moderate
Teng Tzu-hui as the regime's spokesman on agricultural policy.
Apparently anxious to extract the largest possible amount for
the regime from the countryside, Tan has been particularly
critical of those who took it upon themselves to deplore the
low living standards of the peasants. In a People's Daily
article of 5 May 1957, he- decried the "super c a comparison"
that showed peasant earnings to be less than urban wages. The
thought may have occurred to Tan that a population limitaton
program would alsc serve to increase the amount of grapin that
could be taxed or bought at artifically low prices by the regime,
for he conceded that "China is overpopulated.'.' Tan did not
go on record as an individual in favor of birth control, but
Abe has associated himself with the.rggime's policy on the
subject as set forth,in the Draft 12-Year Agricultural Program.
He submitted the program for official approval on two seaparate
occasions:. The first in September 1957 to the central commit-
tee and the second in April 1960 to the National People's
Congress. Section 29 of the program contained the pertinent
statement on birth control.
With the exception of the minority nationalities
areas, birth control should be publicized and
popularized in all densely populated areas. Family
planning should be promoted to prevent the develop-
ment of excessivly haavy burdens on families and
to enable children to receive better education and
have better employment opportunities.
The draft program had been first formulated in January
1956, and it is uncertain that Tan had much of a hand in the
wording of all the provisions--in particular the section on
birth control. In view of his official preoccupation with
rural problems, however, Tan would perhaps be more disposed
than other ardent leap forward proponents to concede some
merit to population limitation arguments. In the opinion of
the US Consulate General in Hong Kong, Tan's speech to the
National People's Congress in 1960 "betrayed an undertone of
uneasiness.. and some doubt as to whether sheer manpower alone
will be enough to meet production needs."
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Among the alternate members of the politburo, propagandist
and party theoretician Chen Po-ta--long a spokesman for J1Iao--
has been the most explicit on the population question. His
formulations are wholly anti-Malthusian. Speaking to the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in February
1956, he :fumed at "Malthus' preposterous theory of overpopulation. "J
There was, in fact, no sign of overpopulation, he asserted.
There was, he conceded, a food question, which would be solved
by the transformation of agriculture from individual to coopera-
tive organizational forms.
The ling-up
If any significant point emerges from a review of polit-
buro members' views on the population issude, it is that all
have taken fairly safe positions, at least as far as their .
public statements go. People's Daily and other party publi-
cations have gone into far more a tail in discussions of the
issue than any of the major leaders. The ostensible protag-
onists in the debates have been non-party or lesser party
figures. If there is any line of division at the politburo
level, it does not seem to divide zealous proponents from
opponents of birth control. The encouragement of birth control
is official policy, and no one speaks against it.
Some are, however, more disposed to speak for it than
others. The theoreticians of the party--Mao Tse-tung, Liu
Shao-chi, Teng Hsiao-ping, Chen Po-ta--all or almost all must
have supported the decision to inaugurate a birth control
campaign. Liu Shao-chi, for one, and perhaps some of the
others as well, even took some personal initiative to get
the camaign under way. But as a group, they are distinguished
by a clear reluctance to make individual statements that would
in the least seem to compromise their uncorrupted Marxism.
The government administrators, particularly those with
economic outlooks--Chou En-lai, Chen Yun, Li Fu-chun, Li
lisien-nien, for example--have been more disposed to make
personal statements that explicitly or implicitly favor birth
control. This was done only when the regime was pushing birth
most actively. When the life went out of the birth iuntroi
most campaign--even though i Leruained official policy--the
government administrators, like the party theoreticians, called
atteiltioii 'to the virtiie-s 'of: a,:'large p'opu'lation. - , .
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The military figures in the politburo have kept their
tongues. Because of misgivings on the presumed effect of
population limitation on national power, they are probably
no more enthusiastic about birth control than the party
doctrinaires. But their record is not indicative of strong
opinions on the question.
In sum, the leaders have differed in degrees of enthusiasm
(or, better said, lack of enthusiasm) rather than convictions.
The task may not so much be to resolve differences among the
leaders as to settle on a satisfactory and satisfying theoreti-
cal position. In the meantime, all must couch their utterances
in carefully guarded phrases.
SFr)FT
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V. POPULATION DOCTRINE AND THE SINO-SOVIET RELATIONSHIP
Chinese Communist theoreticians fool bound to develop
propositions that are broadly acceptable to Communists abroad
no well as at home. Some foreign Communists are of course
more equal than others; the Russian nod in particularly im-
portant. When vital interests of national policy are involved,
however, or when the immodest desire to assert a doctrinal
authority equal to Moscow's is not contained, Peiping has
taken theoretical stances at odds with the Kremlin's : witness
the dissonance over contradictions, over communes, and over
global strategy. Since the doctrinal issues have their bear-
ing on the solidarity of the Sino-Soviet relationship, it is
in order to examine the Kremlin's reaction to Peiping's
treatment of the population question.
Marx and Malthus
The Communist impatience with "population explosion"
propositions is long-standing. As Malthus presented his
theory--that population tends to increase faster than the
available food supply--the phenomenon of mass pov,rty
transcended the particular social order. He advanced a
proposition that was held to be true whatever the reformers
did about the Poor Laws, whatevever the revolutionaries did
about feudalism and capitalism. T Marx, the Malthusian
theory was sheer apologia for the status quo, and he reacted
with the venom that has become so characteristic of Communist
polemics., Malthus was not merely wrong but, dishonest:
Malthus was altogether a plagiarist by profession.
One has only to compare the first edition of his work
on population with the work by the Reverend Townsend
to become convinced that he does not use the latter
as raw material, as an independent producer would,
but that he copies and paraphrases him, like a slavish
plagiarist although he nowhere mentions him, keeping
his existence a secret.
When he brought the argument from ad hominem to
substantive grounds, Marx took the position that there was
no absolute law of population that was valid for all
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T,i'.) I','1'
societies. If there was in his day a surplus of workers, the
overpopulation was relative. The apparent manpower surplus
was not merely a derivative of the capitalist order; it was
the very essential of a viable capitalism, constituting the
"Industrial reserve army" that forced the workers to accept
less, than the value of their production. As Marx saw it,
the situation became progressively worse for the masses
under capitalism. His abstruse argument made the demand for
labor dependent on the supply of "variable capital," which
tended with time to fall relative to the magnitude of fixed
capital. The outcome was for the laboring population to
become "relatively superflous. "
The threads of Marx's arguments are never easy to follow;
the relevant point for this study is mainly that he conceded
no validity to the Malthusian theory, either as an explanation
of poverty under capitalism or of the limitations on progress
under socialism. It is possible that he took so uncompromis-
ing a stand on tactical rather than logical grounds. The
ends of the class struggle would hardly be served by con-
ceding merit to an argument that seemed to him in the main
so hostile to revolutionary aspirations. Viewing the po-
ten?;:ials of a socialist society as some optimists today
anticipate the effects of dramatic technological break-
throughs, Marx possibly felt like them that "population ex-
plosion" arguments were trivial for the present (if not
harmful), however pertinent they might become for the con-
ditions of a later era.
He did not consider it useful to elaborate on the future.
But inwardly he may have realized that population could not
go on expanding forever. It would not go on expanding
forever, he intimated at one point, under the civilizing
effects of the socialist order. The high fertility of the
proletariat was evidence of the degrading effects of capi-
talism; he saw an analogy to the fecundity of those animals
that are preyed upon by other species.
Engels was no less hostile to Malthus, and for the same
reason. In 1844, he affirmed that population pressed, not
against the means of subsistence, but against the means of
employment. In other words, capitalism set limits to popula-
tion growth that fell short of the strictly technological
capabilities of society. Like Marx, Engels apparently
advanced his argument mainly to discredit Malthus, not as a
statement of the ultimate Communist position on the population
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question. Nearly 40 years later, in a :lottor'to Kautsky, he
wrote niche -frankly:
If, at some stage, communist society finds itself
obliged to regulate the production of human beings, U.
just as it h
al
as
ready come to regulate the produc-
tion of things, it will be precisely this society,
and this society alone, which can carry it out with-
out difficulty.
(h several. occas.jons,' Chinese have alluded to this remark of
Engels' as doctrinal justification for the birth control
campaign. In general, the Chinese approached the matter
with due respect for the sacred texts. They were duti-
fully hostile to Malthus and sought support for birth control
in postulates (health of mothers, etc.) which were largely
specious but acceptable on Marxist grounds. The Chinese
understood that the situation had a certain delicacy. Apart
from a few loose statements made during the liberalization
period of early 1957, they tried earnestly to express their
doctrine and policy in a manner that would not give offense
even to strict constructionists in the Kremlin or elsewhere.
The Soviet Viewpoint
Two considerations shaped the early Russian formulations
on the population question. First, it was incumbent on
party spokesmen to reject Malthus, to adhere firmly to the
Mar:cist standpoint that the revolutionary upsurge of energies
under Communism could be counted on to provide for all.
Second, it was mandatory to criticize the man-dominated
family, to favor the emancipation of women. If contraceptive
practices furthered this second objective, it was necessary
to make clear that they were not condoned because of any
apprehensions about over-all population growth. "We are
unconditional opponents of neo-Malthusianism," said Lenin,
but "this does not prevent us in the slightest from demanding
the abolition of all laws which place penalities either upon
abortion or upon the circulation of medical writings dealing
with methods of preventing conceptions or similar laws."
Soon after the revolution, abortion waG legalized, the
sale of contraceptives authorized, and the laws on family re-
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.S,4LI E7'
lationships made extremely liberal by Western standards.
Divorce, for example, was readily granted on the request
of either party. The quantitative effect of these enact-
ments on the birth rate is indeterminate, but the general
encouragement for women to fulfill their roles outside the
traditional home -tended presumably to reduce the size of
families. The grounds, however, were feminist, not Malthusian.
As was to be the case in China some 30 years later, the
new sanctions for birth control for a time emboldened a
few academicians to advance neo-Malthusian concepts. This
limited license was ended under Stalin. In the middle 1930s,
there was a tide of denunciation against the expositions that
showed any sign of Malthusian taint; Soviet demographers
elaborated the propositon that fertility decline was
associated with a decaying society. On the legislative and
administrative fronts, abortions were first restricted a ' d
then forbidden entirely except on medical and eugenic grounds.
No further effort was made to promote contraceptive practices.
With a new emphasis on the virtues of the socialist family,
the Communists adopted measures to make divorce more difficult.
Financial assistance to mothers was extended. Maternity and
nursery facilities were enlarged.
It is likely that Stalin's apprehensions of a shift in
the European power balance to the detriment of Russian
national interests was a key factor in the turn of Soviet
population policy. The apprehension was made all the more
acute after the accession of the Nazis to power and their
institution of measures to encourage rapid population growth
in Germany. Against this background, Stalin probably viewed
with deep misgiving the precipitate drop in the Russian birth
rate during the preceding ten years (from perhaps 45 per
thousand to some 30 per thousand). Another consideration
was the "excess mortality" of the period (deaths may have
exceeded births in number during some the the years) arising
from famine, undeclared civil war in the villages, and other
consequences of the forced collectivization and hasty
industrialization.
v
(3)
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If Stalin associated the long-range maintenance of
the USSR's power position with demographic factors, the
c!ffects of World War II must have given him further dis-
tress. The separation of soldiers from their wives cut
sharply into the birth rate, and the heavy losses at the
front of men of marriageable age seemed likely to have a
depressant effect on births for several years after the
war ended. The result was the enactment of measures de-
sif;ned to promote female interest in childbearing.
The elaborate system of awards set up in 1944 stip-
ulated a range of honorifics for mothers with five children
on up: Motherhood Medal (First and Second Class); Order
of Glory of Motherhood (First, Second, and Third Class);
and Order of Mother Heroine (Gold Star), with Scroll from
the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The
financial allowances to mothers were most liberal (they
had to be cut back later), ranging up to 5,000 rubles up-
on the birth of the 11th child and 3,600 rubles annually
for a certain number of years thereafter. As a further
inducement to childbearing, discriminatory taxation was
levied on men and women with fewer than three chil-
dren.
The post-Stalin era brought a modification but not
reversal of Soviet outlook on the population question.
Khrushchev, like the Soviet demographers of Stalin's
day, associates an expanding population with a vigorous
society. Speaking to Komsomol members in January 1955,
he warned, "if each family has only one or two children,
the population of the country will not grow but will be
on the decline. And we must think about the develop-
ment of society."
Unlike Stalin, however, the more recent leadership
seems disposed to recognize the humanistic considarations
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that impelled Lenin to approve such measures as the legal-
ization of abortions in the 1920s. Criminal sanctions
against pregnant women who procured abortions were discon-
tinued in 1954. The remvining prohibitions against abor-
tions were repealed in 1955. It is difficult to evaluate
quantitiatively the effect on the birth rate of these en-
actments, which to some extent merely legalized what 'as
already widespread practice. The fact remains that the
new leadership, in contrast to the old, was accepting the 25X1
considerable downward influence of abortions on fertility.
rates./
the USSR in 1957, abortions ranged from 30 to 85 per-
cent of live births in individual hospitals.
After the birth control campaign got well under way
in Communist China, statements in Soviet media favoring
contraception seemed to increase somewhat--whether by co-
incidence, in sympathy, or possibly in competition with
some of the Chinese propaganda is not clear. In the mid-
dle of 1957, Soviet doctors were urging the establishment
of speipal women's clinics to give birth control advice.
They also advocated pamphlets and posters on cont
ti
racep
on
and an expanded supply of contraceptives. Later in the
year, the Soviet Minister of Health urged "serious scienti-
fic researt;h to discover new contraceptives" since the
widespread practice of abortion tended to promote gynecol-
ogical disease. A Moscow broadcast in July 1958 to South-
east Asia was critical of a French demographic journal for
the statement that Marxists opposed birth control propa-
ganda. The Soviet state did indeed encourage a high birth
rate, but individuals were free to choose; contraceptives
were available in any chemist's shop and freely advertised
in the medical journals. It was necessary to oppose the
"anti-scientific and reactionary" theory of Malthus, but
this was not to preclude "a realistic and truly humane
policy on the question of population under socialism."
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In Summary, Soviet population policy and commentary
under the post-Stalin leadership took a turn which reduced
the room for doctrinal controversy with China. Had Stalin
lived, it is possible that Peiping's birth control campaign
would have occasioned greater distress to the Kremlin, for
the blatant pro-natalist line of his time suppressed the
fo.minist and humanistic considerations that were modifying
influences under Lenin. But as Khrushchev apparently viewed
Chinese population doctr th and policy, they called for no
comment from Moscow. The Chinese were obviously more con-
cerned about population growth in China than a good Commu-
nist would be about population growth in the USSR. While
the Russians condoned birth control, the Chinese advocated
and encouraged it. The differences of attitude and approach
made perhaps for some awakwardness, but they did not oc-
casion the snide comments from top Soviet officials that
were engendered by other Chinese doctrinal initiatives, e.g.,
on contradictions and communes. Basic to the preservation
of accord was Peiping's scrupulousness in seeking grounds
for birth control that were by and large in harmony with
current rationales in Moscow.
The East European experience
There remains still another indication of Soviet dis-
inclination to take issue with Peiping's handling of its
population question: the USSR acquiesces in the population
limitation measures adopted in other bloc capitalis. Warsaw
has taken a particularly advanced position. With the highest
birth rate on the European continent next to Albania, Poland
came to the decision in the middle 1950s that a cutback in
the rate of population growth was essential both to maximize
the amount of funds that could be directed into investments
and to avoid a deterioration of per capita incomes. In April
1956, the Polish Sejm legalized abortions under certain con-
ditions. In January 1960, abortions were authorized virtual-
ly at the will of the applicant. The sole requirement was
a simple declaration by the woman that "she is in particularly
difficult material conditions justifying interruption of
pregancy."
By 1958, a Birth Control Association and planned parent
hood centers had been established in the country. The propa-
ganda took on strong antireligious overtones. In August 1958,,_
?1
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for example, the party daily T_rybuna Ludu carried a long
article which charged the clergy with encouraging believers
to break the civil edicts pertaining to marriage, birth
control, and divorce. This lino of attack continues. In
January 1960, Trybuna Ludu charged that the clergy had or-
ganized a campaign against planned parenthood, abortions,
and the sale of contraceptives and had further blackmailed
pharmacists into refusing to sell contraceptives. The daily
took Cardinal Wyszynski to task for asserting that the
Polish people had no reason to fear high birth rate,. It
was the State, not the Church, retorted the daily, that
would have to build schools, houses, and factories for ad-
ditions to the population.
Repent Polish commentary implicitly impugns the state-
ments of Soviet demographers that high birth rates are to be
associated with dynamic societies. The illustrated weekly
Swiat put it as follows in April 1958:
Let us reject the fictitious suggestion that a high
birth rate is proof of improvement in the standard
of living. One should admit boldly that the exces-
sive birth rate is one of the factors which adversely
affect the standard of living and is even...the
cause of misery...
As the Poles became increasingly frank in giving their
real reasons for favoring population limitation, they took
up positions from which the Chinses carefully shied. Job
opportunities, it was stated, were not sufficiently numerous
to take care of all new entrants to the labor force. Speak-
ing to the central committee in October 1959, Gomulka at-
tributed the meat shortage in part to the high birth rate.
Speaking to the same audience in January 1960, chief of the
Planning Commission and politburo member Jedrochosi observed
that Poland's high birth rate forced the regime to invest
more than countries with low birth rates in industries that
served consumers. As he foresaw it,.over a third of .net
investments over the next five years would have to be ear-
marked for the purpose of merely maintaining existing per
capita levels of consumption. This line of argument by Ma
Yin-chu in China had cost him position and friends.
In Hungary, the Communists have taken their position
on the more acceptable feminist ground. As Radio Budapest
C)
CJ
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framed the rationale in September 1959, "Since the constitu-
tion grants complete social, political, and economic equality
to our women, it would be an infrimgemer.t of their rights not
to allow women to dc& ide whether they should bear children
and how many children they should-, have." Not that the broader
national economic interest was denied; the party newspaper
rrjna bbaadsag acknowledged in May 1058 that "the growth of
population is also an economic problem." This thesis was
illustrated by references to classroom and housing shortages,
rathor than by any developed argument to show that population
Growth hindered investment and national economic growth.
Nevertheless the regime had clearly departed from earlier
positions banning abortions and the sale of contraceptives.
Under the terms of the decree promulgated in June 1956,
doctors were permitted to perform abortions at the request
of mothers even if the pregancies did not endanger the mothers'
health. The result of this measure was a rise in the number
of legal abortions from some 35,000 in 1955 to 120,000 in
1957. Although the increase represented in large part merely
the legalization of what had been illegal practice before,
the authorities were appalled at the numbers and decided to
encourage publicity for contraception as the better method
to prevent unwanted births. Leaflets were printed on the
techniques of contraception, and prenatal and women's clinics
were instructed to give women advice on how to prevent preg-
nancies.
In Czechoslovakia, the law forbidding abortions was
liberalized in December 1957. The following year there were
about 38 legal abortions for every 100 births. A birth con-
trol center opened in Prague in 1957 gives advice'on contracep-
tion. The low birth rate in Czechoslovakia (17.4 per thousand
in 1958), however, exerts no real pressure on the authorities
to encourage contraception except as the preferred alterna-
tive to abortion.
Although East Germany and Albania have not legalized
abortions, it is evident from the programs of the other
countries that Chinese population policy has not been a
cross-current in the Communist mainstream. The Chinese ran
for a time well ahead of the other currents (with the excep-
tion perhaps of Poland's) but this did not occasion any in-
trabloc polemic on Peiping's course. The one prevailing
feature in population policy and doctrine throughout the
bloc has been the insistence oi-, retaining Malthus as the
Lucifer of the plot. Beyond this, the Communists have tacitly
accepted variety in the population programs that may be
followed in the different countries.
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1...I V a 1 4J A
VI. THE GEOPOLITICAL CONSIDERATION
Moscow's failure to take issue with the Chinese policy
on birth control reflects more than a disinclination to pub-
licize doctrinal divergencies with an important ally. There
is evidence that the Russians, sharing a long common frontier
with the Chinese, have their moments of "yellow peril" anxiety.
This is an aspect of the long-range national interest that
has apparently suggested to Kremlin leaders the rationality
of taking satisfaction rather tiian displeasure in policies
to curb population increase in China.
Chinese internal migration
Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang, Tibet, and the Tibetan-populated
province of Tsinghai comprise more than half of China's land
area. They hold perhaps 3 percent of China's population. The
image of teeming hordes is applicable to the areas of China
east of a line drawn from Manchuria southwest to Yunnan Prov-'
ince. Elsewhere, China has some of the- world's emptiest
spaces.
As buffers to absorb Chinese population increase before
it presses against the Sino-Soviet border, these spaces give
dubious comfort to the USSR. In the first place, very little
in-migration of ethnic Chinese is sufficieut to swamp the
local minorities which have often been responsive to Soviet
influence. Sinkiang particularly was a sphere of Soviet in-
fluence in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In the early post-
war period, the Russians were able to sponsor and support a
revolt against the Nationalists in the Ili area of Sinkiang;
after 1949 they retained a measure of economic influence for
several years by operating oil, nonferrous. metal, and civil
air enterprises jointly with the Chinese CommunSsts. In the
case of Inner Mongolia, the influx of Chinese and the polit-
ical redrawing of boundaries have made the Mong')ls a minor-
ity in theiq own "autonomous" territory; they .r.ow are out-
numbered seven to one by the Chinese. If these is in this
Chinese population movement toward the border any ultimate
implication for the Soviet position in Outer Mongolia, it
is perhaps intimated in the irridentist sentiments Mao once
expressed to Edgar Snow:
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When the people's revolution h^,s been victorious in
China, the Outer Mongolian Republic will automatically
become a part of the Chinese federation of its own
will.
As matters turned out, the Kremlin was able to obtain the Chi-
nasc government's recognition of Outer Mongolian independence
before Mao came to power, but the Chinese Communists still
publish maps that dispute Ulan Batnr's and Moscow's versions
of the China-?dongolia boundary line.
In the second place, the migration of Chinese into the
border areas does not have the compensating advantage For the
USSR of significantly easing population pressure in China at
large. The population carrying capacity of the border areas
is low. The terrain and climate, though varied, are uniform-
ly unfavorable to large-scale agricultural resettlement;
barren plateaus
exten
i
,
s
ve mountain ranges, meager grazing
lands, vast wastelands, extremes of aridity, long winters,
short growing seasons in-.small oases.
The statistics on "new lands" settlement are sketchy.
1 t_ _ -
WA L,.Jvv
persons between 1949 and 1957--less than 200000
~V
;yearlyon
a ,
the average. The number was probabl
y
good deal higher
than this average in the later years, but it was always in
the hundred thousands as compared with natural increase of
some 15,000,000 annually.
Most of the internal migration in China (perhaps three
million or so a year) has in fact bee
t
n
o the cities from
the surrounding countryside rather than to the border- areas.
The "blind infiltration" into the cities has led the authori-
ties at various times to tighten controls on travel. Cer-
tificates of employment from urban labor agencies, certifi-
cates of acceptance from schools, or other such guarantees
have to be presented before permission is granted to peasants
to migrate to the cities. These measures prove ineffective
to stem the flow when "spring famine" in the countryside
reaches disaster proportions. In the spring of 1960, a
hundred thousand and more peasants swarmed into each of
such major cities as Peiping and Canton.
As most observers evaluate the prospects, it is the
industrialization of the already settled areas rather than
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S nCR I,' lip
the development of the border regions that will continue to
afford the more impcvtant outlet for China's surplus peoples.
The flow to the border areas will be statistically signifi-
cant in relation.to their present populations and will tend,
therefore, to eliminate the vestiges of Russian, Mongol,
Tibetan, and other non-Chinese influences in those areas.
This interregional flow, however, will remain minor by
comparison with the high volume of natural increase in the
country as a whole. Even considered in conjunction with the
flow to the cities, it will not allay the qualms of those
individuals who apprehend eventual Chinese demands for
lebensraum.
The population of the Soviet lands adjoining China in
the Far East is about 6,000,000. On the other side of the
boundary line, Manchuria has perhaps 50,000,000 Chinese.
The presumed danger from the population disparity notwith-
standing, the Russians agreed in the 1950s to work jointly
with Peiping on projects that would in fact seem to facilitate
rather than discourage migration toward and to the USSR.
The two countries cooperated, for example, to construct the
railroad from China to the USSR that transverses Outer Mon-
golia. After the line was opened on 1 January 1956, there
was a visible expansion of Chinese contacts with the Outer
Mongolians; Peiping extended technical aid to Ulan Bator,
and some 10,000 Chinese are said to have gone to Outer Mon-
golia to work on construction-projects.-
Further to the east, the Russians agreed to a project
for joint research and exploration in the Amur basin during
the years 1956 to 1960. Joint field studies began in 1956
with a view to developing plans for the development of hy-
droelectric power, waterways, and flood ^ontrol. According
to a Pravda news account of 12 November 1956, "large masses
of virgin land were found to have climatic conditions very
favorable for the development of agriculture." There are
obvious benefits that will accrue to Russian districts
around the Amur; the point is that these benefits (and the
general advantages to Moscow of promoting Sino-Soviet
harmony) for the present seemed to outweigh apprehensions
about Chinese spillover across the border.
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, A
If the Kremlin's anxieties for the near future have not
boon acute, there is fairly good reason. First, there has
been no objective sign of Chinese Communist inclination to
push a mass migration across the border in search of arable
land. The Soviet Far Eastern provinces--lightly populated
as they are--are barely self-sufficient in food grains. Even
in their southern sectors, the winters are severe, although
tie growing period is long enough or certain crops. Farther
north the farmers are limited to the cultivation of a few quic:k-
;rowing varieties. Permafrost is the land feature of most of
the area north of the 55th parallel. The region has not at-
tracted Russian tillers. Until technological innovations bring
precedent-breaking changes, it will have very limited attraction
for Chinese farmers.
Second, "land hunger" is not a predominant motivating
force in Chinese migration anyway. The bulk of migration
within China under the Communists has been from farm. to city
or from city to city. Emigration abroad in the last century
has also been prompted in the main by the desire to take ad-
vantage of nonagricultural opportunities in foreign lands. An
influx of Chinese into Siberia during the next 25 years is im-
probable if Moscow does not allow them to take up jobs in the
factories and other Soviet enterprises. 25X1
To say that the Russians are not overly concerned about a
Chinese influx within the next 25 years is not to say that they
will, during this period, be insensitive to changes that might
eventuate later.
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,:)':.t..,IN C., I
A further indication that
a'.zalyses are not completely ou o line with Communist think-
ing comes from some remarks of Chang Kuo-tao, a former member
of the Chinese Communist politburo. Speaking to a visiting US
official in Hong Kong, Chang said that population pressure in
China could not occasion Sino-Soviet conflict for "at least
scores of years." Chang evidently intended to belittle the is-
sue but could not exclude its ultimate relevance for Sino-Soviet
relations.
Finally, the historical record may afford some intimation
of present attitudes. The population disparity between the
Russian Far East and Manchuria occasioned grave concern in Rus-
sian circles both before and after the Revolution. The ratio
was 30,000 to 9,000,000 at the turn of the century, 1,000,000
to 19,000,000 after World War I, over 2,000,000 to 40,000,000
at the beginning of World War II. The Chinese who crossed over
into Siberia were few but unwelcome. In 1900, the Russian author
ities in the Amur; region pushed the Chinese back across
the frontier; nearly 5,000 lost their lives near Blagoveshchensk
when driven into the Amur River.
25X1
In the Soviet era, the Russian interest in peopling the
Far East continued and was implemented under the Five-Year Plans.
After Japan seized Manchuria, the question became all the more LJ
urgent; a lightly populated For East wher
S
i
t
d f
e
ov
e
arme
orces
were dependent on supplies from Europe, would be an obvious
handicap in a two-front war. Ten percent of the total budget
in the Third Five-Year Plan (1938-1942) was allocated to the
development of the Soviet Far East and East Siberia. The eth-
n .+c composition of the peoples of the area was considered to
.have its bearing on national ,security; by 1939, the prudent
authorities had removed the Koreans and Chinese to Central
Asia.
W1
C,rr nrm
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Tho defeat o:E Japan has brought no 11minution of the
Soviet drive to people the Far Past with Europeans. Finan-
ci:al inducomonts to por.suade farmo:s to colonize Primorsky
Kral on tho Chinese border :In 191.57 included free transpor-
tation for tho family, cash paymont3 based on family mizo,
crod:its to build homes and to ::;cock farms, and n;cemption from
ta,cos and stato grain procurement for five years.
The skein of considerations that have impelled the Rus-
sian authority os to encourage European migration eastward of
course include threads of economic interest as distinct from
tho problems of military security. Were thorn no Japan or
China, an overland migration toward the Pacific would prob-
ably have occurred anyway. The record suggests, however, that
national security interests have carried considerable weight in
the past and that the size and racial composition of the pope--
lation in the Soviet Far East remain matters of importance to
military as well as economic planners in the Kremlin. There
seems to be no groat worry that the Chinese will want to push
into the area to take up farm lands in this generation; but the
growing number of nonfarm Job opportunities in the Soviet Far
East would certainly attract many Chinese if the barriers against
population movement across the border were led down. The Rus-
sians presumably still recall the need to relocate suspect pop-
ulations during World War II, and they are making no move to let
the barriers down.
The balance of forces
The more sophistic?3ted fozsbodings of population expansion
in China do not envisage the mere swarming of Chinese masses
across frontiers. For all the "living space" arguments of
Japanese militarists in the 1930s, the seizure and development
of Manchuria resulted in only limited Japanese emigration. (Some
800,000 Japanese lived in Manchuria in 1940.) In the modern
world, militant industrial societies can extend their areas of
economic and political hegemony without expo.ting much manpower.
The presumed danger to the USSR is not so much from the inflow
of hungry Chinese as from Peiping's ever growing ability to as-
sort its political and economic interests as a world power.
It seems probable that Soviet thoughts now and then dwell
on this danger since so many Soviet formulations explicitly re-
late population size to shifts in the international balance.
"The main content of our epoch," declared Radio Moscow on
JFCP T
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November 1957, "is the 'transition from capitalism to so-
c:t.tlism. . . . Today more than a third of the population
o1 the world--over 950,000,000 people--have taken the road
of socialism." In addition, "over 700,000,000 people have
sliakon off the colonial yoke,' Moscow left unstated--but
probably not unconsidered--the numerical distribution within
the bloc; some two out of three persons in the bloc were
Chinese. By the end of the 1960s the demographic ixir]icated the projections proportion would be around 70 percent. It was
cli:fficult to say with much assurance what would happen in the
years beyond, but one could hardly exclude the possibility
that three out of every four persons in the bloc would be
Chinese sometime in the 1980s. China would add about three
Soviet Unions to its population by 1985. Striking as the
national totals were, one had further to consider that the
population disparity would be particularly zreat in the Tar
East--remote from the main centers of Soviet power, on the
very doorstep of China.
Considerations such as these, unarticulated perhaps but
nonetheless sensed, may lie behind the comments of the every-
day Russians who on occasion talk frankly to Americans. Robert
C N
C
th
r
. o , writing in The Reporter of 5 March 1959, recount,;
the incident of an American in Moscow explaining the attitude
of New Yorkers toward the influx of Puerto Ricans. "...sup-
pose planeload after planeload of Chinese were du
d i
mpe
n Mos-
cow." The American apparently made his point, for the response
was said to be, "Yes, yes, now I understand." And North quotes
an agronomist in Moscow, "...in China we Russians have a tiger
by the tail
W
'
.
e
ve got to hold on. There's no letting go."
Sentiments in this vein were also heard by a US Embassy
officer in Moscow who attended a lecture on "The Economy and
Culture of thE, Chinese People's Republic" in December 1959.
The lecturer alluded to the fact that China's population was
approaching 800,000,000. At this point, one of the Russians
in the audience muttared, "Yes, and soon they'll turn them
loose."
Cir?D T
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Pensive ruminations about the Chinese hordes seems to have
had just this danressing effect upon one of the functionarios in
trig Soviet Ministry of Culture. After imbibing perhaps a little
too much at a reception in December 7.959, he carne over to a US
Embassy officer and enlarged on the necessity of Soviet-American
friendship; as far as the friendship with China went, well, the
United States had once been a friend of China's too. The Amer-
ican observed that Sino-American conflict had been tempered some-
what by the facts of geography--the ocean between. "Yes," re-
plied
the Russian, "but we do not have this ocean. We have a
long land frontier instead."
25X1
There is not of course complete uniformity of attitude in
Russian circles toward the eventual danger posed by a China with
the industrial strength necessar to make its vast manpower re-
sources militarily effective.
Popular distrust of the Chinese is apparently reinforced
by reflections on the problem of surrvival in nuclear conflict.
25X1
Semi-
A
-d-Ocular statements by many Russians about China's
large popula-
,
~/
Lion were to the effect that China, not the USSR,
a nuclear war.
would survive
The humor is possibly tailored from cloth supplied by the
h
C
inese themselves, who have often professed to disdain the
destructive power of nuclear weapons. "The atom bomb," said
.Iao, "is a paper tiger...in the end the bomb will not destroy
the people. The people will destroy the bomb."
25X1
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It was possibly to this po3'ion that Tito
was referring when he spoke to 50,000 people at Labin in
795x:
It is interesting that the Chinese leaders also
assail us because of our foreign policy, the
policy of coexistence of states and peoples with
different social systems...they are bothered by
our peaceful policy, our policy of peace, our pol-
icy of coexistence. But difficulties in building
socialism are not solved by war, even if a country
has 600,000,000 inhabitants as some of their people
like to point out--in a war still about 300,000,000
Chinese would survive.
Cr.
The indictment of Tito's and the misgivings voiced or in-
timated by some Russians may have run also through the private
though?cs of the top Soviet leaders; they have not admitted to
them publicly. In December 1955, Khrushchev took occasion in
Rangoon to scorn the warnings of one "bourgeois leader" who
compared China's 600,000,000 people to Russia's 200,000,000
and suggested that aid to China would build up an eventual
menace to the USSR. Khrushchev disdained the warning as ten- Q_i
dentious, "not prompted by good intentions."
When interviewed by prominent Americans a few years later,
the Soviet leader was equally vehement in rejecting the idea
of a Chinese population threat. To Eric Johnston in 1958,
Khrushchev averred, "China is a great country. By the year
2000 it may have a billion people, but Communist states never
think of going to war with each other...there is no fear of
China." Walter Lippman the same year and Averell Harriman the
following year received similar responses. To Harriman, how-
ever, the Soviet leader added some comments that may have re-
flected inner uncertainties. The Chinese people, he said, pre-
sented a special and delicate situation since they had their
own way of looking at problems, and the Soviet Union did not
want to tell them how to run their own country.
(?
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