Rice Up, Prices Down

The Chinese lost Hengyang (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS), but last week they had better news than a military victory. For a bumper rice crop--in some provinces the best in 40 years--China's peasants gave thanks to Lao Tien Yieh, Old Father Heaven.

In Szechwan alone the grain yield would be at least 250,000,000 piculs (600,000,000 bushels), or 40 to 50% above last year. Kansu, Honan, and Shensi had already harvested their biggest wheat crops in 15 years. Yunnan, too, expected a bumper crop. In the great metropolitan collection depots the Government's rat-proof bins bulged with grain piled in wicker baskets twice as high as a man's head. River junks and sampans had to be used for emergency grain storage.

The big crop might prove the salvation of Free China. The price of rice, the Nation's staff of life, fell sharply. Inflation was set back. Other prices, though still 440 times as high as in the far-back days of peace, also fell.

Just as important: this crop would see China through the next year. Long before then, China hoped, the blockade would be broken.

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