Reds Have Troubles, Too

Most of the headlines these days (as well as the facts) emphasize the Western disarray as bargaining begins at Geneva. But the big Communist powers, outwardly cocky as they seem, are having major trouble of their own.

Communist China faces mass starvation. Bad weather and worse organization had cut the country's agricultural production for the third successive year. The Reds have pledged half a billion dollars worth of their needed foreign exchange to buy grain from Canada and Australia. Millions of Chinese are reportedly suffering from beriberi, and though Communist functionaries have been ruthlessly willing to ignore civilian wants to concentrate on industrialization, reluctant economic planners have now lowered 1961's investment rate and even frozen some scheduled industrial construction until Red China's desperate agricultural crisis can be finally reckoned with.

Breakdown in the Cadres. On a stopover in Hong Kong, Columnist Joseph Alsop, who rarely finds much to encourage him, listened to the latest stories from refugees trickling out of Red China and detected signs of "a breakdown of the iron, super-Spartan discipline which the Chinese Communists enforced with such astonishing success during their first twelve years in power." The dedication and austerity of the party cadres were once the party's pride, and officials boasted that the Communists had at last freed China from the ancient practice of "squeeze" and bribery. Under the pressure of famine, Alsop concludes, the vaunted discipline is cracking. Cadres are feeding themselves while their subordinates starve. The result is a crisis in public morale. Reports Alsop: "In 1959, not one [refugee] charged any dishonesty to the Communist cadres. [They] were downright astonished by the suggestion that the cadres might use their authority to supplement thair rations illegally. 'They live as we live ..." This time, in sharp contrast, not a single refugee, whether from town or country, failed to charge the cadres with habitual pilfering." Communist cadres were the only fat Chinese nowadays, several Hong Kong refugees told him bitterly.

"The public discipline, which has also been one of the most publicized achievements of the Chinese regime, is also breaking down. Beggars, supposed to have been eliminated long since, have reappeared in many Chinese cities, are now so bold that they often enter the few permitted restaurants to bully the diners. Small food riots have become fairly common, and so have raids by hungry villagers on the carefully locked-up communal grain stores. The police-enforced compliant silence of the people is being broken, too. Bitter rhymes and slogans mocking the Communists are now quite often reported by refugees." Concluded Columnist Alsop: "The breakdown of discipline must mean that the conditions are beginning to exist in which a small spark can light a gigantic fire."

U.S. intelligence sources find the evidence still fragmentary, but agree that the Chinese Communists' predicament is "damn serious."

Death by Shooting. Russia's problems are less serious but very real. Here also, crops were poor. The Soviet Union, which in 1960 exported 100 million bushels of grain to Eastern Europe, is now itself short of food. The spring planting lagged 2,000,000 acres behind last year, and meat production was down 13% in spite of Khrushchev's feverish speeches and Draconic firings early in the spring. In fact, the U.S.'s 21 million farm population in 1960 grows as much food as some 500 million Chinese, and 60% more than no million Russians.

The Russians, too, seemed to have a problem of discipline. To counter widespread thievery from state farms and other state-owned operations, the government reinstated the death penalty for counterfeiting and large-scale embezzlement of state property, including falsification of production figures, which Khrushchev has complained of loudly in recent months. Another law provided heavier penalties for idleness and illegal private-enterprising.

Russia also was having acute satellite trouble in Albania, the tiny backward outpost in the Adriatic that has repudiated Soviet leadership as "revisionist" and sided with the tough Red Chinese. Last week the outside world learned that Albania's Communist leaders executed two of their own Foreign Office officials as spies--for Russia.

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