Word: communes
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...exactly as he would an enemy's main line of resistance: by ordering forward a human wave to storm and overwhelm it. He conceded that the farms desperately needed chemical fertilizer, machines of all sorts and skilled labor. His solution: let the farmers do it themselves through the commune system...
...works so hard that the commune...
Kanpu's Whistles. The instruments Li Fu-chun used to shape the formless multitude were the kanpus, or cadres, who carry out Peking's policies at all levels of society. They hustled China's peasant millions into people's communes, complete with mess halls, barracks, and the loss of identity common to military life. Routed from bed at dawn, the peasants lined up for roll call and marched off under red banners to the mist-hung fields. At the sound of the kanpu's whistle, they raced to their tasks of plowing, weeding or reaping...
Bricks for Jade. On the eve of the introduction of the commune system, Li Fu-chun warned that the economy was getting lopsided. Now, he said, there should be concentration on the farm problem. He was strongly supported by his fellow economists. One of them, hiding behind a pseudonym, wrote ominously: "We may gain heavy industry only to lose Man; we may even lose Man without gaining heavy industry...
Other economic quarrels reflect deeper ideological differences, though to many Westerners they may sound far less "real." Khrushchev told visiting Senator Hubert Humphrey that the Chinese-cherished farming communes were "oldfashioned and reactionary." Not until after December 1958, when the Chinese "modified" the commune system, did the Russians agree to help the Reds build 78 new industrial projects. Today, Red China owes Russia more than $300 million on last year's trade pact alone, and depends on Moscow for half its oil, machine parts and heavy industrial equipment...