Word: redness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Fagade & Reality. Like the other guests of honor who had flocked into Peking from 87 countries, Nikita Khrushchev could scarcely fail to be impressed by Peking's display of might and by the fireworks, the glittering banquets and the gleaming new buildings that Red China's masters had conjured up to mark their tenth year in power. But behind the gala façade lay a grim reality: the world's biggest and brashest Communist state was stumbling into the most critical year of its existence. Says a Western diplomat stationed in Peking: "The place...
...Today Red China's economy gasps and shudders like an abused donkey engine. The "great leap forward" that was to make China a major industrial power in the twinkling of an eye has instead produced something close to chaos. In the ant-heap rural communes that were to convert 500 million peasants into depersonalized, multi-purpose labor units, there is apathy and despair...
During Liu's absence in Russia, where he was both bored and homesick, Mao and eleven other comrades founded the Chinese Communist Party. On his return from Russia Liu promptly joined, and for the next 20 years he worked as a Red labor organizer-a job that occasionally landed him in prison. In 1934, when Mao led the Red army in its famed, 6,000-mile Long March from southern Kiangsi to the caves of Yenan in northern China, Organizer Liu went underground, remained behind as a Communist agent in Kuomintang territory...
Incredibly, among Red China's teeming millions-a manpower shortage developed. Stevedores were shifted from the ports to the paddies, and unloaded ships piled up in the harbors. Railroad workers were rushed to the docks, and train schedules became chaotic. Office workers went to the farms, and commerce staggered. Instead of performing military duties, soldiers were put to work digging ditches and raising pigs. Even the wives and children of army officers and enlisted men hoed cabbages and spread fertilizer...
Clearest symptom of the chaos was the sudden and steep decline in China's exports. In 1958 Peking had begun to invade the markets of Southeast Asia with a flood of inexpensive bicycles, textiles, rice. By underselling Japan, Red China increased its exports to Singapore and Malaya by 23%, nearly doubled its trade with Thailand and Ceylon. But by this spring Red China was unable to fill even longstanding orders. At the annual trade fair in Canton last May, export sales were down 56% from the previous year...