2 Soviet Industries

A few days northwest of Pao An, on my way to the front, I stopped to visit Wu Ch'i Chen, a soviet "industrial center"of Shensi. Wu Ch'i Chen was remarkable, not for any achievements in industrial science of which Detroit or Manchester need take note, but because it was there at all.

For hundreds of miles around there was only semipastoral country, the people lived in cave houses exactly as their ancestors did millenniums ago, many of the farmers still wore queues braided around their heads, and the horse, the ass, and the camel were the latest thing in communications. Rape oil was used for lighting here, candles were a luxury, electricity was unknown, and foreigners were as rare as Eskimos in Africa.

In this medieval world it was astonishing suddenly to come upon soviet factories, and find machines turning, and a colony of workers busily producing the goods and tools of a Red China.

In Kiangsi the Communists had, despite the lack of a seaport and the handicap of an enemy blockade which cut them off from contact with any big modern industrial base, built up several prosperous industries. They operated China's richest tungsten mines, for example, annually turning out over one million pounds of this precious ore——secretly selling it to General Ch'en Chi-t'ang's Kwangtung tungsten monopoly. In the central soviet printing plant at Kian with its eight hundred workers, many books, magazines, and a "national"paper——the Red China Daily News—— were published..

In Kiangsi also were weaving plants, textile mills and machine shops. Small industries produced sufficient manufactured goods to supply their simple needs. The Reds claimed to have had a "foreign export trade"of over $12, 000, 000 in 1933, most of which was carried on through adventurous southern merchants, who made extraordinary profits by running the Kuomintang blockade. The bulk of manufacturing, however, was by handicraft and home industry, the products of which were sold through production cooperatives.

According to Mao Tse-tung, in September, 1933, the soviets had 1, 423 "production and distribution"cooperatives in Kiangsi, all owned and run by the people.^[*] Testimony by League of Nations investigators left little doubt that the Reds were succeeding with this type of collective enterprise——even while they were still fighting for their existence. The Kuomintang was attempting to copy the Red system in parts of the South, but results thus far suggested that it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to operate such cooperatives under a strictly laissez-faire capitalism.

But in the Northwest I had not expected to find any industry at all. Much greater handicaps faced the Reds here than in the South, for even a small machine industry was almost entirely absent before the soviets were set up. In the whole Northwest, in Shensi, Kansu, Chinghai, Ninghsia and Suiyuan, provinces in area nearly the size of all Europe excluding Russia, the combined machine-industry investment certainly must have been far less than the plant of one big assembly branch of, for instance, the Ford Motor Company.

Sian and Lanchow had a few factories, but for the most part were dependent upon industrial centers farther east. Any major development of the tremendous industrial possibilities of the Northwest could take place only by borrowing technique and machinery from the outside. And if this were true in Sian and Lanchow, the two great cities of the region, the difficulties which confronted the Reds, occupying the even more backward areas of Kansu, Shensi, and Ninghsia, were manifest.

The blockade cut off the Soviet Government from imports of machinery, and from "imports"of technicians. Of the latter, however, the Reds said their supply was ample. Machinery and raw materials were more serious problems. Battles were fought by the Red Army just to get a few lathes, weaving machines, engines, or a little scrap iron. Nearly everything they had in the category of machinery while I was there had been "captured."During their expedition to Shansi province in 1936, for example, they seized machines, tools, and raw materials, which were carried by mule all the way across the mountains of Shensi, to their fantastic cliff-dwelling factories.

Soviet industries, when I visited Red China, were all handicraft; there was no electric power. They included clothing, uniform, shoe, and paper factories at Pao An and Holienwan (Kansu), rug factories at Tingpien (on the Great Wall), mines at Yung P'ing which produced the cheapest coal^[*] in China, and woolen and cotton-spinning factories in seven hsien——all of which had plans to produce enough goods to stock the 400 cooperatives in Red Shensi and Kansu. The aim of this "industrial program, "according to Mao Tse-min, brother of Mao Tse-tung and Commissioner of People's Economy, was to make Red China "economically self-sufficient"——strong enough to survive despite the Kuomintang blockade if Nanking refused to accept the Communists' offers for a united front and a cessation of civil war.

The most important soviet state enterprises were the salt-refining plants at Yen Ch'ih, the salt lakes on the Ninghsia border, along the Great Wall, and the oil wells at Yung P'ing and Yen Ch'ang, which produced gasoline, paraffin, and vaseline, wax, candles, and other by-products on a very small scale. Salt deposits at Yen Ch'ih were the finest in China and yielded beautiful rock-crystal salt in large quantities. Consequently salt was cheaper and more plentiful in the soviet districts than in Kuomintang China, where it was a principal source of government income. After the capture of Yen Ch'ih the Reds won the sympathy of the Mongols north of the Wall by agreeing to turn over part of the production to them, revoking the Kuomintang's practice of monopolizing the entire output.

North Shensi's oil wells were the only ones in China, and their output had formerly been sold to an American company which had leases on other reserves in the district. After they had seized Yung P'ing the Reds sank two new wells, and claimed increased production, by about 40 per cent over any previous period, when Yung P'ing and Yen Ch'ang were in "non-bandit"hands. This included increases of "2, 000 catties of petrol, 25, 000 catties of first-class oil, and 13, 500 catties of second-class oil"during a three-month period reported upon. (A few barrels at best.)^[**]

Efforts were being made to develop cotton growing in areas cleared of poppies, and the Reds had established a spinning school at An Ting, with a hundred women students. The workers were given three hours' general education daily and five hours' instruction in spinning and weaving. Upon completion of their course, after three months, students were sent to various districts to open handicraft textile factories. "It is expected that in two years north Shensi will be able to produce its entire supply of cloth."^[‡]

But Wu Ch'i Chen had the largest "concentration"of factory workers in the Red districts, and was important also as the location of the Reds' main arsenal. It commanded an important trade route leading to Kansu, and the ruins of two ancient forts nearby testified to its former strategic importance. The town was built high up on the steep clay banks of a rapid stream, and was made up half of yang-fang, or "foreign houses"——as the Shensi natives still called anything with four sides and a roof——and half of yao-fang, or cave dwellings.

I arrived late at night and I was very tired. The head of the supply commissariat for the front armies had received word of my coming, and he rode out to meet me. He "put me up"at a workers' Lenin Club——an earthen-floored yao-fang with clean whitewashed walls strung with festoons of colored paper chains encircling a portrait of the immortal Ilyitch.

Hot water, clean towels——stamped with slogans of Chiang Kai-shek's New Life movement！——and soap soon appeared. They were followed by an ample dinner, with good baked bread. I began to feel better. I unrolled my bedding on the table-tennis court and lighted a cigarette. But man is a difficult animal to satisfy. All this luxury and attention only made me yearn for my favorite beverage.

And then, of all things, this commissar suddenly produced, from heaven knows where, some rich brown coffee and sugar！Wu Ch'i Chen had won my heart.

"Products of our five-year plan！"the commissar laughed.

"Products of your confiscation department, you mean, "I amended.

^[*]Mao Tse-tung, Red China ……, p. 26.

^[*]The price quoted in the Red districts was 800 catties——about half a ton——for $1 silver. See Mao Tse-min, "Economic Construction in the Kansu and Shensi Soviet Districts, "Tou Tsung[Struggle] (Pao An, Shensi), April 24, 1936.

^[**]Ibid.

^[‡]Ibid.