Chairman Mao's babies

Murray Sayle Thts Peking Year's harvest, as far as one can „,, Judge on a long train journey, looks '"°d. Which is just as well: according to ne 1982 census tally, just released, China 0w has a population of 1,008,175,288, ex- elucling Hong Kong and Taiwan, of whom Per cent are Han Chinese, the familiar, `"013stick-wielding kind, bearers of the World's oldest, richest continuously existing It is not easy for us residents of thinly- ,1)nlated, Johhny-come-lately islands to he these figures in. A quarter of the ctruntall race are Han Chinese: this single aP, with a common script and culture 41.1„13 Closely related languages, are more ,unterous than all the Russians, Americans gond, Europeans put together, showing how c°sY a comparative handful of paper tigers c411k. C. Literacy, by the standards of Old 'Ina, or Europe a century ago, is quite ti_ncl, but there are still 253 million adult thinnese who cannot read, or write more an their names. ,A. nd, despite China's recent test o.f .a °!Id-fuel, submarine-launched ballistic uhi,issile, a country with 800 million farmers n° food surplus still relies on wooden -1Igns muscledrawn by animal and human s, for basic cultivation. A new road ," under construction, to take Japanese- p"lacle tourist buses more comfortably from usepkkillg UP to the Great Wall: the road is be- tillVnit by men and women bobbing along ,:"Ier baskets of earth, and donkeys draw- sa"8 carts loaded with stones — much the me Methods the ancestors of both species sosecl to build the Wall in the first place some 2200 years ago. ah,e11, we might think, time marches on, a"Li there always were a lot of Chinese, nYway. True, but this conceals the real port of the new population figures. When 0:11Peror Chin Shi-huang (the one who megalomaniac the burning of the books, a chInlornaniac tyrant and a great hero of Vv,a,l,rnnan Mao's) ordered a start on the et`71 around 200 B.C. the population. of hand Ina was approaching 20 million. .Eight almost years later, under the Tang, it had y;*st doubled. It took another thousand air,S to get to 60 million, with the Ming. es,,,„,"! Pace then started to speed . up, clallY under the Ching, the last Chinese tio'astY, regarded by communists, na. - }icalists and even Chinese gangsters in

,Kong as bad guys. China's popula-

b y nh n 1, 100 million in 1685 AD, 200 million oi "64 and 400 million by 1868. A century DIY War famine, foreign interference and ste&-smoking kept the figures fairly til""X, and 500 million was not attained un- 948, just before the defeat of

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the establishment of the communist regime under Mao Tse-tung, or 'Mouse Tongue' as US General Joe Stilwell used to call him.

Since then, in 33 years, China's popula- tion has doubled again, the fastest sustain- ed growth in her or anyone else's history. At first, this surge might seem to reflect credit on the communist regime, and in some ways it should. Early death, which kept China's population in bounds in the past, has been all but eliminated, and life expectancy, around 45 years when Mao assumed the purple, is now 70 or so for both sexes, among the longest anywhere in the world. The trains run on time, the canals have been cleaned out, and the coun- try is so big that a China-wide famine is now probably impossible.

Over-eating, the undertakers' ally in the West, is equally unlikely. Only a tenth of China is cultivable, the rest desert and mountain wastelands. Per head, this is half the land available to Indians, one-ninth the share of Americans. Primitive farming pro- vides just enough for Chinese to live on, about 1,800 calories a day, very fairly distributed. The result is that one-quarter of the human race is on a perpetual diet, and the only fat people you see in China are foreign tourists. Chinese travel on foot, or by bicycle, both excellent forms of exercise. Going for walks in cars, in the Western fashion, is only possible for high party functionaries, and they are far too busy. Except in areas set apart for foreigners, there is nothing you could call a bar, tavern or nightclub in China. Even heavy smoking is far beyond the means of the ordinary man, or woman. The only places in the West as healthy' as the People's Republic are remote farming communities, logging camps and well-run prisons. Some increase, therefore, was to be ex- pected in China's population, once the wars of intervention and ideology were over, but the explosion that has taken place is altogether another matter. Totalitarian revolutionary regimes here assume a heavier responsibility than more traditional ones,

`We'd like to adopt a female Sloan Ranger.'

claiming both that they understand perfect- ly what is best for their subjects, and unlimited power to interfere in people's lives to achieve the desired results. Whatever their intentions may have been, China's communist rulers have in fact con- trived to cut in half the amount of arable land available to each Chinese farmer, choke the schools with children (hence the army of illiterates) and condemn this im- mense, gifted mass of humanity to coolie work or worse for generations, simply to find something for all those redundant hands to do.

To take absolute power over what was already the most populous nation on earth and then allow, or encourage, the population to double in 30 years is a man- made calamity — probably, considering the numbers involved, the greatest of our times. The census figures, although ex- pected, amount to hearing the worst, and Chinese opinion (as far as I have been able to gauge it, visiting various parts of the country) is in no doubt about where the blame should fall. China's current popula- tion explosion can hardly be the work of long-dead emperors, callous imperialists or the CIA. The principal guilty parties are Chairman Mao, falling every day a little further from the pedestal he once claimed, and Chiang Ching, his last wife, serving the life sentence she may, for all we know, have already completed.

It is, by now, fairly common knowledge that the Mao family dictatorship was one of the worst regimes that even China has had to endure, but the figures which enable us to quantify the extent of the Chairman's (and/or his lady's) misrule have only recently started to come to light. At the show trial of Mrs Mao and her co- conspirators of the celebrated 'Gang of Four' it was stated that between 700,000 and one million people, almost all of them good, card-carrying communists, died in labour camps or prisons during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. An even more impressive figure, the number who were born, can be deduced from a recent book on China's population by Liu Zheng, director of the Research Institute of Demography in Peking, and other scholars.

It is, incidentally, a sign of how far China has already come from the dark night of the Maos that such a book of statistics, free of Marxist abracadabra and ritualistic invoca- tions of the genius of the Great Helmsman, and so disturbing that it is almost certainly honest, can now be published in China and even be made available to foreigners. Even if we had time, there is no need to do our own independent head-count of Chinese: the ring of truth sounds on every page.

Elements in the Chinese leadership, notably the more realistic school of bureaucrats represented by the disgraced, deceased and now rehabilitated former head of state, Liu Shao-chi and his suc- cessor, current bossman Deng Shao-ping were, we learn, always worried that uncon- trolled population growth in China might

undo all their efforts at national renewal. Their fears seemed justified when, with peace restored and prospective fathers home from the wars, China's birthrate hit 37 per thousand population in 1950, 1951 and 1952, the death rate fell sharply, and half-hearted attempts were made to interest people in family planning. But, instead of slowing, the birth rate accelerated, and bet- ween 1954 and 1957 China put on 58.5 million people. This period, it will be recall- ed, corresponds to the Chairman's Hun- dred Flowers and Great Leap Forward catastrophes, when Mao was arguing that China (then without nuclear weapons) could develop its economy by will-power, and win nuclear wars by simply having more dazed survivors still on deck when the fallout finally cleared.

The first post-war baby boom was bad enough, but the second, covering 1963- 73, was horrendous. In the first three of those hectic years the birthrate reached 40 per thousand per year, among the highest ever recorded in a human population, while the death-rate fell to 7.3 per thousand. This was the period when the Great Cultural Revolution was gathering steam, under the shrill directives of Madame Mao. Her next step in the campaign to 'learn from the masses' was to close down all China's universities for four years, a move which cost China a million never-taught engineers, doctors and, worst of all, teachers. In 1966 the last family planning clinics were closed. The result is there are now 550 million Chinese under the age of 21, just about to enter their child-producing years, and there are simply not enough schools, houses, jobs or arable acres in sight to receive them, let alone their offspring. In 1971, when China was beginning the long recovery from its collective lunacy, a 'two children per fami- ly' campaign was hastily inserted among those criticising Confucius, Beethoven, An- tonioni and other enemies of the people. But even at this rate (if achieved) China would have a population of 1.3 billion by the year 2000 and 1.5 billion by 2050. So now, against all Chinese tradition, 'one child per family' is being vigorously urged. To estimate its chances of success, we need to look at the mechanism which generated the two wild population surges of the Mao years. Chinese farmers are far too hard-headed simply to go forth and multip- ly at the command of the Chairman, or anyone else. In fact, apart from getting rid of the landlords (some three million were murdered in the years just after the revolu- tion, not nearly enough to affect the population) communism has made surpris- ingly few changes in the immemorial struc- ture of Chinese rural villages, where 800 million people live. As often as not, the village clans, or extended families, all with the same surname, have been renamed 'pro- duction teams' and the village itself becomes a 'production brigade' or 'com- mune', ready, if close enough to a comfor- table hotel, to be shown to innocent foreign visitors. But decisions are still made collec- tively, by folk wisdom, and the real authori- ty of Peking stops, as ever, at the village gate. So, while Chinese culture is family- oriented and child-loving, the farmers had all those children for what seemed to them sound practical reasons. When the central and local governments looked stable, they restricted their families to replacing the parents. When the government, seen from the village, seemed to have gone mad, or broken down altogether, they took out the insurance policy which has made China the world's longest-lived civilisation. The authors of China's Population estimate that supporting a child in the Chinese countryside to the age of 16, when he or she can join the labour force, costs all-in the equivalent of £500. Even so, bringing up those born since 1949 has absorb- ed half of China's disposable funds. But, from the viewpoint of a parent, no cheaper way of ensuring support in retirement, a de- cent burial and continuation of the family name could be imagined, as productivity and therefore wages have increased little over the years. The only way to increase family income was to breed more wage- earners, all guaranteed a ration of food by the 'fair shares' policies of the regime. The population explosion was therefore based on what seemed at the time the soundest of economic motives, while Chairman Mao appeared to think, as far as one can follow his clotted reasoning, that big families equalled a prosperous and powerful future for China. Even if the 'one child per family' cam- paign succeeds, within reason, China's population will still peak at an unimaginable 1.2 billion. But will it? The means are certainly widely available, with abortion on demand, diaphragms and intra- uterine devices illustrated in graphic anatomical detail on posters in every major population centre, and vasectomies and tubal ligations, complete with certificates conveying the thanks of a grateful nation, are to be had for the snipping. (Putting a quarter-billion Chinese ladies on the Pill is beyond China's and probably the world's pharmaceutical resources.) The former positive economic in- ducements to have children have now been replaced by drastic. negatives. Regions,

'Does that little painter chap come in here any more?'

The Spectator 27 November 17' towns and cities are now expected to Ohl! a reproduction plan, as well as a product° programme, to Peking. Shensi Pr°vIiirces for instance, has just proposed a fine of 0 for having a second or subsequent chlic1,1116 grain ration for plural children until ageing (meaning short commons for the exts,..."T1 mini-family), educational priority fotr.":1e children (which, given the state 01 schools, means a sentence of illiteracy the rest), and no additional housing sPac for those with more than one child. This nasty basket of disincentives reaTi, troduces, we might notice, radical inetiu,s, ty into Chinese life, in a way the illeanej` emperors of old would have aPPt°11 And, in the cities at least, it so far scans,. be getting results. Some 20 million CdOW; already have their one child, and hale tificate specifying the means they "h"ese adopted to avoid having any more; ofd families, the one child dolled up like ,cjlad Fauntleroy or Shirley Temple in her years, proudly hoisted on Dad,tieYse shoulder, could be seen in every Chin city I visited.

But the strength, and weakness, of china Li lies as ever in the countryside, and here the authorities are doing their best to reast'el away the farmers' suspicions, in Pond. campaigns, radio talks, village ',„—ass speakers harangues, compulsorY it rallies and every other means at single disposal. dis.posal. The danger of losing 3 5115 .and thus risking a childless old agroi negligible with China's vvell-organisti, health care, the argument runs (pt °,1/,,31) fairly enough). A girl can carry the l'bi; blood line as well as a boy, if gc/th' Chinese custom, the name, and t0 hold otherwise is to be guilty Of feudalistic thinking'. Even the dau-,,-1„11 Cpr.hoisnpeescet ,sup4Oporyteinagrs twoon,agoedf every ar■los parents craft his or her own half-child will be talcerlf"ille dfuosut rr o4 f, the authorities say, by the success 01 ill. y ,mtoecdheur nuilsuagt iyona and (doeffeangcrei)c.ultur,e,, sup But suppose, just suppose they clot' •;terl ceed? This possibility is not, of course,„'; I to. be hinted at in China. But it exPlai",if' think, the curious ambivalence of sent leadership towards the rrienildiol Mao, himself the author of so many u'ri''d flops (`three years of hardship n°w and' thousand years of communist haPP'',,rd. was. the slogan of the Great Leap forwa'ret China certainly got the first half, and ,11):1110 Madame Mao, the former Shafigl'; coy actress Chiang Ching as was, and h.e: nn leagues in the 'Gang of Four', as man` b. lamed for most if not all of China's:iv 0 ills. Her husband of 36 years was deg.:. C'O'fir, Lenin used to say, well to the left but faded from view, along witli,ifred, mon sense, and even Lenin hintself 114-t Marx and the rest of China's one'eesel'' the pre pantheon. Every action of the Vtori tC.uhr.emiessse leadership confirms that theY.5 VC' this view of the Chairman, and Yet 112:014 still displayed in Tien an Mill in Peking, and the new constitution 0

Communist Party of China, adopted in September this year, `takes Marxism- Leninism and Mao Tse-tung thought as its guide to action'. Which of Mao's many thoughts is still operative?

Mentioning the `Gang of Four', lo- quacious young people in Shanghai and Peking (even more so after dark) often hold up an open hand, the thumb clearly representing Madame Mao's husband. The Little Red Book has disappeared as if it never existed, and the 700 million copies printed must have gone into the flames, in the ancient Chinese manner. The Mao badge once sported by every well-dressed Chinese has become an under-the-counter collector's item. I paid two yuan, the equivalent of 60 pence, for mine and, wear- ing it as an experiment, got only laughter.

The museum in Changsha, where Mao attended teachers' college, has been closed and turned into a warehouse. The Mao mausoleum opposite the Forbidden City in Peking is still there, but it seems to be perpetually closed, and there are persistent rumours that the Chairman is not, as it were, keeping well, and has been removed for running repairs. Certainly the worshipp- ing crowds, shuffling two by two past the mummy in its crystal sarcophagus, are just a fading memory, as are the six appalling revolutionary model operas staged to death by Madame Mao (the charge that she was trying to convert the Chinese army, sole guarantor of the nation's integrity, into an all singing and dancing show was one of the heaviest levelled against her, and the army stepped in to depose her on her husband's death).

Why not, then, acknowledge that Mao himself was another enemy of the people, and consign him to oblivion? One day, perhaps, but not yet. Like Napoleon and Stalin, Mao is going to remain an enigmatic, divisive figure, patriot and tyrant, half genius and half fool, a necessary disaster thankfully past. For the present leadership to over-emphasise Mao's blunders, or to admit that he failed the elementary Confucian test of suitability to rule — namely keeping his own household in order — would be to warn that they, too, are fallible human beings, not agents of history or the incarnate will of the pro- letariat. And, as they grapple with the mess the Maos left behind, it is important that the Chinese people, once again, believe that their leaders know what they are doing.

For the sake of a notable quarter of humanity, let's hope they do.