Monday, Nov. 17, 1952
Love, Love, Love
A special train from Moscow rolled into the Peking railroad station one afternoon last week and stopped before a greeting committee of 1,500-odd bureaucrats. Out stepped 34 Russian ballerinas, composers and scientists and the 260-member Soviet Army Red Flag Song & Dance Ensemble. Forward rushed 150 Chinese Young Pioneers with bouquets. The two sides embraced and, led by 70 gaily clad drum dancers, marched to a large square. There, according to Radio Peking, a waiting crowd rumbled "thunderous, spontaneous cheers of 'Stalin!' and 'Mao Tse-tung!'" while speakers extolled "the most devoted friends of the Chinese people, sent by the great Generalissimo Stalin." The Chinese Communists proclaimed "Sino-Soviet Friendship Month."
Fanned Friendship. Perhaps never in history had friendship between two nations been so determinedly fanned. In Peking, it was love, love, love on a timetable, production-line basis. Twenty-four official slogans proclaimed: "Warm Thanks for Selfless Aid to China's Construction by Generalissimo Stalin," "Fighters of the People's Liberation Army Study Hard Advanced Soviet Military Science," "Salute Soviet Experts Who Have Tirelessly Helped in China's Construction." The others acclaimed Soviet women, youth, animal breeders, cooperative workers, farmers.
The printing presses rumbled their accompaniment. From Vice Minister of Health Fu Lien-chang came a long eulogy of Soviet medicine; from Feminist Teng Yingchao (wife of Premier Chou Enlai), a brochure extolling Soviet standards in marriage and personal relations.
Expert Help. Most revealing of the tributes was a speech by China's No. 2 labor boss, Lui Ning-i, listing some--doubtless not all--of the Chinese projects on which Russian experts have been working: the Peking-Hankow, Canton-Hankow, Chengtu-Chungking and Tienshui-Lanchow railways; the Huai River conservation plan (employing some 5,000,000 workers, many of them slave laborers); the Chinkiang water detention basin, the new Tangku harbor in Tientsin. According to best estimates, there are 60,000 Russians "helping out" in China.
Behind all the love, love, love stands the well-organized, well-financed Sino-Soviet Friendship Association, which in two years has grown from 3,000,000 members to 39 million, organized into 120,000 branches. (Every soldier and government employee must join.) The association promotes Russia in a big way, with a big budget: last year it sponsored 74 periodicals, 580 books and pamphlets, 200 film projection teams, 2,500 lantern-slide groups, and 20,000 evening classes in the Russian language.
None of this was calculated to give aid and comfort to those who still think that Mao Tse-tung is bound to become another Tito.
China's people could ponder another evidence of Big Brother's presence last week. All over the land little boxes were going up in the streets. They are called Denunciation Boxes. Chinese were invited to fill them with unsigned notes that could send neighbors to death or slave labor camps.
The boxes are the work of China's Beria, Lo Jui-ching, boss of the Peking equivalent of the MVD. Assisting Lo in the work is a resident corps of well-paid Russian "specialists."
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