They Have Troubles Too

At Geneva, Red China's poker-faced Premier Chou En-lai allowed Communist newsmen to photograph him at his assured ease. The pictures were released to Western newsmen, who were not allowed to talk to Chou. It all made a prettied-up picture, to go with the whole confident facade of advancing and unstoppable Communism in Asia.

In the Communist China press, the picture was prettied up too, but still ugly spots showed through. Issues of Communist local papers reaching Hong Kong report these details of Communist unrest in recent months:

P: The government created special courts and special prosecutors in the showcase Manchurian industrial centers of Shenyang (Mukden) and Anshan, and along the country's principal railways, to detect and punish "counterrevolutionary sabotage," espionage and willful inefficiency (Peking People's Daily, March 30).

P: "The greater part of the peasant masses" still resists Communism (same paper, April 28)

P: Workers staged mass anti-government demonstrations in the streets of Hankow. Sixteen pushcart coolies accused of "inciting them to disturb general peace and security" were sentenced to death at a public trial (Yangtze Daily, March 3).

P: Six thousand peasants of Kwangsi province revolted and fought Communist troops for a full week after Red guards shot peasant leaders for resisting a local administrative order (Kwangsi Daily, Oct. 26).

P: Some 70 hungry peasants surrounded the district government office in Hsiangtang, Hunan, and tried to kidnap Communist officials (New Hunan Daily, April 2).

P: Two peasants in Anhui province were arrested for setting fire to 4,000 acres of forest, destroying 120,000 saplings (Shanghai Liberation Daily, Feb. 25). In the same paper: 435,000 trees on 750 acres of forest in five counties of Fukien destroyed by arson; 280 cases of forest arson being investigated.

P: A reactionary armed force [guerillas] some 140,000 or 150,000 strong, apparently well-trained and well-organized." was operating in the hilly East River area of Kwantung province (East Kwantung Peasant Daily, Feb. 25).

P: "More than 40" members of the anti-Red "Youth Vanguard Society" in southern Kwantung and Hunan provinces were arrested and accused of operating in at least six cities (Peking People's Daily, April 28).

P: In five localities of Hunan, dissident peasants and militiamen together manufactured illegal arms and attempted to whip up "the wavering sentiments of the masses" for abortive revolts (Peking People's Daily, April).

P: Two hundred thousand anti-Communist guerrillas were killed in recent months in southwest China (Yuennan provincial administrative council report, 1954).

The Nationalist War Ministry on Formosa reported that the mutilated bodies of 52 men & women, all lashed with wire to boards, had been pulled from the sea off the China Coast in the past week.

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