Famine on the Way?

Dry dust swirled across China's great plains under cloudless skies. Red China was facing a major drought in its chief food-producing areas.

From May to July (TIME, May 13 et seq.) the Chinese had suffered what the Reds called "the greatest floods in recorded history." Then the rains stopped. Unless the rains came soon, admitted the Reds, in February there would be famine.

The Communists have mobilized all their resources of manpower. In Anhwei, where no rain has fallen for two months, 9,000,000 peasants, led by 3,000 Red cadres, dug emergency canals, lugged water on their backs to sprinkle 5,000,000 parched acres. In Honan, more than a million formed bucket brigades to bring water from the rivers to fields sometimes ten miles away. In Hunan, China's "rice bowl," 600,000 persons labored around the clock. In Shantung, all military units suspended drill and moved to the drought front. Thousands of schoolhouses were shut down, and in Honan alone, 800,000 students and teachers were turned into the fields.

In Hong Kong, Canada's Trade Commissioner Max Forsyth Smith saw an opportunity to unload some of Canada's surplus wheat. Canada has not recognized Mao Tse-tung, and has no wish to offend the U.S. by doing so. But many Canadians blame the U.S.'s "dumping" of surplus wheat for Canada's own mountainous surplus. At week's end, with the approval of the government in Ottawa, Forsyth Smith prepared to go to Peking to see how much hard-pressed Mao Tse-tung would pay for a few million tons.

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