The U-Shaped Advance

The outside world knows little about the man who is generally ranked No. 2 to Mao Tse-tung. Greater headlines have gone to Chou En-lai and to Marshal Chu Teh, but the man next in line is presumed to be Liu Shao-chi, Moscow-trained party theoretician. Last week Red China published his 16,000-word keynote speech to the 19-day closed session of the eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. His confident theme: "In the past the party concentrated its efforts mainly on socialist revolution . . . Now we can and must concentrate on socialist construction."

Declaring that "crisis, unemployment and disunity" are "discrediting" the "imperialist world," Liu described with confidence and sober optimism the prospects for Communist China and the Soviet bloc. With repeated quotations from Marx, Lenin and Mao Tse-tung (who was among the 1,000-odd delegates present), Liu urged increased production to surpass Britain in 15 years. His new slogan: "Hard work for a few years; happiness for a thousand." He predicted more than 7,100,000 tons of steel production this year, against 2,200,000 tons only four years ago. But in the fine print, not all was so rosy. He was significantly silent on last year's harvest and this year's crop prospects. He regretted "excessive wage increases" in 1956 but denied that that year had been one of "reckless advance." He admitted that a retrenchment had followed, but for those who weary of such economic jargon as saucering out of recession, Liu had a classic new Communist equivalent to offer: there had been, he said, a "U-shaped advance" in China's economy during the past two years. The first four months of 1958 had registered a significant "leap forward" in industrial and agricultural production, he added. Western specialists believe there is opposition inside the top leadership over the relentless "leap forward" policy, and noted how much space Liu devoted to justifying the speedup. Connoisseurs of Communist politics also noted that Liu gave "credit" for the policy no less than a dozen times to Mao, thereby establishing his responsibility for it.

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