Mao's Muscled Minions

CHEN DUMPS AMERICANS WITH ONE JERK, trumpeted the headline in Hong Kong's Communist Wen Hui Pao last week. AMERICANS POWERLESS TO THREATEN CHEN CHING-KAI. Occasion for the rejoicing was a weight-lifting meet in Moscow, in which Red China's little (127 lbs.) Chen hoisted 326 1/4 lbs. in the clean-and-jerk to shatter the world featherweight record held by the U.S.'s Isaac Berger.

Chen's feat was the latest product of the ten-year athletic program launched by Red China's Mao Tse-tung with the avowed intention of producing citizens "capable of more and harder work in China's socialist reconstruction." Red China's muscled minions, according to the Peking press, "resolutely pledged themselves to overcome all difficulties and all individualist ideas existing in their innermost minds, and strive to become the vanguard on the physical-culture front." Chen himself gave due credit to patriotic inspiration. "During the jerk event, I was somewhat nervous," said he, "but just then I looked down at the responsible comrades of our country's athletic association. This indeed meant the ideas of the party were in me, encouraging me. This strengthened my determination."

Last year Mao's inspired athletes claimed seven world records in sports ranging from swimming to weight lifting. One rowing group became so incensed by "U.S. imperialist aggression against our territory of Taiwan" that it bettered the winning time of the U.S. pair-oared shell with cox in the 1956 Olympics, even though the Red rowers had trained only a month over the 2,000-meter distance.

Some Chinese claims bring only sniggers in the West. Rowing times, for example, are meaningless because wind and water conditions vary so widely from course to course. But Britain's Runner Sylvia Cheeseman, one of the few Western athletes to have seen the Red Chinese in training, came back from a trip behind the Bamboo Curtain convinced that Mao's big-brotherly encouragement to sport is no joke. "The coaches have to stop the athletes from killing themselves with overwork," she says. "The Chinese will be among the top three or four nations in sport in the next ten years."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.