The Hard Struggle

In a great crescent stretching 10,000 miles from Iran to Japan live more than a fourth of the world's 3.1 billion people. This is non-Communist Asia, whose vast size and vaster human reservoir make its bitter struggle for a better life of particular concern to all nations. Last week a new report from the United Nations showed just how hard that struggle is -- and how far most of the 22 Asian nations in the survey must go before reaching even the most preliminary goals.

The Asian-born, Western-trained economists who directed the survey are worried most about the crisis facing Asia's agriculture and mining. Eighty percent of the area's export income comes from such primary commodities as rubber, minerals, tea and jute -- but commodity prices fluctuate sharply, and industrial nations are turning increasingly to man-made substitutes. Because of soft prices and shaky politics, the inflow of foreign capital is declining. Asia's foreign exchange reserves are far lower and its trade deficits three times higher than a decade ago.

Food & Factories. Even more alarming to the economists is the fact that population is growing five times as fast as food production in Asia. The output of food is actually dropping in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Korea, Iran and Nepal. The average Asian eats little more than he did in 1939, and hunger is a constant gnawing companion of about one in four. At present rates, food output in the area will rise only 5% during the next decade, but the U.N. figures that it must increase about 60% if Asians are to eat enough.

To earn money to buy food, many of Asia's non-Communist governments hope to raise export income by pushing industrialization. But, warned the U.N. report, "industrialization is not the panacea, nor is it a simple and easy process." Though the area's manufacturing has been growing at a brisk 8% annually in recent years, its share of world industrial output is still only 7% , most of which is consumed within the area itself. The products of Asia's small factories are still too costly for most foreign buyers, and widespread inflation aggravates the problem, notably in Indonesia, South Korea and Laos. In India, a car costs 38% more than in Britain, a small refrigerator 50% more than in the U.S.

Map for Progress. The U.N. group has some fairly obvious suggestions for narrowing the gaps: abandonment of ancient farming methods, more use of fertilizer, more irrigation. As for industrialization, it said, "what is needed is entrepreneurship, research, and skilled and disciplined labor." In varying degrees, this has been achieved in Japan, Hong Kong and Malaysia, which the U.N. economists held up as luminous examples for others to follow. Said the report, in a boost for free enterprise: "The significant fact is that industrial growth has taken place without protective measures or other devices that have now come to be accepted by many countries as necessary."

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