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PART 1

Report of Senator Mansfield

JOURNEY TO THE NEW CHINA

When President Nixon returned from Peking last February, he transmitted an invitation from Premier Chou En-lai to the joint leadership of the Senate to visit the People's Republic of China. The invitation was accepted by Senator Scott and myself and between April 15 and May 7, we undertook the journey.

On Monday, last, I gave to the President a written report on what I had observed, heard and discussed in China and conclusions which I had reached, as a result, particularly with regard to Indochina. I have requested this time, today, to provide a general account of the journey to the Senate.

I shall speak in some considerable detail because it seems to me that the long deprivation which has been experienced regarding direct information on China warrants a most thorough account. Moreover, since the President has chosen to take new military risks in Indochina, we had better get as clear a picture as we can of the contemporary nature of the immense nation whose southern borders are contiguous with that troubled and tragic region.

If I may, Mr. President, I shall now proceed to report on the journey to the new China, but before I begin I would like to express my grati tude to the distinguished minority leader, the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Scott) and to Mrs. Scott and to the staff, but especially to Mr. and Mrs. Scott because of the assiduousness with which they applied their talents and abilities and to commend most especially the distinguished Republican leader who has a great cultural knowledge of China and an intense personal interest.

1. INTRODUCTION,

From arrival in Shanghai on April 18 until departure from Canton on May 3, the leadership was in China a total of 16 days. Five days were spent in Peking; two in the great industrial port of Shanghai on the eastern seacoast; two in the recreational lake-city of Hang ZhouHangchow-which is south of Shanghai; two in Xi An-Sian-which is a gateway to Mongolia, a source city of Chinese dynastic culture and, today, a major agricultural and industrial center of the northwest; 2 days in Chang Sha, in the south-central Province of Hu Nan where Mao Tse-tung began his revolutionary activities; and 2 days in Guang Zhou, formerly Canton, the commercial hub of South China and the site of China's International Trade Fair.

We had ample opportunity to move about in these cities and into the surrounding countryside. We talked to many people, to govern

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ment and party officials, soldiers, medical and health specialists, scientists, teachers, farm managers, factory workers, and students. Our most important discussions were held in Peking, where we met for 8 hours of informal conversations with Premier Chou En-lai, and many more hours with the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ch'iao Kuanhua, and other officials.

Host for the visit was the People's Institute of Foreign Affairs, which is a quasi-official arm of the Chinese Foreign Ministry. I was deeply impressed both by the kindness and efficiency of the staff of the institute who accompanied us on the entire journey and by the warmth of the reception we received everywhere in China. The hospitality shown to us by our hosts and the Chinese people was thoughtful and considerate. The friendliness was unmistakable.

I did not go to China with the expectation of becoming an instant expert on its government, its social structure, its economy, or its internal affairs. I went to see what I had seen a long time before-as a private in the Marines in the early twenties and, twice again, during and after World War II, as a representative of President Roosevelt and as a young Member of the House of Representatives. After an absence of a quarter of a century, I went to compare the old China with the new and to explore current attitudes of the People's Republic toward the United States.

It is difficult to look at China, today, free of the distortions of national disparities, especially after two decades of separation. But the distortions can be tempered by perspective. It is possible, for example, to judge a bottle as half full or as half empty. If China is measured by some of our common yardsticks, whether they be highway mileage, the number of cars, television sets, kitchen gadgets, political parties, or newspaper editors the bottle will be seen as half empty. If China is viewed in the light of its own past, the bottle is half full and rapidly filling.

Today's China is highly organized and self-disciplined. It is a hardworking, early-to-bed, early-to-rise society. The Chinese people are well fed, adequately clothed and, from all outward signs, contented with a government in which Mao Tse-tung is a revered teacher and whose major leaders are, for the most part, old revolutionaries.

There has not been a major flood, pestilence, or famine for many years. The cities are clean, orderly, and safe; the shops well stocked with food, clothing, and other consumer items; policemen are evident only for controlling traffic and very few carry weapons. Soldiers are rarely seen. The housing is of a subsistence type, but is now sufficient to end the spectacle of millions of the homeless and dispossessed who, in the past, walked the tracks and roads or anchored their sampans in the rivers of China and lived out their lives in a space little larger than a rowboat. Crime, begging, drug addiction, alcoholism, delinquency are conspicuous in their absence. Personal integrity is scrupulous. In Canton, for example, a display case for lost and found articles in the lobby of the People's Hotel contained, among other items, a halfempty package of cigarettes and a pencil.

The people appear to be well motivated and cooperative. Women and men work side by side for equal pay. There are no visible distinctions of rank in field, factory, armed services, or government offices. A casual sense of freedom pervades personal relationships with an air

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of easy egalitarianism. There is no kowtowing, not even to the highest officials.

A factory worker in Peking earns the equivalent of about U.S. $22 a month, and his wife works, making as much or more. That income is ample for a subsistence-plus existence because children are cared for free at a nursery or in public schools. Rent takes only about 5 percent of total income. Basic food prices are low and fixed. Medical care is free. Entertainment is cheap admission to a movie is about 10 cents. Prices have been stable for years while wages have risen.

Cooking oils, rice, wheat, and cotton cloth are rationed, but the allotments are ample. The system seems to be designed more to assure basic distribution than to cope with shortages. In fact, large quantities of all rationed items, except wheat, are exported.

Bicycle and bus are the almost universal forms of transportation. The rickshas are gone: so, too, are most of the bicycle-pedicabs. Although China builds automobiles, including a few fine limousines as well as small sedans, they are for official purposes and limited in number. Production has been concentrated on such utilitarian vehicles as tractors, trucks, and buses. Private passenger cars are a rare sight on the streets of some cities. Indeed, there may be fewer now than immediately after World War II, when such vehicles were imported in considerable quantity.

Eighty percent of China's population is rural and is now largely organized into communes. The communes are in the nature of agrotowns and are a fundamental economic unit of the new China. They are also a new concept in social organization which acts to broaden and extend the virtues of interdependence of the old Chinese family system into a community of cooperation and group-action by many families.

One such unit which was visited, the Ma Lu Commune outside Shanghai, embraces over 6,500 families. In several successive years, this commune has reported an exceptional expansion of the production of grains, meat, and other agricultural commodities, much of which is now sold as excess to the commune's needs. Machine cultivation and power equipment is in wide use and electricity is generally available. The commune's small factories process a large part of the agricultural output and also produce gasoline engines, farm tools, spare tractor parts, insecticides, and consumer goods.

Ma Lu is regarded as a prosperous commune. Income last year was estimated at about $336 per household. It has 33 primary and secondary schools, a hospital, a clinic for each of the 14 production brigades, and a health worker for every team.

The accent in China is on today and the future, but throughout the country new interest is also being evidenced in China's rich past. Everywhere there are striking restorations of cultural shrines even as the search continues for more of the ancient heritage. Excavations of historic sites are underway throughout China. Wherever these works are undertaken, the effort is made to distinguish between the "bad"-that is, the cruel and exploiting rulers of the past and the "good"—that is, the peasants whose creativity and labor were exploited for the well-being and pleasure of the few. Thus, in accordance with the teachings of Mao Tse-tung, a revolutionary content is made a part of archeology as it is of almost all other pursuits in China.

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There is, in other words, a determined effort to preserve a revolutionary consciousness in China.

The conservation of natural resources has also received great emphasis under the present leadership. So many trees have been planted in the Peking area, for example, that it has altered the local weather. Tree planting is a symbol of the new China and it is taking a place all over China wherever the land is unsuited to agriculture. Gardening is also widely pursued even on postage-stamp plots inside the cities. Throughout China new productivity is being developed out of wastelands and by massive water control projects.

China, today, builds the new on the base of the old and sometimes, with remarkable results. A most striking example is the revival of the ancient healing practices of acupuncture, whose origins go back over 3,000 years. Thanks to current research and experimentation, acupuncture is coming into wide usage in the treatment of a variety of ailments and as an anathesia in surgery.

The Capitol physician, who accompanied us on the journey, witnessed four major operations in which no sedative or anesthesia was used, only the manipulated needles of the acupuncturist. It is estimated that about half of all the surgery now being performed in China is done with acupuncture anesthesia. Major experimentation is also underway in the use of the technique to cure deafness and other maladies.

The Capitol Physician visited seven different types of medical facilities, and on every one of his visits he was accompanied by either Senator Scott and me separately or together, and on one occasion by our wives, during the course of which visits he was exposed to a representative cross-section of the Chinese medical services on the farms, in the factories, and in large city hospitals. He saw treatment dispensed by "Western" trained physicians, whose efforts are dovetailed with those of traditional Chinese physicians experienced with herbs and acupuncture-and by basic medical workers, the so-called "barefoot doctors" who number in the hundreds of thousands and whose nearest counterpart in this Nation would be the medical corpsmen of the armed services.

Only a few years ago no modern medical care to speak of was available to the great preponderance of China's inhabitants. Now some kind of care is provided to every Chinese in need. In more remote regions, it may be elemental but it is available. There is no charge to workers in the cities but each family on the communes pays about 4 cents per month for medical services.

It should also be noted that epidemic and intestinal ailments have been drastically reduced in China. A heavy accent is placed on personal cleanliness and order. The people have also been repeatedly and successfully mobilized to cooperate in mass campaigns to eradicate disease-carrying snails, flies, and mosquitoes.

Some of the Chinese health techniques would have exchange value to this Nation. So, too, would Chinese methods of dealing with the disposal of human and animal excrement. Traditionally, these wastes have been regarded in China as an asset with great value as a fertilizer. The problem with their use in the past has been that they have also been a major source of intestinal and other communicable diseases. The Chinese now employ a very simple process for converting wastes into safe and effective fertilizers. It is estimated that 75 percent or more of

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