From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard
In an article in the Sunday Times on October 6th Sir Fitzroy Maclean, M.P., described the conditions he found on a recent visit and expressed the view that the peasants are better off than they were before the Communist Party got control of the government:
It is true that by one method or another they are regimented and made to toe the line. But they do not, as they used to, have the fear of actual starvation always hanging over their heads. Nor are they perpetually harassed by the rent collector and the money-lender or by the marauding war lords and bandits who caused such havoc.
He sees China developing militarily and economically and aiming to dominate Asia. He also noted that, despite the abuse the Chinese and Russian Communists hurl at each other there is one thing both countries (and all other countries) have in common:
In China, as elsewhere, how you live and what you buy depends on how much money you have. And who, it will be asked, has the money? The answer, as in the Soviet Union, is: the privileged classes, Officials, high-ranking officers, scientists, technicians, skilled workers and so on. But to those must be added a small and peculiarly Chinese category: the Communist Capitalists. These, surprisingly enough are the former owners of, for example, factories, whose enterprises have been taken over by the State and who receive annually from the State as compensation a percentage of the capital value of the enterprise. As they are also very often employed as managers of the factory, some of them are extremely well off.
Edgar Hardcastle
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