Notes on the Revolution in China

Abstract

No honest and reasonably alert visitor to China can fail to be impressed by the remarkable changes in the country and the people. The material advances shown by the new system since so recent a year as 1952 leap to the eye. New factories, mines, oilfields, steel works, dams, cooperatives, roads, buses, hospitals, schools, cultural palaces, theaters, have sprouted almost overnight. The language is being reformed. The rise in the general standard of living is equally remarkable. The normal noonday meal even of the unskilled laborer now compares with his rare holiday feast in the old days. Conditions of work have improved out of all recognition. Coal mines in whose untimbered pits eight or ten famished peasant laborers dropped dead, or were killed by accident every day, now have death rates among the lowest in the world, and are pleasant places to work in, with excellent automatic machinery for the bulk of the production. The former incredible stench and filth have disappeared from the workers' slums, once the most dreadful in the whole world, and even the older hutments are free of vermin.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.