It took the Bolsheviks ten years to proclaim their first five-year plan. Last week the eager pupil outdid the master: only three years after the Communist conquest of China, Peking proclaimed a five-year plan. Said Premier Chou Enlai: "With the national territory entirely liberated, with the exception of [Formosa], with bandits now liquidated, and with agrarian reform nearly completed . . . the time has come."
Nobody specified what it would cost or what the planners planned. Best guess: concentration on metals and chemicals. "Some may ask whether large-scale construction is possible...
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