RED CHINA: The Numbers Game

Barely two months ago, in a moment of unwonted honesty, Red China's braggart overlords admitted that the economic achievements of 1958's Great Leap Forward had been vastly inflated, and revised their 1959 production goals downward. But the price of truth proved too painful. Fortnight ago, during the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Red takeover in China, Premier Chou En-lai complained: "The imperialists ridicule our adjusted 1959 plan as a 'big leap backward' . . . Obviously, it is a continued great leap forward on the basis of the exceptionally big...

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