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In his 1954 report, Lo boasted that forced labor, among other things, had produced 2 billion bricks, 770 million construction tiles, 714,000 dozen pairs of socks, and 1,700,000 steam-radiator couplers. His chilling reference to the financial aspect was a classic in Marxist accountancy: "The income from production of labor service for reform during the past four years, after deducting the living costs of the criminals and the other necessary expenses incurred in the work of reform through labor, has been accumulated, in the forms of fixed capital and fluid capital, to an amount approximately equal to the expenses."
According to Communist theory, all the forced labor workers are "voluntary," and the cadres supervising the slave labor always use high-sounding, almost loving words, to describe their charges. Those who die of exposure and overwork are eulogized as "dead heroes." On the "mechanized farms" a few Soviet tractors are used, but most of the work is done with primitive plows manned by groups of six pulling on plow ropes. When the slave laborers fail to fulfill their "norms," they are obliged to conduct "selfcriticism" sessions. Risings in these remote camps have been frequent. Mobile units of slave laborers have been reported as far distant as Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Trade by trade, industry by industry, the Communists have worked over China's extensive and once thriving commercial life. By 1952, 58% of the economy was under government control. Because the Communists control raw materials, retail prices, staff hirings and firings, and can demand exorbitant taxes at will, private businessmen have no alternative but to give up. By last November, 70% of all Shanghai firms had been handed over. Since then socialization of business has been speeded up, and complete transformation, already achieved in many smaller cities, is soon expected.
In the country areas peasant holdings are being reorganized into cooperatives. Peasants who join the cooperatives get advantages, such as the use of tractors, plows, water wheels and fertilizers. They also get cheaper loans from banks. By the end of 1955, almost 2,000,000 cooperatives had been formed, or twice as many as had originally been planned for the fall of 1956. In cooperatives the peasants still profit from their own crops, but in the next step, i.e., complete collectivization, the land will belong to the state, to be farmed by central management. The peasant will be a paid worker.
Breaking the Will. Something of deep significance to China, to Asia and all the world occurred in the last six months of 1955. The crescendo of terror in 1951 and the skillfully timed and carefully calculated applications of terror since had their cumulative effect. One of the most enduring and resilient of peoples apparently gave up hope. Whatever those hopes had been—an internal breakdown, a return of the Formosa Nationalists, or simply, in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Dulles, "hope from without"—six years of unremitting terror had finally crushed them. On this important fact most of the foreign agencies whose work it is to observe, analyze and report on Communist China agree. Millions of Chinese—something in the order of 100 million families —had surrendered, not to the idea of Communism, but to its iron system.