At a meeting of Communist functionaries in Mukden recently, a stolid, square-faced Communist named Kao Kang, one of the most powerful men in Asia, made one of his frequent harangues to party functionaries. "We . . . are in the front line," he told his lieutenants. "We must make sacrifices."
The front line he talked of is one of the richest areas in Asia—Manchuria. In the 2½ years since Mao Tse-tung's Communists captured China, it has become Red China's breadbasket, industrial heart and political bellwether. It is also the arsenal, supply depot and staging area for Chinese armies in Korea, and the constantly expanding haven of the 1,500-plane Red Chinese air force which hovers buzzard-like over the stalemate in Korea.
As boss of its 36 million people, little-known Kao Kang is one of Chinese Communism's big men. Not many visitors, even among those welcome in other parts of Red China, are permitted to see Kang's Manchuria,which Peking calls "the Northeast District." But in guarded progress reports, the Communists showed last week how completely the Red future in China hinges on the 443,275-square-mile land of the Manchu, a land nominally Chinese but actually north of the Great Wall and outside of China proper. Examples:
Industry: Red China's Ruhr is a small triangle in the center of Manchuria, formed by Mukden, Anshan and Fushun. Under Japanese occupation (1931-45) it became perhaps the greatest industrial complex Asia had ever known. Then the Russians expertly looted it: steel plants with a 1,500,000-ton capacity were left with enough machinery for 500,000 tons; the big generators at the Sungari Dam, which fed power to the Mukden area, were carted off.
Gradually, the Chinese Communists have built it back. Anshan, the Communists admitted last week, fell below its 1951 steel quota—probably set at about 720,000 tons. But the rest of the triangle's mines, factories and machine shops, according to the Reds, reached their goals. The triangle is producing about 49% of all Red China's coal (Fushun's open bituminous pits are said to be the world's largest), 87% of its pig iron, 93% of its steel products, 78% of its electrical power.
It is thus the fattest target possible should allied airmen ever be allowed to cross the Yalu. Mukden, its population now swollen to more than 3,000,000, grinds out lathes, shapers, planers, boring mills, presses, air compressors, electrical motors and transformers for all of China.
Agriculture: Manchuria is the only region in underfed Red China which produces an agricultural surplus. The Japanese got its grain production up to 16 million tons a year; the Communists increased it to 18. This year, because of devastating summer floods and the drain on manpower for the armies in Korea, it has fallen to about 17 million tons.
The Correct Communist. As master of "the Northeast District," spectacled Kao Kang, who is not yet 50, is one of the six vice chairmen of Mao's Peking government. Not Manchurian by birth (he comes from Shensi), he is undisputed No. 1 in Manchuria.