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higher mountain ranges.

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Alan Winnington in Tibet--7

LHASA, Tibet ;

Eighteen cents in the dollar off }

tea and an average of 14 cents in
the dollar off other necessities.

This is what the new roads
mean to the people of Lhasa.

Tibet is a vast plateau, averag-
ing 15,000 feet above sea level,
surrounded and crossed by still
Some
huge convulsion of the earth
threw it up and the whole area is
still changing.

Across 1,700 miles of this plat-
eau, over 16 of its major moun-
tain ranges and 12 big rivers along
Perpendicular rock precipices,
mountains of sliding sand, over
kidden waters, swamps and gla-
ciers, the Chinese People’s Liber-
ation Army and its Tibetan help-.
ers drove the road to Lhasa by
tke end of 1954 and now is push-
ing it to the Indian border.

“Fighting the mountains and
weather was hard enough,” Lang
Ming-teh, told me, “but fighting
antiquated .ideas was even
harder.” ~ :

Chinese engineers, trained in
the West, held up their hands
and said that such a road simply
could not be built.

There were no facts to go on,
they said. There was no data.
Nothing was known of soil con-
ditions. Lowland people could
not work in such rarified air
and there was not enough man-
bower in Tibet.

“Nobody ever built a road at
this height,” they said. “It will
take a century.” a

But the People’s Liberation

See for themselves that there had
to be a road if Tibet was to make
any social advance and not re-
main a backward region — a
temptation to imperialist intrigue.

They went to work on ropes,
hanging over ravines that make
you sick to look down.

Until the road was. built they
could not transport air com-
Pressors, so every blasting hole
had to be drilled in the granite
by hammer and chisel. At first
they were exhausted after
striking three or four blows with
the sledgehammer.

Tibet had no surplus food and
all the People’s Liberation Army’s
needs had to be carried from in-
land China. Only yaks could do
the job and then only with the
support of the Tibetan nobility
Who owned them, and the serfs,
who herd them: Unlike the
Kuomintang and the Chinese
emperors, who used forced |
transport, the People’s Liberation |.
Army paid well for every load-
Carried. ; 13

Tibetans helped the road and
the road helped them. Attracted |
by the high wages, even some
monks worked on the. road —
after borrowing different clothes.

Work .on the road never stops”
along its whole length. Thous-
ands of road-maintenance workers

are stationed in cosy bungalows |

all along the road at six-mile
Intervals. ;
* * *
Along these two miracle
kighways which the Chinese
modestly describe as “not yet
up to Western standards,”
thousands of trucks are run-
ning with Chinese-made goods
and tea in exchange for Tibetan
_ Wool, musk and herds.

Tibetan merchants who used
to trade only with the capitalist
world — by yak — now find it
better to hire a-truck and trade
With the homeland.

Now you can often see a truck
or two parked near a road main-
tenance station, with a yak hair
tent pitched nearby and a young
Tibetan pottering with the engine

While someone else blows a yak

dung fire with yak skin bellows

Trucks replace yaks on roads
winding across roof of world

neal

Lhasa last October. —

to make tea with yak butter.
A monk named Chamba, chief
monk-merchant of Kanze monas-

tery, told me about his trade as}.

we sat among the images, but-
ter lamps and iron money chests
in his Lhasa room. He was dres-

sed in ordinary clothes and on a
settee by his side were elements

of his calling—a leather satchel,

an abacus for counting money,
rosary.

ante ass in Tibetan wool,
musk, saffron and a strange
Tibetan: medical speciality called
‘syorm grass,” because half of
the creature is a worm and the
other half is a vegetable. :

“J buy tea and Shanghai-
manufactured goods,” he told
me: “in two weeks: now with
five trucks I can do what used
to take me two months with 500
yaks, I turn my capital over
three times a year instead of once,
and my profits are steadier be-
-quse prices are down and sales

”

Ss aie chatted, he sat with his
legs crossed under him, taking
enormous pinches of snuff mixed

with incense ash, while he offered

me buttered tea and “Morton’s
Sweets of Distinction” brought
k ‘by India.
as cot ih to India when I like
and get rupees for foreign trade
simply by going to the People’s
Bank here,” this civilian-look-
ing monk went on. “And it’s not
only a matter of speed now —
we don’t have to bother about

‘his picture shows the opening of the new highway to

bandits. More merchants and
goods are going to India than
before as well as inland, and
this is only the. beginning.”

Monk-merchant Chamba was
really saying how the new roads
and trading policy of the Chinese

government have made markets
for stagnant Tibetan products and
raised purchasing power for
manufactured goods.

When everything went by yak
at eight miles daily, the emphasis
was on lightness and high profits
because of the slow turnover.

Wool, and even the costly musk,
were not worthwhile because of
low prices offered in the West.
Now the emphasis is exactly re-
versed. |

State buying companies are
paying top prices for wool and
three times the previous price
for musk. And by selling com-
modities to merchants cheaply
and providing cheap, fast trans-
port there is now every incentive

‘}to break with the centuries-old

habit of maximum profit on a
minimum turnover.

Already some merchants are
acting as tea agents for state com-
panies. This enables ‘them to
buy tea cheaply on agreement
to sell at a fixed price and a fixed
profit. These policies are work-
ing.

State buyers in Chamdo last
year bought three times as much
of local products as in the pre-
vious year, while exports to India

also rose in the comparable period.

~ Here Chairman Mao Tse-tung of China is seen with the
Dalai Lama (right) and Panchen Lama (left) at a banquet in

Peking. — i

‘

| |cluding 198 Europeans.

across Eastern Europe from
ing aircraft.

and other agencies, with a reckless
disregard for public safety, the
baloons are filled with an in-
flammable gas that frequently
causes them to explode on land-
ing or contact.

There is not the slightest doubt
that any airplane colliding with
one of the balloons would be in-
stantly be destroyed. They are
released. from places in Austria
and West Germany.

Urgent protests are being made
in Prague, where the civil avia-
tion authorities have sent a cable

International Organisation for
Civil Aviation calling for im-
mediate steps to ehd the menace.

There are good reasons for the
protests from Czechoslovakia.
For one of the latest victims of
the balloons is a 14-year-old
child, Milan Jurcik, who was
seriously injured when _ his
father’s house was half demol-
ished in the village of Drienov,
Presov Region, Eastern Slovakia.

A balloon fell on the house
and the explosion not only
wrecked the building but sever-
ly burned the child. Jurcik
also has concussion and is now
in hospital.

Earlier there were two ex-
plosions in the village of Mengu-
sovice, in the Kosice region, where
eight people, including several
children, were injured and a
house was demolished. The in-
jured suffered serious burns.

In Prague itself a partly de-
flated balloon demolished a flat.
Another fell on the building of
the local National Committee in
Bohuslavice, Gottwald region.
The Soviet Union is supporting
Czechoslovakia’s demands - that
the United States should observe
elementary standards of inter-
national law.

When West German Chancel-
lor Adenauer visited Moscow
last September, the Seviet
government drew his attention
to the fact that balloons sent
from West German territory
were a serious menace to civil

to the European Bureau of the ;

U.S. balloons

create menace

LONDON

Explosive propaganda balloons floating by hundreds

American’ bases are injuring

civilians, demolishing buildings, causing fires and endanger-

Launched by the’ U. S-controlled Radio Free Europe,

air lines and the safety of air
passengers.

The Hungarian government has
also. protested.

Radio Free Europe and other
organisations staffed by a mix-
ture of Americans and emigres,
have never troubled to conceal
their dangerous activities.

The balloons mainly carry leaf-

{lets and pamphlets, but Radio

Free Europe has also been accus-
ed of sending incendiary tablets
which burst into flames when they
touch water.

The leaflets are intended to
to incite the populations of the
People’s Democracies against
their governments — but their
actual propaganda effect has
been to arouse the anger of mil-
lions of people made aware of
the pain and destruction they
have caused.

About 52 feet high and up to
30 feet in diameter, the balloons
are not toys. They can carry up
to 666 pounds in weight, are made
of plastic material and can travel
about 500 miles.

Medium models

carry 150

pounds and small ones four
pounds. '
They have at times been

launched at the rate of 350 an
hour from a single base. The
danger of this to aircraft can
easily be imagined.

The smaller balloons have a
ballast of dry ice in a single bas-
ket. As the ice melts the basket
tilts and upsets its contents. The
medium size carry drums which
unroll a string binding leaflets.
The largest type carry batteries
and clockwork to release their
contents.

The bases wait for a suitable
wind and then release. their bal-
loons. Many go from points close
to the Czechoslovak and Hungar-
ian frontiers. ,
Radio Free Europe, the main
group now using the balloons,
has its headquarters in Munich
and employs more than 1,000
Americans, Germans and East

European emigres. ’

Communism Act, which forbids
names as a Communist to hold!
public office or a trade union |
position.

On the “liquidators’ list,” said
Swart, were 75 trade union offi-
cials, of whom 35 were Europe-
an, and 529 other persons, in-

The government last week
published its redrafted Industrial
Conciliation Bill, which seeks to
impose segregation throughout
the trade union movement:

An amendment now in-
corporated provides that any
union open to both European
and African members must
have Europeans only on its
executive committee.

Last week also, the Govern-
FEBRUARY 3, 1956 —

| RE RNNEREE ROOM HRTEM = | |) | UT

South Africa bars
56 union officials

CAPETOWN

‘No less than-56 trade union officials in South Africa have
been ordered by the Nationalist government to resign, Justice
Minister Charles Swart disclosed last week.

The orders were made under the 1950 Suppression of

anyone whom the government

ment Gazette published a list
of 182. books banned in South
Africa by the government.

They include the classic work
by Daniel Defoe, Roxana, pub-
lished in 1724.

Roxana refused to marry be-
cause , “the marriage contract
was, in short, nothing but giving
ups liberty, estate, authority and
everything to the man and the
woman was, a mere woman after
that, that is to say, a slave.”

Although Defoe brings Roxana
to complete misery by the end
of, the book, such ideas appear
still too much for the suscepti-
bilities of the present Nationalist
government of South Africa.

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