SE a ieee RES “A million peasants . are carrying stones and other materials, planting hundreds of thousands of willows, throwing up great earthworks to raise 625 miles of dykes .. .” - PEKING HEN peasant workers and technicians held the Yellow River in W its course last year, China turned a new page in its history. It was -a triumph of the government policy and’ organizations—for last year the Yellow River reached its highest recorded water level and all natural conditions existed for inundation of great areas of farmland. Now the million peasants who defeated the river last year are carrying out the 1950 stage of one of the most comprehensive pro- jects of fiood prevention and irri- gation ever envisaged. It will, in the end, bring the Yellow River completely under the domination of men and use its muddy waters to. enrich the Chinese people. They are carrying stones and other materials, planting hundreds of thousands of willows, throwing up great earthworks to raise 625 miles of dykes five feet above the highest water level of last year. ‘This year’s scheme involves work in five provinces; strength-” ening dykes, planting trees, con- structing reinforced concrete sluice gates and cutting big canals. Shantung peasants have already completed the first stage of their earthworks many days ahead of schedule. In Suiyuan province, 30,000 men of the People’s Libera- tion Army. are raising some 300 miles of dykes three feet above the high water level, under the guidance of the working corps of experts and engineers. The work in this region involves combining numerous small canals on the Yellow River which have caused floods in the past into four *. main canals/and turn two and a half million4acres into high yield- ing wheat fields. : While all this is going on, long term plans are on the drawing board. Water conservancy spec- ialists and geologists have been sent to mountain gorges to sur- vey for reservoir sits and draw up plans for more far-reaching schemes. ; One of these is to lead the wat- ers of the Yellow River 30 miles northward to Sinhsiang county in Pangyuan province and thus ir- rigate 60,000 acres of land. This same plant will take enough water into the Wei River to permit the use of water transport from Sinh- siang to Tientsin. Great schemes of tree planting and crop rotation to conserve wat- er, prevent soil erosion and main- tain fertility will be carried out in the river’s middle reaches. Peasants who are working on these schemes at government pay, are those who, under the govern- ment’s direction, turned out in vil- lage after. village last year and fought pitched battles with the river as it threatened to break its banks at innumerable points. Typical of the determination with which they fought the river “yo @ jie |/eopie s sovernment (ames ie Velow itver ‘China’s Sorrow’ becomes her joy last year was the action of one young peasant, Tai Ling-teh, who found a new*gap im the main dyke at a critical point. Taking off his quilted cotton clothes he thrust’ them into the hole and held back the water until the pres- sure of flood widened the gap. ’ Then he plunged into it himself and others pushed on behind to seal the gap. For thousands of years, the Yel- low River has brought tragedy and devastation to unrecorded millions. It is the seventh long- est river in the world and runs through nine provinces. Its catch- ment area is covered with fine, _fragile loess soil to the depth of 160 feet, the deposit of soil wind- blown from Siberia some 15,000 years ago. Enormous quantities of loess soil has been brought down from mountain gorges along the Shan- si border and the Wei River sys- tem in Shensi province and depos- ited in the river bed, resulting in gradual reduction of fertility of the farmland along the middle reaches and in silting up of the lower course. It has been estimated that dur- ing the rainy season between July and October, the silt content of the river almost reaches one half in weight and the river becomes a flow of muddy paste. _ The annual silt run-off amounts _ to 1,900,000,000 tons — enough to erect a wall three feet in width and height 82 times round the. equator. This silt has raised the river bed by an avérage of 13 feet above the adjacent land, and has. become a watershed dividingline built by ages-long action of the silt-landen river itself on the great alluvial plain. Moreover, the dykes themselves _are built of sandy loam, for stone is scarce in the basin, and the fine silt of the river bed is very un- stable, permitting the main cur- rent to swing and change its course and attack dykes at unpre- - dictable points. It has breached its dykes more than a thousand times in recorded history and changed its course seyen times, causing untold suffering every . times. Its outlet once reached Peking in the north and the Yang- tse in the south, ovér 375 miles apart... 3 ' e ’ The corruption and rottenness of the Kuomintang officials wors- ened the situation. They made virtually no repairs to the dykes and did no flood prevention work, although they were energetic en- ough in demanding more and more - funds for that purpose. They al- ways fled at the very beginning of flood menace, leaving millions at its mercy. 4 Fifteen floods within eleven years of the Kuomintang rule over the region (from 1927 to 1938), broke all previous records under the feudal empire and warlords. Flood devastation reached a most serious point in 1938 when the Kuomintang broke the dykes at Hwayuankow.in Honan prov- ince, turning the river southwards to stem the Japanese advance and save their own troops to-at- tack the People’s Army. They inundated some 21,000 square miles in east Honan, north Anhwei and north Kiangsu proy- inces, and made six million in- \habitant homeless. : Immediately after the Japanese surrender in 1945, the Kuomintang prepared another inhuman scheme, A great part of the area along the old lower course of the river was then under the control of the people’s forces, so with the back- ing up of UNRRA, the Kuomin- ‘tang sealed the Hwayuankow gap in March, 1947, and turned thé river back to its old course and to flood the liberated areas in East and North China. ; 2 Under Kuomintang guns, bomb- ing and strafing, the People’s gov- ernment organized the local peas- ants to rush repairs on the dykes which had either crumbled away or been torn up during the eight years of Japanese occupation. ’ ’ "THE story of how Chiang Kai- hs shek, using American equip- ment and supplies, deliberately flooded liberated areas along; the Yellow River after the Jap- anese surrender and destroyed thousands of peasant home- steads is told by the Peking People’s Daily in replying to what it terms the “overwhelm- ‘ditions making for a food shortage in parts of China. Declaring that American pol- icies helped to create those con- ditions, paper comments: “Dean Acheson, who takes pleasure in exaggerating the - present difficulties in China and will perish as a result of them, will not realize his expectation. Measures taken by the People’s “government provide the guar- antee that there will be no star- vation in the flood areas.” | ing interest” of Dean Acheson, - U.S. secretary of state, in con- | asserts that millions of people. The paper then relates the story of “Yellow River strategy” which . Chiang Kai-shék once boasted was “worth 400,000 troops’ against the People’s Liberation Army, because it would create a terrible “economic and mili- tary situation” in the liberated areas. This “strategy” was to flood the liberated areas after the Japanese surrender (a sin- ister scheme, worked out with American knowledge). The Kuomintang and the US. trolled CNRRA (China National Relief and Rehabilita- tion Administration) put for-’ ward a plan to divert the Yel- low River back to its old ‘course, The Kuomintang then signed a series of agreements with’ the People’s government. According to these agree- ments, the diversion of the Yel- low River could only be carried the Kuomintang’s . Chiang’s Yellow River ‘strategy’ ‘out after the dykes along the _ eld bed of the river in the liber- ated areas had been completely repaired and 4v0,000 people liv-— ing along the river bed had moved away. ‘ But immediately after the agreements had been signed, Chiang Kai-shek began to seal ‘the Yellow River gap near Kaifeng, using American sup- plies and:equipment, and push-— ing the project at top speed. His army chief, Pai Chung-hsi, — directed the work personally. The Yellow River was switch- ed back to its old course on March 15, 1947, when the gap was sealed. This took place _ before the dykes in the liberat- ed areas were repaired and be- fore the people living on the old river bed had moved away. As Chiang Kai-shek antici- pated, this sudden diversion of the river created great difficul- that summer. ties in the liberated areas. Thousands of peasant home- steads onthe river bed were washed away. The People’s government, which was then preparing to repulse the inva- sion of the Kuomintang, had to find shelter for tens of thous- ands of srefugees, and at the same time mobilize peasants to complete the repairs to the ver dykes before the Yellow iver rose to its full height And as the peasants repaired the dykes that had crumbled during nearly 10 years of ne- glect, Kuomintang bombers and fighter planes, supplied by . Washington, bombed and straf- ed them, bringing new misery to the thousands who had seen their farms, and the crops up-_ on which they depended, de- stroyed to provide Chiang Kai- — shek with a “victory.” PACIFIC TREBUNE—MAY 26, 1950—PAGE 4 At critical points stones had been moved away by the Japan- ese to build fortification, willows along the banks had been felled ‘and dykes slashed with defence works. Activity ran high on the dykes and peasants in other parts of the liberated areas came to help, but the Kuomintang bombed the repaired sections during the high “water season in 1947, and their troops attacked the peasants while they were working. The peasants took up their spades and guns against their two enemies— the Yellow River and the Kuomin- tang, dnd defeated them both. A total of 45 million man days welfe spent on the dykes and 60 million cubic feet of earthworks were raised even under those diffi- cult conditions. And in 1948, 625 miles of the Yellow River dykes strengthened and rebuilt three feet above the highest water ‘were level of 1937, holding back the. | towering Yellow flood for the first time in many, many years. The Yellow River has its ami- able aspects too. Along its middle course in Ninghsia and Suiyuan provinces for 350 miles lies China's biggest irrigation area where the river makes a large semicircular loop. The whole region is a flat plain covered with less soil in which irrigation is led by gravity through canals dug by peasants several hundred years ago. In Hinghsia province, there are at least one million irrigable acres or 80 percent of the total arable land of the province, but many of the canals were allowed to silt up at the very source, and the ex- isting irrigated land is less than one half ‘of the posisble total. Suiyuan province exceeds all other provinces in irrigation. More than 80 percent of its population are farmers and every county has adequate canal systems, two crops being harvested in a single year. Rain of the upper Yellow River falls so conveniently that it en- sures abundant water supply for the lower region year in and year out, though not a single drop of rain may fall there. ‘Many canals, built by individual peasants are still too few to irri- | gate the whole two and a half mil- lion acres of irrigable land and, owing to lack of adequate sluice gates, the canals have time and again caused floods in the recent years? > As soon as the Yellow River came wholly under the control of the People’s government last year, the Yellow River Conservancy Committee was formed in Kaifeng, Honan province, to unify the work of taming ‘this wanton giant. _ Prevention of flood last year and the present work on the river are the results. Aa. As the present scheme unfolds. and still more comprehensive Plans follow behind it, the Yellow River will cease to be a sorrow of the country and instead will be- come one of its most precious pos- sessions, t ! on