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