In the Soviet Union

MOSCOW

To vast new inland seas trans-
: formirfg the map of Western
Siberia are being created by
Soviet engineers. The first, more
than 310 miles long, will be at
the junction of the Irtysh and

Bukhtarma rivers, in Eastern
* Kazakhstan.
The second, 150 miles long,

will be on the Ob, 18 miles from
Novosibirsk, a centre of agricul-
tural, mining and railway engin-
eering and clearing-house for
grain, timber and other agricul-

“Soviet Chicago.”

The two new power stations
forming part of the two great
Projects will supply more’ and

of the Urals and for the exploita-
tion of, the rich gold, silver and

non-ferrous metal resources of the
Altai Range. ;

They will provide power for
railway electrification and for the
electric tractors and other mach-
inery to be used in the great drive
to bring millions of acres of new
agricultural land in Kazakhstan
into cultivation.

The Qukhtarma station will be
built by the workers who last
summer built the Ust-Kameno-

_ Sorsk power station lower down
the Irtysh. Bukhtarma will have
2 capacity two’and a half times
that of its predecessor.

When the dam at Bukhtarma is
. completed, the level of Lake Zay-

tural products — it is described:
by Western geographers as the *

cheaper power for industry east -

Work on a hospital,

san, higher up the turbulent It-
tysh, will be raised. by some 15
feet.

Bulldozers and giant excavators
are already arriving at the site,
moving up the Irtysh gorges along
the frozen river.

Two automatic concrete plants

are to be assembled and work on
the building of a new: township—
Serebryanka — has already start-
ed.

Well-built homes, a school and
a clubhouse today stand where a
vear ago there was nothing but
the huts of research workers.
nursery
schools, shops and restaurants is
well under way.

/

New inland seas

As well as a power station and
great concrete and earthwork
barrages, the Novosibirsk project
includes a ship canal with a three-
chamber lock, which will aid navi-
gation on the 2,700-mile Ob river.

Work here has continued night
and day throughout the harsh
Siberian winter: All sections are
working ahead of schedule, re-
ports V. Ivanoy, the project’s
chief, in an interview with the
trade union paper Trud.

The Bukhtarma and Novosi-
birsk projects, like that on the
Angara at Irkutsk, details of
which were published last week,
form part of the 1951-55 Five-
Year Plan.

In People’s China

NEVER ‘have Chinese people

travelled about so much or so
easily as they do today. And in
the future they will travel about
still more easily.

Things are very different from
the days when an ordinary vil-
lager seldom went more than a
few score miles from his village,
and a journey to Peking was al-
most as impossible for him as a
journey to the moon.

Railways are being brought to
Provinces as large as a major

uropean country, territories
which have never before been
linked with the rest of the coun-
try by rail.

China is, by area, the second
largest country in the world, and
railroad construction is essential
to its future economic develop-
ment.

_ One obstacle“to travel in China
since railways were built has al-

; ways been the great Yangtse
river, which has never been bridg-
ed, and which trains could cross
only by special ferries. zi

Now the Yangtse is to be bridg-
ed at Hankow, and for the first
time trains will be able to. run
from Canton in the south to Pe-
king in the north without a break,

First bridge across
‘the Yangtse River

saving much time and expense.

The main bridge will be half a
mile long, in two tiers — one for
road traffic and the other for rail
traffic.

Tt has to be built so high that
big steamers can pass under it,
for Hankow, though 500 miles
from the sea, is served by sea-
going vessels. ae

Preparations for the building
of the bridge are now pretty well
completed and actual building
will begin shortly.

The Han river, a wide ‘tribut-
ary of the Yangtse at Hankow, is
also to be bridged. The building
of this bridge began last Novem-
ber.

Road travel is developing much
faster than rail. China now has
a network of roads more exten-
sive and better kept than before.

“The network is constantly ex-
panding ‘and the great highway
from Szechuan into Tibet through
the most difficult mountainou ;
country in the world, is now ha:f
completed. "

Foreign travel is also increas-
ing and improving. The first Pek-

*ing-Moscow through passenger

train arrived in Moscow a month

ago.' The journey takes nine
days..
Previously one had to change

trains in Manchuria.

As for sea travel, shipyards in
Shanghai, which previously did
only repair work, will this year
build their first passenger ves-
sels.

When all the work of harnes-
sing the Yellow River is complet-
ed it will be possible to sail 200-
ton boats from the China Sea up
to Lanchow, in Kansu province,
nearly 2,000 miles from the sea.

The harnessing of the upper
reaches of this river, part of the
scheme for its control, will pro-
duce five times more electric
power than all the electricity now
produced in China.

Of course, it will take a few
years for all this to be done, but
the general prospecting has been
made and, before long, some of
the dams and power stations will
begin to be built. .

Already on the Huai River, the
first of China’s flooding rivers to
be brought under control, the first
power station is being built. This
is the third and last stage of sub-
duing this river.

Opening of the Volga-Don canal (top) last summer marked com-
pletion of only one of the many great construction projects under
way in the USSR following on the initial post war program to repair
the tremendous war damage (centre). People’s China, too, has largely
repaired the destruction of the long anti-Japanese war (bottom) and
is embarked upon an ambitious program of construction.

Sa

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH 19, 1954 — PAGE 9