ers

By ALAN WINNINGTON
PEKING — Chairman Mao

Tse-tung is to retire from his .
“> position as chairman of the

Chinese People Republic and
concentrate his attention on
policy and theory.

* He will remain chairman of
the Chinese Communist Party.
“This decision was taken at a
‘recent meeting of the party’s
central committee in Wuhan,
according to reliable sources.
Mao himself made the pro-
posal to the central commit-
tee, which then agreed not to
‘rénominate him at the coming

» meeting of the National Peo-

ple’s Congress this month.

This decision has come as no
surprise here. Mao has several
times raised this question and
has. latterly devoted far less
time to public affairs and con-
centrated on close investigation
of problems of transition, tours
of the countryside and indus-
try, and formulating policy.

The 65-year-old chairman
was elected four years ago for
a four-year term but has fre-
quently expressed the wish to
relinquish his duties.

The functions and. powers
of head of state in China are
not vested in the chairman
but jointly exercised by him
and 66 members of the stand-
ing committee of the National
People’s Congress.

However, the chairman has
to spend much time in receiv-
ing foreign diplomats, delega-

tions and in protocol pubue ap-
pearances.

The Communist party’s cen-
tral committee left it open for
Mao to return to the position
if special circumstances ever
require this.

The question of who will
now take his place as head of
state will be decided at the
congress session. The present
vice-chairman, Chu Teh, would
normally take his place if the
office fell vacant between ses-
sions, but will not necessarily
be elected at the session itself.

The Comunist party re-
gards Mao’s contribution in
policy and theory as more im-
portant than performing func-
‘tions as head of state. Many
of the policies now sparking
China’s sweeping advance were
envisaged by Mao in writing
several years ago.

Recently he scdtlighted the
new development of the peo-
ple’s communes, which will en-
able that advance to continue
at a still greater pace.

_ The Communist party deci-
sion will be discussed at meet-
ings throughout the country
pefore the congress session.

pine a pubished resolution,,

Mao Tse-tung will
give time to policy

MAO TSE-TUNG
Theory and policy

the people’s communes, in the
creation of which Mao Tse-
tung has played a leading role,
have been given high praise
by the Chinese Communist
Party’s central committee.

Summarizing the experience
of the few months the people’ s
communes have been in exist-
ence, the resolution says they
have helped to solve problems
of labor shortage and develop-
ment of industry in the coun-
tryside. They have emancipat-
ed women from the remnants
of the patriarchal family and
established many welfare serv-
ices,

‘The communes are and will
remain a “basic-unit of the soc-
ial structure” and will speed
the pace of China’s advance.

They will play a big part
in making China a great soc-
ialist land with modern indus-
try, agriculture, science and

‘ culture:

Rocket past

system next _

MOSCOW — Professor Boris
Kukarkin, deputy chairman of
the astronomical council of

the Soviet Academy of Scien-

ces, said in a Moscow Radio
broadcast last weekend it was
technically possible and prob-
ably “soon attainable” to build
rockets with a much higher
speed than that of the moon
rocket now in orbit round the
sun,

“Such spaceships will be
capable of travelling beyond
the boundaries. of our solar
system,” he said.

He added it was possible to

-go farther and-think about the

task of leaving “our galactic
system” (the whole galaxy of
stars of. which the earth and

_ sun are part).

Batista flees as Castro forces
topple bloody Cuban dictatorship

HAVANA—The bloody Batista dictatorship of Cuba collapsed last weekend with the
entry of opposition forces led by Dr. Fidel Castro into the capital and the flight of Batista
and his leading supporters. Batista, whose private fortune cached in foreign banks is esti-
mated at $200 million, sought refuge with his fellow dictator Trujillo in the ime Re-
public, but most of the leading figures in his regime fled to the U.S.

Castro’s march to power
from Santiago de Cuba, the
island’s second city, where he
proclaimed Dr. Manuel Urru-
tia provisional president, was
facilitated by a general strike
of workers in Havana and
other cities.

The Popular Socialist Party,
the main working class party,
which has been banned by
Batista for years, called re-
cently for preparations of a
general " political ‘strike to
bring the struggle against the
dictatorship to a» successful
close. a‘

The U.S. government has
been embarrassed by the Ba-
tista regime for some time.

But the Opposition forces in
Cuba are aware of the dan-
gers of American domination
being foisted on the people in
a new form.

One of the first tests Castro
faces now is the extent to
which he will carry out
pledges to restore democracy
to the republic — including

legality for the Popular Soc-

ialist Party and for the trade
unions. E
The liberation movement
had the support of both -the
Popular Socialist Party and
the unions; landless peasants,
encouraged by first steps to-

ward land reform, flocked to.

the Castro banner.

But so far Castro has an- .

nounced very little of his pro-
gram. His presidential candi-
date, Dr. Urrutia, has describ-
ed himself as strongly anti-
Communist.

(“Castro himself is the owner
of a sugar plantation, and I
doubt if he will be in the mood
to nationalize anything,” a
Castro ‘spokesman in New
York told pilesonets last
week.)

Relations with the -U.S. will

be the other — and allied —

test of the provisional govern-
ment...

For the U.S. dominates the
Cuban economy, ‘owning a
large part of the Cuban sugar
industry. — biggest output in
the world — as well as having
nickel, oil, tobacco and United
Fruit Company investments in
Cuba.

Sugar shares dropped on
the New York stock market
last week — because the end
of the fighting in Cuba means
that most of the almost-ready
crop will reach the world
market and thus lower prices.

Batista’s regime of terror
lasted right until the end: one
of the last acts of his police
was the murder of two of

Cuba’s outstanding trade union
leaders for attempting to or-
ganize the sugar plantation
workers.

Their deaths followed the
killing, torture and jailing of
hundreds of working class and
patriotic leaders by Batista’s
henchmen. :

With Batista’s fall only two
of the old-style U.S.-backed
dictators are still in power in
Latin America: Somoza in
Nicaragua and Trujillo in the
Dominican Republic.

The American government
officially ceased supplying Ba-
tista with arms some time ago
— but he continued to get
American arms through the
Dominican Republic. The Brit.
ish government let him have
some Hawker Sea Furies and
the rockets to arm them as
late as last November.

Except for a gap of eight
years, Batista has held power
in Cuba for nearly 30 years,
keeping Cuba safe for the Am-
erican and smaller British in-
terests.

Fidel Castro, leader of the
opposition forces which have
finally accomplished the down-
‘fall of the Batista regime after
two years of guerilla fighting,
is a 32-year-old lawyer.

“ions:

Continued from page 1

His father was a Bie sd
sugar planter; his mother also
came from a landowning fam-
ily. A devout Roman Catholic,
Castro was educated at Jesuit
schools; at university he gain-
ed two.degrees, one of them
a doctorate.

He practised as a lawyer in
Havana until he and his brother
Raul were jailed over six
years ago for trying to organ-
ize resistance to Batista. Am-
nestied, Castro lived in Mexi-
co and the U.S. for a time.

In December 1956 he landed

in Oriente Province, on Cuba’s

eastern tip, with 82 compan-

70 of whom were -—
killed immediately by Batista —
troops.

Castro; with the other 12,
took to the» mountains and
there began to gather the
guerilla forces which soon
dominated the whole province.

Castro told a visiting Am-
erican correspondent last year:
“Our first fight is for. political
rights — and after that for
social rights.”

He said he advocated social
security measures and more in- ~
dustrialization to combat the
land’s constant unemployment

problem. But he added: “I do

not believe in nationalization.”

~ SUN ROCKET

scientific reasearch and ach-
ievement.

Socialism’s superiority over
capitalism has again been
dramatically demonstrated for
all the world to see. But the
moon rocket is only one aspect
of this superiority, only one
expression of the aims of the
new Seven-Year. Plan...

The Seven-Year Plan means
not only rockets to the moon
followed by a 35-hour week,
a ten-year secondary educa-
tion for 40 million school-
children, a doubling of hos-
pital beds, a vast housing pro-
gram.

Put this alongside the stag-
gering progress made by China
in 1958 and the still bigger
aims of 1959. Contrast it with
the stagnation and decline in
the West ... . the growth of
unemployment, the fear of the
future.

For the people of the West
the lesson is clear—the need
to end capitalism and advance
to socialism. 5

Both British Ene American

scientists were saying this
week that the Russians could
now reach Venus. Prof. H. S.
W. Massey, who presided over
Britain’s IGY rocket research —
said they had enough power.
to go anywhere in the Sauer

system. Z

He said they could certainly
reach Mars and Venus, and
might well attempt to send
scientific instruments to the
vicinity of one of the planets
as their next experiment.

“Perhaps the most impres-—
sive thing about the Russian
rocket is its accuracy,” he
added. “To get so near the
moon, they must have con-
trolled the final speed of the
rocket to a few hundred feet
a second and kept the error of
launching down to a small
fraction of a degree.”

He was quite certain that
the intention of the Russians
had been from the start to fire
a rocket at more than escape
velocity to pass close to the
moon and this had been com-
pletely achieved.

January 9, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 3