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