Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site inmet.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!cca!inmet!janw
From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Newsflash! [JoSH on Socialis
Message-ID: <28200215@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Oct-85 19:01:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.28200215
Posted: Wed Oct 23 19:01:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 06:29:43 EDT
References: <876@water.UUCP>
Lines: 35
Nf-ID: #R:water:-87600:inmet:28200215:000:1656
Nf-From: inmet!janw    Oct 23 19:01:00 1985


[Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes]
> I wish someone would be specific about what has happened in China's
> economy, and what has permitted the relative economic prosperity
> China has experienced since the revolution (no famine, population
> coming under control, etc.).  

The following is from "China, Alive in a Bitter Sea", by Fox Butterfield,
Bantam Books, p. 15.

> > For recent Western Studies show that food consumption per  capita
> > is  actually  only  about what it was in the mid-1950s, and, more
> > surprisingly, no better than in the 1930s, before World War  Two.
> > 
> > These  studies  suggest  that the average daily calorie supply in
> > China is  between  2,000  and  2,100  per  person.  Two  thousand
> > calories a day is the level of India, 2,100 is the norm in Pakis-
> > tan. Americans eat an average of 3,240 calories a day.  
> > 
> > But what makes these figures worse is that three fourths  of  the
> > protein  in  the  Chinese diet and five sixth of the calories are
> > derived from food grains like rice, wheat and corn,  rather  than
> > from  other richer and more varied sources like meat, fish, eggs,
> > vegetables, or sugar. In Asia only Bangladesh and  Laos  approach
> > these proportions.

BANGLADESH AND LAOS, Richard. Bangladesh and Laos.

> > Uneven distribution has compounded this shortage of food.  A Com-
> > munist  periodical  in  Hong  Kong disclosed in 1978, while I was
> > there, that the  annual  grain  ration  of  200  million  Chinese
> > peasants  was less than 330 pounds a year.  "That is to say", the
> > journal said, "they are living in a state of semistarvation".

		Jan Wasilewsky