p China had found it possible to build up a complex modern industrial system against the odds of a backward economy, a narrow market and limited accumulation base during the five-year period owing to all-round assistance from the industrial socialist countries, particularly, the USSR, which had signed a number of economic and credit agreements with the PRC on very easy terms (10-15 year credits at an interest rate of only 1 per cent).

p Under a 1950 agreement, the Soviet Union pledged itself to help China rehabilitate, reconstruct and build anew 50 enterprises worth a total of $300 million. Under 116 agreements signed from 1950 to 1956, the USSR agreed to help China build 211 complete enterprises, construction on 145 of these to be started in the first five-year period. These and other projects being designed with Soviet assistance were to involve 11,000 million yuans’ worth of investment, or 44.3 per cent of total industrial appropriations. Indeed, in the first five-year period, the USSR helped to start the construction of 156 enterprises and shops, among these 12 coal, 29 electric power, 17 metallurgical, 8 petrochemical, 26 metalworking, 1 paper-making, 1 textile and 1 food projects. By the end of the period, 68 of these had been started (56 fully and 12 in part), instead of the target figure of 45.

p In 1958 and 1959, the Soviet Union agreed to the PRG Government’s request to design and deliver, from 1959 to 1967, 125 major enterprises to a cost of 5,000 million rubles.^^12^^ Most of these, like the Tsuehfan, Yitu and Hsichang metallurgical combines with productive capacities of more than 4 million tons of steel a year, were unique. The Sanhsia hydroelectric power station was to have had the world’s first Soviet-designed 500,000 kw turbo-generators. By 1967, the final year of the third five-year period, industrial capacities to be launched with Soviet assistance were to have totalled 28.7 million tons for pig iron, 30 million tons for steel, 25 million tons for rolled metals, 11.2 million kw for electric power, 106 million tons for coal, 8.8 million tons for refined oil, 738,000 tons for aluminium, 60,000 tons for synthetic rubber, 240,000 tons for heavy machine equipment, 42,000 units for tractors, and 1.5 million tons for chemical fertilisers. In some instances, these capacities would have provided even more than the target production figures for 1967.

p But China’s Maoist leaders, whose adventurist “great leap forward" plunged the country into economic turmoil and who in 1960 decided to take the line of aggravating their political relations and cutting back their economic links with the USSR, refused to build many of the enterprises provided for under the agreements with the USSR and other socialist countries. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union helped China to build and launch complete enterprises with a capacity of 8.7 million tons of pig iron, 8.4 million tons of steel, 6.5 million tons of rolled metal, 17.2 million tons of coal, 38,000 tons of aluminium, 60,000 tons of heavy engineering goods, 117 42,000 tractors, 30,000 cars, and so on, and also delivered steam and hydroelectric turbines with a capacity of 1.7 million kw and generators with a capacity of 0.6 million kw.

p In the early 1960s, these enterprises were producing a sizable share of China’s industrial products: 30 per cent of the pig iron, 40 per cent of the steel, 50 per cent of the rolled metals, 80 per cent of the cars, more than 90 per cent of the tractors, 25 per cent of the electric power and 55 per cent of the hydroturbines. Soviet credits for these enterprises were something like 2,000 million rubles in terms of foreign currency.

p Besides delivering complete enterprises, the Soviet Union also sold China on credit and in exchange for other goods large quantities of producer goods, like equipment, machinery, semi-manufactures and raw materials required in industry. According to Soviet foreign-trade figures for 1950-60, out of trade totalling 12,800 million rubles, China imported 6,600 million rubles’ worth of goods, which included 1,600 million rubles’ worth of complete plant, 1,500 million—of incomplete equipment and machinery, and 600,000—of other means of production. Soviet deliveries included 10,000 metal-cutting lathes, hundreds of units of forge-and-press equipment, cranes and excavators, thousands of steam and diesel electric-power stations, drilling machines, tractors and passenger cars, more than 100,000 trucks, about 3 million tons of rolled ferrous metals, more than 13 million tons of oil products and many other types of machinery, equipment and raw materials.

p Besides supplying China with complete plant and equipment on credit, the socialist countries, the USSR in particular, did a great deal of design work for China, handed over many design projects free of charge and helped it in its scientific and technical research, as, for instance, in the peaceful uses of atomic energy.

p Thus, from 1954 to 1963, the Soviet Union handed over to China more than 24,000 sets of technical documents, among these 1,400 projects for large enterprises. On the basis of these, the Chinese designed more than 400 large and 159 small and medium-size enterprises, and started turning out hundreds of new lines of products. More than 50 per cent of the output in engineering, 85 per cent of all new 118 machine-tools in particular, were being made under Soviet licences.

p The Soviet Union also helped China to start fabrication of complete plant for electric-power lines, grids, and stations, and for the metallurgical, mining and chemical industries, and also to produce complete machine-tools and forge-andpress equipment for engineering, various plant for locomotive and freight-car plants, shipyards, and so on.

p The Soviet Union aimed to have all the projects it had constructed put in operation, but unfortunately, in 1965, the Chinese Government, bent on stoking up the anti-Soviet campaign to show the Chinese people that the economic chaos resulting from the “great leap forward" was due to the Soviet Union, finally refused all Soviet assistance in completing a number of building projects (like the Sanmenhsia hydroelectric power station), so doing much harm to the deployment and launching of China’s industrial capacities. Still, no one will deny the fact that a sizable part of China’s industrial facilities operating in 1965 and 1966 was built with fraternal Soviet assistance.

p The socialist countries were granting large amounts of assistance for rapid economic development with a view to its being used in the common interests of the whole socialist camp, the interests of struggle against imperialism so as to overtake capitalism in economic terms in the shortest possible period, and to consolidate the political and ideological superiority and ensure the final victory of socialism and communism over capitalism.

Subsequent events showed, however, that the nationalist elements in the CPC leadership meant to use the socialist countries’ fraternal assistance for a very different purpose, namely, to establish a powerful all-round industrial system aiming at a complete break with the socialist community and capable of providing the material basis for their GreatPower hegemonistic policy.