INTRODUCING "CHINA RECONSTRUCTS"

Wherever you live, we wish you and your country a happy and peaceful year in 1952.

As our New Year gift, we send you the first issue of CHINA RECONSTRUCTS. The purpose of CHINA RECONSTRUCTS is to present the work and achievements of the Chinese people to people abroad who believe that all nations should cooperate for peace and mutual benefit.

The magazine will appear every two months - six issues a year. As its name indicates, it will concentrate on reporting reconstruction and new construction in our country and the changes that have come into the lives of our citizens. It will give up-to-date information on what China is doing to solve social, economic and cultural problems - both old and new. It will describe the nature and work of our educational and welfare services - and our relief activities based on self-help, so long as the need for relief continues.

As practically everybody now knows and even the ill-disposed can no longer deny in the face of mounting facts, China has moved ahead tremendously in the two years since our People's Government was established.

Weak and divided for many decades, our country has become united from the borders of Siberia to the borders of Burma and Viet-Nam, from the Pacific shoreline to the middle of Asia.

Long racked by malignant inflation which brought ruin to agriculture and urban occupations alike, China now has a stable price level and a nationwide economy that serves all the people. Our factories, both publicly and privately owned, are busy supplying tools and consumer goods to the peasants, 80 per cent of our population. Our villages, in their turn, are sending ample food to the cities. For the first time in 73 years, we have a favourable balance of foreign trade.

Up to two years ago, China had to import food, yet many people were hungry. Now, with the land reform, with constantly increasing production, and improved communications speeding up distribution, our people are eating well. We have even been able to ship rice to fill the needs of our neighbour, India.

Moreover, events have proved that China is now a strong country. She is strong enough to defend what has already been done and to ensure further progress along the lines that have already yielded such fruits. She is strong enough to repel all attempts to turn back the clock.

CHINA RECONSTRUCTS will chronicle the life of the Chinese people in authoritative articles, vivid features, representative photographs, drawings and charts. It will relate how difficulties are overcome and problems are solved. It will report on our resurgent art, literature, music, drama and cinema - on works that embody our best national traditions and our new experiences.

CHINA RECONSTRUCTS will introduce you to some of the people who are helping to build the nation, the rank-and-file men and women who are the makers and motive power of our progress. It will report how old and young, workers, peasants, scholars, scientists and professionals, industrialists and businessmen, people of various religious beliefs and no religion, of various political parties and of no party, are cooperating in tasks that benefit all.

In placing this first issue in your hands, we want you, the reader, to feel that CHINA RECONSTRUCTS exists to serve your needs. If you have questions, write us about them. If you have criticisms or suggestions, let us know. We welcome praise too - but most of all we want to know how we may help fill gaps in your knowledge of the fields we cover. That is the way we hope to bring closer the peoples of China and the countries where our readers reside.

Once again, we wish you a year of advance toward peace.

THE EDITORIAL BOARD