From the very first day of its existence, this magazine marshaled around it noted personages from various walks of life. Apart from its founder, Soong Ching Ling (Mme. Sun Yat-sen), the editorial board was led by chairman Jin Zhonghua, famous social activist, and vice chairman Chen Hansheng, leader of world history and international political studies in China. Its writers were also mainly experts and noted personages in various fields.

In Praise of Peace

Mao Zedong,founder of the Republic of China, inspecting a factory

As an executive member of the World Peace Council and chairwoman of the liaison committee for peace in the Asia and Pacific regions, Soong Ching Ling was committed to world peace. She wrote in this magazine:

"The Peace Conference of the Asian and Pacific Regions has come to a most successful conclusion. Goodwill among peoples was the foundation stone of its success. Willingness to negotiate was the mortar which securely held together such a diverse and broad gathering. Of such materials was built a unity for peace which is without precedent in these regions and of great significance for the whole world.

The conference created solidarity among peoples long separated by distance and the events of history. In Peking, Latin American sat with Indian, Canadian with Burmese, American with Korean, Chinese with Middle Easterner, Japanese with Mongolian, Pakistani with New Zealander.

This important contribution which the Asian and Pacific regions have made to peace has infused all people with hope. It has strengthened their determination to meet every threat to humanity with resolute action. It has immensely sharpened the awareness, already increasing in many lands, that the danger of war has grown in recent months but that the people have the ability and the resources to change the course of events. It has enhanced the importance of the hundreds of millions of signatures already attached to the demands for banning all weapons of mass destruction, for a Five Power Pact, for control and reduction of armaments, for an end to remilitarization of Japan and West Germany, and the immediate cessation of all present wars. Above all, it has set the scene and the mood for one of the great events of this epoch, the People's Congress for Peace in Vienna.

These things represent the will of every decent person, no matter what his views or faith. This is the will which must be expressed in every conceivable way, and makes all paths lead to Vienna and the People's Congress for Peace. The people must guarantee that the work for peace leaps, in spirit and in essence, from Peking to Vienna, from Vienna to the next victory.

The people can and must save the peace!"

(From "To Vienna for Peace" by Soong Ching Ling, November-December, 1952.)

Safeguarding Democracy

The national election in 1953 was a great and unprecedented event in China. It indicated the participation in the administration of state affairs of hundreds of millions of Chinese, and their enthusiasm for building new China into a beautiful and prosperous country. The following article, written by Jin Zhonghua, first chairman of the editorial board of China Reconstructs, presents vividly to readers this great event.

In the elections, hundreds of millions of people have already begun to go to the polls. They will choose their own representatives to over 280 thousand people's congresses of the basic level mainly in the hsiang (villages) in which there is a deputy for every one or two hundred inhabitants. In subsequent rounds, deputies will be elected for the people's congresses of the 2,037 hsien (counties), the 30 provinces, the 153 major municipalities, the various national autonomous areas -- and finally for the National People's Congress.

The people's congresses will in turn elect the people's government of corresponding grades. The National People's Congress will adopt a national constitution, approve the outline of the first five-year plan and elect a new Central People's Government.

When the process is completed, organs of state power in China will become fully elective. The popular saying that gained currency after liberation, "We people have risen from our knees and are running our own house", will be truer than ever before. This will be the greatest extension of democracy, in terms of the number of people involved, ever to have occurred in human history.

(From "World's Biggest Election" by Ching Chung-hwa [Jin Zhonghua], July-August, 1953.)

The First Five-Year Plan

At the early stages of the People's Republic, in order to rid it of old China's legacy of poverty and weakness, the Chinese people began to construct their country according to set plans. The first Five-Year Plan, started in 1953, was therefore of epoch-making significance, and laid the foundations for China's future development of its industry and national defense. It was the cornerstone of China's socialist construction.

Work under China's First Five-Year Plan began in 1953, on a year-to-year basis. The complete plan was approved by the National People's Congress in July 1955. Its purpose is to lay the preliminary ground-work for socialism in both industry and agriculture.

The center of attention is heavy industry, which determines progress in every other field. This can readily be seen if we examine its connection with other fields, notably agriculture, in which the vast majority of the Chinese people are engaged. The very few mechanized state farms we have today have already impressed the peasants, and are inspiring them to look forward to an easier and better life. After seeing a Stalin-80 tractor on the Lutai State Farm near Tientsin, an 85-year-old peasant said, "Twenty oxen ploughing for a day can't do as much as this iron ox in one shift." But tractors and agricultural machinery are products of heavy industry. At the moment, China produces less steel than European Russia in 1913. Our output is only just under 8 lb. of steel per head of the population. Only when we can make the necessary machinery on a large scale can we have modern prosperous collective farming.

The emphasis, as has been said before, is on heavy industry, in which remarkable increases of production have already been achieved in the plan's first two years. Between 1952 and 1954, China's output of pig iron rose by 56 percent, of steel by 65 percent, of electric power by 51 percent, of coal by 26 percent, of crude oil by 84 percent, of cement by 61 percent and of machinery by 100 percent. China is already making 2,000 machine parts never manufactured in our country before. Chinese-made heavy machinery of different kinds, precision lathes, aircraft, motor lorries and tractors will be running off the production lines before the end of 1957. By that time the total output of heavy industry will be 2 1/4 times that of 1952.

(From "The First 5-Year Plan: What It Means" by Chen Han-seng [Chen Hansheng], October 1955)

Land Reform

A picture from the 1952 third issue of China Reconstructs depicting land reform. On the board is written: Poor peasant Wang Guiyuan is assigned 11 mu (0.73 hectare) of land.

Land is the lifeline of Chinese peasants. In feudal times, the majority of Chinese peasants were deprived of land, which, unless they found some way of obtaining it, was the only means by which they could become emancipated and start a new life. One of the central government's main priorities for the first few years of the People's Republic was implementation of land reform in China's vast countryside, so that emancipated peasants could own and work their own land as soon as possible.

On June 30, 1950, The Land Reform Law of the People's Republic of China was promulgated. It stipulated nullification of the old land ownership system, which was legalized feudal exploitation by the landlord class, and institutionalization of the system of land ownership by peasants, in order to emancipate rural productivity, develop agricultural production and open the way for the industrialization of new China. China Reconstructs published a series of reports on land reform. On the cover of its first issue was a picture of a group of happy peasants, shouldering farm tools that the government had allocated to them.

The aim of the great agrarian reform now being completed in China is to uproot the feudal land system that has a history of 2,500 years and to replace it with a system in which the tillers own the soil. Before the land reform, the landlords, who constituted only 5 percent of the rural population, owned between 50 to 60 percent of all agricultural land in the country. This unjust and oppressive situation, which was the main internal factor holding back China's progress, is now being wiped out. Now democracy has become real for the great formerly oppressed majority of the Chinese people.

For over two thousand years, Chinese peasants fought the landlords and demanded their just share of land. But it was not until thirty years ago, when they accepted the leadership of the Communist party, that they were able to take the road which has led to final victory over feudalism. In June 1950, eight months after it was founded, the Central People's Government promulgated the new Land Reform Law. In August it adopted the Decision Concerning Differentiation of Class Status in the Countryside.

The land reform is the fiercest as well as the last battle against feudalism in China. It is unprecedented in thoroughness, speed and effectiveness. It is led by the Communist Party and has the poor peasants and hired laborers as its main force. The reform consists of four steps. First, a deep study is made of conditions in one hsiang (an administrative unit comprising many villages) and a typical village within it. The second step is to ascertain the class status of the village people. The third step is the confiscation and redistribution of landlord holdings. The fourth and final step is the surrender of old title-deeds and evidences of debt which, after inspection, are burned in a public bonfire. In 1951 the land reform was completed among 320,000,000 people, or 80 percent of all who live in the Chinese countryside. In 1952 the process will be completed in all China with the exception of Taiwan and some regions inhabited by national minorities.

Immediately after the land reform, the peasants begin to work better and produce more. This further adds to rural purchasing power, the growth of which provides a sure foundation for China's industrialization. The significance of the land reform is by no means restricted to economics. Since both feudalism and imperialism are breeders of backwardness, poverty and war, our land reform represents a victory of vast proportions for political, economic and cultural progress, as well as for world peace.

(From "Land Reform Uproots Feudalism" by Chen Han-seng [Chen Hansheng], May-June 1952.)

People's Communes

A member of a people's commune on the front cover of the March 1958 issue.

Despite having land, the peasants could not rid themselves of poverty. They were still vulnerable to misfortune, such as natural disasters, or a family member being struck down by serious disease, or accident injury, and could, therefore, easily relapse into landlessness and poverty. Chinese state leaders, being familiar with the Chinese situation, guided peasants on to the road of mutual assistance and cooperation after the land reform, first organizing them into mutual assistance groups, then into primary cooperatives, later into high-class cooperatives, and finally into people's communes.

The people's commune system existed for 26 years in the rural areas of new China and influenced the lives of several generations of peasants, as well as the development of the Chinese countryside. It was the symbol of an era. This magazine carried over 60 reports on people's communes. The following is an extract from one of them.

This urban commune, founded in 1958, is a pioneer among the thousands that have now sprung up all over China. Universal for two years in the countryside, the people's communes, after an experimental period, are spreading rapidly to urban areas with their more complex problems. The creative tide of socialist construction and the communist spirit have overflowed into city lanes and alleys. Comparatively "stagnant corners" up to now, and among the last in the country, they too have become a scene of rapid fundamental change. Here the communes as a form of collective organization, besides serving as a bridge to the future communist society, are a means of transforming the towns inherited from the old exploiting order. Through them, China's new garden-cities are growing with great speed.

The 58 public dining halls are distributed in such a way that members need walk only a few minutes from their homes or places of work to take their meals. On the freshly whitewashed walls of the one on Shihfuchien Street, a typical establishment, there is a big slogan in red which reads, "High Spirits for Higher Production!" Its kitchen, to which the visitor is drawn by the aroma of food and the clatter of pots, is managed by Tu Hsiu-chen, the first volunteer cook, who has since learned large-scale catering from the chef at one of the city's restaurants.

The walls of the spacious dining room are decorated with paintings, as a home might be. Its tables and chairs, though simple, are scrubbed to a shining cleanliness. The food is fresh and tasty -- vegetables are grown by the commune itself. The staff make a special point of studying the diet and preferences of old people, children, nursing mothers and members with ailments. There is a separate room for parents with small children, provided with low tables for the little ones.

(From "Red Flag" -- A City People's Commune" by a team of China Reconstructs reporters, July 1960.)

The Fruits of Traditional Art

A scene from Peking Opera "Three Attacks on Chu Village."

This magazine is also committed to presenting Chinese art, culture, music, theater and film -- all of which have maintained the fine traditions of the Chinese nation as well as promoting the further development of new China, to the outside world. During its four decades as China Reconstructs, many accomplished personages from cultural, arts and scientific circles, such as Lao She, Mei Lanfang, Liang Sicheng, Hu Yuzhi, Liu Danian, Bai Shouyi, Zhou Gucheng, Wu Yuzhang, Zheng Zhenduo, Wu Zuoren, Zhu Kezhen, Hua Luogeng and Li Siguang, contributed articles to the magazine. Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang in particular wrote several articles on this traditional Chinese art form.

The classical Chinese theatre has a long history. It embodies, in drama form, many features of China's rich and ancient cultural heritage. Its technique has been perfected over many centuries. It is an art that is popular in origin and is still loved by the people of our country.

Because of these characteristics of the classical theatre, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs of the Central People's Government is helping us, who work in it, to accomplish the difficult task of making an art of the old society serve the people of the new. On the one hand, this involves building on the patriotic, progressive and democratic content which our repertory draws from its popular roots. On the other, it means removing the backward, reactionary overlay it acquired in feudal, and later in semi-colonial and semi-feudal China.

Among the newly written plays, Three Attacks on Chu Village, is the most successful, though it is not without flaws. It depicts an episode in the great Sung Dynasty peasant uprising which is described in the famous novel translated into English as All Men Are Brothers. We see on the stage not only the successive battles, with the cunning tactical ticks resorted to by both sides, but also the vivid contrast between correct and incorrect strategy, and the results of each.

The Chinese people have always loved the theatre, and audiences have always been very exacting in their criticism of performances. Playgoers who held actors in admiration, however, used to judge them mainly by technical skill. As for the ruling-class spectators who alone had access to the theatres in which the very best performers played, they hardly regarded actors as human beings. It would require volumes to tell of the discrimination, oppression and insults to human dignity suffered by men and women in our profession as a result of the place allotted them in the old society.

(From "Old Art with a New Future" by Mei Lan-fang, September-October 1952.)