in case of war and enemy occupation, when only guerrilla resistance would be possible.  In the same year, aggressive actions against offshore, Nationalist-held islands increased.  China may have believed that war with the United States was imminent.  Perhaps as a result of Russian talks with China, a detente followed in 1959, but so too did increased tension between Russia and China, while the results of the Great Leap and its policies proved catastrophic.  The years 1961-64 provided a needed respite from the failures of the Great Leap.  Farmers regained limited rights to income from private efforts, and improved farm techniques such as better seed and the use of fertilizer began to produce results.  China can now feed her population in normal years.

Chinese leaders realize that an improved level of living is difficult to attain while the birth rate remains high.  They have hesitated to adopt a family-planning policy, which would fly in the face of Marxist doctrine, although for a short period family planning was openly recommended.  Their most efficient method of limiting the birth rate has been to recommend postponement of marriage.

First the limitation of private enterprise and business and then the nationalization of all important businesses following the completion of land reform deprived many employers as well as small shopkeepers of an occupation.  But the new industries could not absorb all of the labor that suddenly became available.  When rural youth inundated the cities in search of employment, the government returned the excess urban population to die countryside and recruited students and other urban youth to work on farms.  Reeducation camps in outlying areas also provided cheap farm labor.

The problem facing China or any nation that modernizes and industrializes in the twentieth century can be simply stated.  Nineteenth-century industry needed large masses of workers which only the rural areas could supply; and, with the development of farming methods, the countryside could afford to send its youth to the cities.  Twentieth-century industry, on the other hand, needs technicians and highly qualified personnel, often with college degrees, but few unskilled workers.  China has traditionally employed human labor where machines would have been cheaper and more efficient, simply because labor was available and capital was not.  But since, with the growth of modern industry and modern farming, the problem will arise again, the policy of employing urban youth on farms is shortsighted.

The labor force also increased as a result of the “liberation” of women, in which the marriage law of April 1950 was the first step.  Nationalist China had earlier created a modern and liberal marriage law; moreover, women were never the slaves that they have sometimes been painted.  In many parts of China, long before the Pacific War, women worked in the fields with their husbands.  Elsewhere they worked in secondary agricultural industries (weaving,