The Press THURSDAY, JUNE 23,1966. Rising Rate Demands

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31093, 23 June 1966, Page 12

The Press THURSDAY, JUNE 23,1966. Rising Rate Demands

Faced with a growing wages bill and no diminution of the demands on it for works and services, the Christchurch City Council had no practicable alternative to increasing its rates this year. It has done well in keeping the increase to 7.1 per cent. Other cities have also been forced to levy more this year; and Christchurch ratepayers can take some comfort from the fact that they will be meeting a smaller increase than most The general rate, which takes the major share of the council’s total levy, is for the first time more than £1 million. This year, because of unseasonable weather pushing up the quarterly power bill, the Municipal Electricity Department was unable to help. Last year it transferred £40,000 to the relief of general rates. The danger of relying on this expedient has been pointed out in the past: and the transfers have caused bad feeling in neighbouring Waimairi county, which is supplied with power from the city.

A reduction in the special rate to meet loan charges helped the civic budget. The airport, which has made no call on the general rates for a number of years, for the second time met its own interest charges: and it is pleasing to see a fine civic undertaking paying its way. But when the rate demands go out with the Drainage and Transport Boards’ demands added, many ratepayers will face a steep increase. Those in the older sewered area of the city will be hardest hit because of the Drainage Board’s consolidation of loan rating areas. This was a sensible move too long delayed: but it will bring home to many just how great a burden rates have become. Some relief has been secured in the Government grant in lieu of rates on Crown properties—an estimated £25,000 this year—but it is not enough. A Royal Commission some years ago proposed a greater measure of government aid to local bodies; and through their associations local bodies have pressed hard for this to be put into effect, so far without success. The alternative is a citizen’s tax, an idea to which the Government has been equally unreceptive. It is time something was done. It would be particularly welcomed in Christchurch by those affected most by the Drainage Board’s increase. Unfortunately, many of them are in old homes and among the people least able to afford an added burden. Fruit Cake For U.S.A. The expectations of Ernest Adams, Ltd., of selling their fruit cake in the United States must rank among the most remarkable results of the New Zealand trade mission to the United States. Although the quality of the company’s products is widely recognised in New Zealand, the idea of importing Californian raisins, baking them in what may be quite prodigious quantities of cake, shipping it across the Pacific, and selling it in California has an air of audacious enterprise. But when the United States is already importing cake from England, Ireland, and Australia and a New Zealand manufacturer finds that the quality, price, and packaging of his product compare favourably with others in a highly-competitive and well-served market, his enterprise in attempting to break into the market deserves congratulation. On this mission the company has disposed of doubts about the interest that American buyers might show in its product; and this puts it well on the way to becoming a valuable, if unexpected, contributor to New Zealand's food exports. No Change In China There is a schism in the monolithic structure of the Chinese Communist Party. This much is clear from the dismissal of the Mayor of Peking, Mr Peng Chen, from his post as secretary of the Peking party. What is not clear is the extent of the split and its cause; but the current campaign against writers and intellectuals, the discovery of an “anti-party group of “ monsters and devils ”, and the close involvement of the Army in the purge suggest that it is both wide and deep. When the campaign began it was seen as little more than a symptom of the ageing Mr Mao Tsetung’s insistence on purifying China ideologically before he gives up his post as party chairman or dies. There was also the possibility of tensions arising in the leadership when the man who has dominated the party for 30 years is ailing, though the chances of a serious crisis arising over the leadership seemed unlikely.

But the campaign took a much sharper turn on the dismissal of Mr Peng, who was ranked an effective sixth in China’s politburo and who had been mentioned not infrequently as a possible successor to Mr Mao. Mr Peng was an unlikely sort of conspirator; but in Peking the city party is closely linked with China’s intellectual and political leaders. “ Local “ party men ”, the “ Economist ” says, “ take a subtler “ and more critical approach to party policies than “ is taken by the propaganda directed at the illiterate “ masses ”. Certainly the party’s economic and political policies were subjected to sharper criticism in Peking than elsewhere four years ago; and the critics have been slow to recant. Mr Peng’s crime may be no more than an oversight, an act of omission, in failing to subdue or correct writers and intellectuals who have resisted total surrender to Maoist orthodoxy. But the extent—and the shrillness —of the current campaign suggest that the voices in Peking actively questioning a foreign policy that has isolated China from almost every country in the world of any significance have been echoed in other parts of the country and in the Army.

Certainly there is cause for criticism at home. The alliance with Russia has been strained to the point where it can no longer be taken for granted that even an American attack on China would invite Soviet retaliation. China has been rebuffed by tiny Cuba and by nearly every new nation in Africa. Communist parties throughout the world, with the exception of Albania and the rump of the Japanese and New Zealand parties, have lined themselves up firmly with Moscow. Chinese influence in Indonesia has been banished; and American determination to hold South Vietnam at almost any cost has wrecked Chinese hopes of exporting revolution throughout South-east Asia. These setbacks, together with the priorities of the third five-year plan, of which no details have yet been divulged, have undoubtedly caused criticisms quite unconnected with “revisionism” or with any tensions that may be arising over the future leadership. But in the minds of China’s leaders, criticism now seems to be equated with “ revisionism ”or “ opportunism ”, or both. It may be months before the extent of the purge, and its real purpose, emerge; but it is clear now that if there has been a real attempt to soften China’s rigid policies, it has failed. Those who had hoped that Mr Mao’s departure would, like the death of Stalin in Russia, mark the beginning of a slow thaw may have longer to waif than they expect. ’’