HUNGRY ASIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 650, 14 December 1951, Page 13

HUNGRY ASIA

ASIA AND THE WEST, by Maurice Zinkin, | issued under the auspices of the International | Secretariat Institute of Pacific Relations; ‘| Chatto and Windus, : ‘Hs symposium of potted blue books is written by an ex-civil servant of | British India. In these days it is just as | well to have.at one’s elbow a few facts about India, Japan, China, Burma, Thai-

land, Malaya, Indo-China, the Philippines and Indonesia. There’s much to be gained from studying some of these figures. It has been drummed into us all that Asia is in revolt, but it is not always clearly stated just why. This book emphasises that the crisis is one of underproduction, under-employment, stagnation, over-population and worsening poverty. The logic of the figures is as horrid and as death-dealing as the bomb om Hiroshima. No amount of rearming, neither curtains nor ideologies can by themselves ease the peristaltic pain of hunger, or turn aside its drive for more to eat. In India and Pakistan there has been an increase in cultivated land of 12 million acres (5 per cent.) since 1880. During this time, the population increased by 130 million (66 per cent.). Where there was 1 1-5th acres per head, now there is only 2-5ths of an acre. Yet in 1941, only 4 per cent. of the population were engaged in industry as against 542 per cent. in 1911, Mr. Zinkin considers that China is shaping her economy one way and India another. They. aré the two key colintries whom the rest will watch and judge by results. "He also asserts that "General 'MacArthur’s claim to have made Japan a real democracy already is only a use-. ful propaganda exaggeration." However, it is for his figures rather than for his comments that I recommend this book.

Tom

Garland