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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 25. 25th September 1974

China's Position

China's Position

One of the best retorts to this notion, which was echoed indirectly by the USSR, was the speech by Huang Shu-tse of the Peoples Republic of China. He said, in part:

Drawing of a large man wearing a US tie being held up by workers

Imperialism — not the "population bomb" or the weather — causes starvation in the third world.

"The third world now has a population of nearly 3 billion, which is more than 70 percent of the world's population. How to see this fact in a correct light is the first thing we must be clear about. One superpower asserts outright that there is a 'population explosion' in Asia, Africa and Latin America and that a 'catastrophe to mankind' is imminent.

"The other superpower, while pretending at some conferences to be against Malthusianism, makes the propaganda blast that 'rapid population growth is a millstone around the neck of the developing countries.' If (these fallacies are) not refuted, there will be no correct point of departure in any discussion on the world population. . . .

"Is it owing to overpopulation that unemployment and poverty exist in many countries of the world today? No, absolutely not. It is mainly due to aggression, plunder and exploitation by the imperialists, particularly the superpowers. . . . What a mass of figures they have calculated in order to prove that population is too large, the food supply too small and natural resources insufficient!

"But they never calculate the amount of natural resources they have plundered, the social wealth they have grabbed and the superprofits they have extorted from Asia, Africa and Latin America. If an account were made of their exploitation, the truth with regard to population problems would at once be out. Their multitude of population statistics will not help them a bit either.

"The average population to a square kilometer is only 12 in Africa and 15 in Latin America. Although population density in the developing countries of Asia is a bit higher, it is nonetheless lower than that in the developed countries of Western Europe.

"How can it be said then that the have-not countries are poor because of overpopulation? They claim that poverty can be overcome by reducing the rate of population growth. If so, why are there still so many jobless and underfed people in the two superpower countries where the rate of population growth is relatively low and the population density fairly small?"

Huang Shu-tse added: "Social imperialism asserts that 'only economic development with my aid can solve your population problem.' This is a ruse. It goes without saying that economic development is necessary for a country to emerge from poverty and solve its population problems. The point is that what social-imperialism calls 'economic development'. . .can only mean intensified control and plunder of the third world countries, with the consequent aggravation of their unemployment and poverty."

The USSR received so much criticism that, according to the Associated Press, when Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin talked with Russell Peterson, chairman of the President's Council on Environmental Quality, "the two men bantered about which of their countries was receiving more 'battering' at the hands of the developing nations represented at the UN World Population Conference."

Altogether some 3000 delegates representing nearly every country in the world attended the conference. The final draft declaration represents a victory for the world's peoples. In essence, it calls for bettering people's lives rather than for less lives.

Photo of people working with bags

Peoples Republic of China conquered its hunger problem with socialist revolution.