News from China

[Cataphrak]

Guangzhou, March 19th, 1976
GUOMINDANG SEIZES MAJORITY, NEW PREMIER PROMISES HARD LINE ON INT'L TERRORISM, INTERIOR DEVELOPMENT

With 99.5% of results now in, it has become clear that this years elections have delivered a result that many commentators on the left had feared: a Guomindang majority after a decade of Socialist governments.

However, if newly elected Premier Zhang Gongming's policy platform is anything to go by, this resurgent Guomindang is nothing like the party which last held power under Du Yuming. Indeed, the new government pledges not only to continue the previous administration's public health and social development projects, but to also embark on an ambitious project to restore the topsoil of the Yellow Earth Plateau, as part of a bid to reduce poverty, raise incomes, and bring a level of stability to the chronically restive interior region.

In other areas, this new Guomindang administration bears more continuity with the party's past. The new Premier has pledged to take an aggressive stance against "Terrorism, Stalinism-Maoism, and Fascism, wherever it may be found." Rumours of a new Foreign Intelligence service and closer ties with China's TOEBEANS allies are also in the offing, as well as a series of sweeping administrative reforms which may considerably curtail the autonomy of the provincial assemblies.

[Cataphrak]

Guangzhou, October 14th, 1976
CENTRAL GOVERNMENT RELEASES FIRST PUBLIC BUDGET

As part of its push to bring "transparency and honesty to governance", the Central Government has released what it promises to be the first of many annual public budgets. While the Control Yuan has traditionally published unclassified summaries of annual budgets in past years, this is the first time that a full accounting of the central government's expenditures and revenues has been released to the general public.

As for the budget itself, some readers may be surprised to note the relatively small proportion of government funding devoted to military spending (about 35 billion Yuan, or about 1.1% of GDP) despite items including several major equipment upgrade and modernisation programmes. Others might be gratified to see major expenditures include the industrial development programmes promised in the GMD's election platform, including the much-touted Yellow Earth Plateau Restoration Project.

As usual, of course, confidential military projects are omitted by name, though the Control Yuan and the office of the Premier have claimed that such expenditures are "still included in the bottom line and folded somewhere into the defence budget."