Sunday, 20 November

Guo Defeng and Zhongxiong said in a building in Montparnasse there is a restaurant for rent, and the monthly rent is just over sixty thousand francs. Kitty wanted to take it. Therefore in the afternoon we went to have a look. Both the site and decoration were fine. Defeng said that he could cooperate with Zhongxiong. I also agreed.

This time, Soviet leaders, Bulganin and Khrushchev, have visited India. This visit certainly affects the Far East. The Soviet Union had recognised that the period of using force to struggle had elapsed, and from now political and economic struggles should take their place. Therefore, to India and those countries in the East which had been suppressed by western imperialism, Soviet Russia has expressed sympathy and willingness to help with their construction, and so on. India is a country which was backward in industrial development and its living standard quite low. What it needs most urgently now is industrial construction. The plan of Nehru is naturally similar to the livelihood policy as stated in The International Development of China by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, which is national socialism. Therefore, when Nehru drafted the second Five-year Plan for India, he hoped to boost national production by twenty-five per cent, and in these five years ₤4,725 million would be needed for construction. The national administrative expenditure amounts to ₤2,400 million with a shortfall of ₤750,000,000. An increase in the issuance of bank notes could alleviate a part of this, but ₤675,000,000 more is still needed. Such an amount cannot be met by so-called assistance from Britain, the United States, and so on. (Financial assistance from the United States to India is only 40,000,000 dollars.) Therefore, the Soviet Union expressed to India its willingness to help with their construction; something that it could do while the United States could not. Also, the Soviet Union has expressed its will in a manner such as friends, with Soviet leaders travelling to India on their own, expressing their concerns. This is totally unlike American assistance to other countries, where the attitude is like giving money to beggars. Naturally oriental countries would welcome the Soviet Union, and the influence of the latter would not be limited to India only. The so-called political leaders of the United States and Britain were absolutely devoid of vision. I was afraid that they would end in failure.