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Through centralized planning and supervision, factories have been established to give them the greatest advantages of location from the standpoints of not only markets and sources of supply, but what is most important, the standpoint of National Defense. Among the new industries developed since the war are large iron and steel works, smelting plants for vaious kinds of minerals, as well as the manufacturing of machinery, machine tools, electrical supplies, motors, radios and other urgently needed products. Several chemical works have also been built. These include large alcohol and vegetable oil cracking plants, which are capable of producing gasoline, kerosene, fuel oil and their substitutes.

It may be of interest to point out that many of the factories in the interior are equipped with machinery, which was removed or salvaged from the war affected areas in the coastal provinces. This is especially true of the silk filatures and textile mills, which formerly converged around Shanghai and are now operating in the interior. Altogether about one hundred thousand tons of industrial machinery were physically transplanted from the coast to the inland, and with the machinery also went the skilled labor to operate it.

Chinese Industrial Co-Operatives

The program of industrialization has been vastly aided by the movement of Chinese Industrial Co-Operatives. This movement began in the summer of 1938, and has already demonstrated its importance not only as an industrial scheme but also as a relief project for the war refugees. The scheme is to train the refugees and the destitute local people in industries by enabling them to work on a co-operative basis. Already two thousand Co-Operatives have been set up supporting a quarter of a million people.