Last fall, the Government launched an economic retrenchment program, and all over China, enterprises were suffering from shortages of cash and raw materials.

China's retrenchment program, with its emphasis on greater central planning, has slowed growth to 4 percent last year from double digits a year earlier.

It was a foregone conclusion that Haslam would for the second time in his career find himself 'pitch-forked' into a retrenchment programme.

The Central Committee meeting also issued a list of 39 economic measures to be followed as part of the retrenchment program.

In the economic retrenchment program that began throughout the country more than a year ago, the Government has often alluded to the campaign to control rural collectives and private enterprises.

These are times of thrift, with the national economic retrenchment program well along, and as economic growth slows there is only so much prosperity to go around.

"At this rate, no matter how the Government adjusts, the economic retrenchment program would fail to achieve its purpose," it said.

The retrenchment program will stress the need to reduce inflation, control investment and consumer spending, and increase roads and bridges and energy production, officials say.

These donors prescribed retrenchment programs to prevent the total collapse of the cotton industry.

New Sources of Earnings China's retrenchment program already is stunting growth on the mainland and the economy in Hong Kong has slowed as well.