CHINA TURMOIL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 264, 20 August 1949, Page 5

CHINA TURMOIL

SHANGHAI EVACUATED (12.5 p.m.) HONG KONG, Aug. 19. The Chinese Government has agreed to allow the steamer General Gordon to enter Shanghai to evacuate American nationals, says the official Central Newsagency. The Nationalists recently closed all Communist-held ports to shipping. A Cdnton message says that 50 per cent, of Government civil servants already have been evacuated from Canton to Chungking or Formosa. Another 30 per cent, are said to be going in the next few days. The remainder, however, will stay as long as possible. Battle news to-day is that the Communists are within 30 miles of Lanchow, provincial capital of Mansu Province. In Eastern Hunan, the Communists are reported to have captured Anjen, 45 miles from Hengyang. EVACUATION OF CANTON lIONG KONG, August 19. Though there is no panic yet, the evacuation of Canton has begun, but unlike 1938 when the poprilace fled before the Japanese, * the colony does not anticipate an acute refugee problem. This time the evacuees are moneyed Chinese and foreigners. Twenty Communist armies have been thrown into the Central China front, according to a Chinese Government military spokesman. On paper the- armies would total approximately 600,000 men, but in fact they totalled little more than 300,000, he said. Sickness and large-scale desertions were responsible for this. The spokesman added that many of the troops, who surrendered to the Communists in- Peiping, had crossed back to the Nationalists or returned home. The Communists in Central China were not numerically superior to the Government forces

Reports that the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (Mr Mao Tse-tung) had died were indirectly quashed by the Peiping radio, which stated that Mr Mao had sent a telegram to the officers and men who recently revolted against the Nationalists in Changsha, telling them to prepare for reorganisation into the People’s Liberation Army.

NATIONALISTS' BLOCKADE EFFECT ON BRITISH INTERESTS SHANGHAI, August 19. The British-owned “North China Daily NewA’ the only independent foreign newspaper in China, in an editorial to-day called on the British Government “to take every possible step” to end the Nationalist blockade. It described the blockade as a ridiculous, costly development which should have been nipped in the bud at the outset. The editorial is generally regarded as reflecting the views of leading British commercial interests in Shanghai: After stating that the blockade? was having 'no military effect on the activities of the liberation armies, the editorial said that the British community, which was entitled to expect its Government to do something, about it, had up to the present seen nothing effected which was at all apparent. “No vessels in appreciable numbers are bringing goods of normal commerce to this port, and the British and other foreign communities are meeting huge losses which would otherwise be financed by trade,” it said. It is reliably reported that the British community is contemplating direct representations to Whitehall urging effective measures to overcome the blockade.

The Panamanian freighter, Moldova, of 4500 tons, carrying copper wire and general cargo from Japan, sailed from Yokohama on August 16 in an attempt to run the Nationalist blockade. The Moldova is making for Taku bar outside Tientsin, which was reported recently to be intensively patrolled by Nationalist gun-boats.