RECOGNITION OF RED CHINA

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 45, 3 December 1949, Page 2

RECOGNITION OF RED CHINA

great blow to world peace

TOKIO, December 2,

British recognition of Communist China would be as great a blow to world peace as the Munich Agreement of 1938, said the United States Senator, William Knowland. Senator Knowland, who has just completed a month’s tour of the Far East, urged the ending of appeasement in China. General MacArthur, h'e said, should :be appointed as United States High Commissioner in the Far East to coordinate the stiffening of anti-Commu-nist economic and defence policy. Business interests must not dictate Unified States policy in China, he added. Opening trade with the Communist regime would be just like the shipping of scrap iron and oil to Japan before Pearl Harbour. The United States could not dictate to Britain, but when Congress met on January 3 he would recommend a fulldress debate on Marshal aid and Army appropriations in the light of Far Eastern developments.

The time had come for action in China—not Notes, Senator Knowland continued. The United States should embark' on a programme of all-out aid to Nationalist China to hold Formosa, Hainan and some areas on the mainland. “If all China falls, it will not be possible to save South-east Asia. Burma, Indo-China, Siam and Malaya would be taken from within,” he declared.

Formosa Not Vital

The American joint Chiefs of Staff are reported to have decided that Formosa was not of vital strategic importance to the United States, and the State Department is prepared to see the island lost to the Chinese Communists, states the Washington correspondent of the “Herald Tribune.” The joint Chiefs of Staff are said to feel that the possession of military bases at Okinawa and in the Philippines is sufficient for- the strategic needs of that area and doubt whether Formosa could be saved at this late hour without the risk of war.