THE SITUATION IN CHINA

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21967, 16 December 1936, Page 7

THE SITUATION IN CHINA

TO THE EDITOB Of THE PRESS Sir,—lt is interesting at this juncture, now that the rule of Chiang-Kai-shek is menaced, to comment upon the extraordinarily spontaneous growth ot the Ccmmunist party of China, which was formed in the early '2o's by a few persons and commanded a membership at the beginning of last year of about half a million. Also, with the advance of the revolutionary struggle on behalf of the peasarts and workers, this great party has organised a Red Army numbering more than 1,000,000, while the extension of territory of the Soviet districts includes a population of 100,000,000 people. Your correspondent, "C.F.S." states that more than 1,000,000 have been killed by the Kuomintang in its endeavour to annihilate subversive action against it. And yet can it be wondered at under the appalling conditions the people are subjected to, when the employed worker? lead a miserable existence, thousands and tens of thousands of unemployed, both workers and intellectuals, are dying of hunger, and artisans and other strata of the population are being completely ruined and pauperised. Suicides have assumed mass proportions. For example, according to statistical data published in foreign and Chinese bourgeois newspapers, 6,000,000 people committed suicide in Kuomintang China during last year. And. yet your leading article deprecates the tragedy that may ensure by the deposing of Chiang-Kai-shek, who has unceasingly betrayed his people by capitulation to the Japanese demands. The present

crisis is the fruition of the Communist party's demand for the formation of a united front against the incursion of the predatory Japanese imperialists, not "the irresponsible ambitions of local war-lords." —Yours, etc., WORKER. December 15, 1936.