CHINA SUPPRESSES LIBERAL GROUPS

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23415, 23 August 1941, Page 8

CHINA SUPPRESSES LIBERAL GROUPS

FAR EAST

BOSTON, July 3. The National Salvationists and other small groups—hovering on the political periphery, between China s ruling Kuomintang Party and the Communjs t s _have been hard hit by Chinas current wave of political suppression. The usual news. reports deal only with the broader outlines of internal affairs in China. But besides the Kuomintang, the only legal party, and the Communists, who de facto hold tne balance of power in North China, a number of minor parties have a finger in China’s political pie: the National Socialists (not Nazi), the China Youth Party, and the Third or Social Democratic Party. . . . . These parties exist in a hazy legal twilight possible only in China. Their members have not been arrested since the war, at least not until recently, and some are even delegates to the People’s Political Council. But these parties have no headquarters, cannot recruit new members, and cannot publicise their views. More important than any of these minor parties is the National Salvation Association, even though it is ■ not a political party and has made no attempt to secure office. The association was started in June, 1936, to combat the Kuomintang’s policy of appeasing Japan. It put forth as a programme: resistance to further Japanese aggression, cessation of the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists. introduction of civil liberties, a measure of democracy, and certain social reforms. It grew rapidly and spread widely in China, in spite of official opposition, it organised professors, students, .writers, lawyers, even officials, Army officers, and businessmen. It is now generally recognised rs one of the major forces which compelled the Kuomintang to stiffen its foreign policy against Japan. The arrest of seven National Salvation leaders by the Central Government in the fall of 1936 created the chief political issue of the day. Their release was one of the demands of the Sian rebels who “kidnapped” Chiang Kai-shek that December. Seven Leaders Freed

The seven leaders were freed in August, 1937, a month after the outbreak of war. The Association came out from underground, grew rapidly, started publications, engaged in war work. It organised the Mobilisation Committee in Shanghai to help the soldiers at the front. Its magazine, Resistance, edited by Chou Tao-feng, one of the seven leaders, soon attained a circulation of 100,000; the matrices were flown to Hankow for a second edition. The Life Book Company, the association’s publishing organ, started 40-odd bookshopvS throughout the country where could be bought liberal and Leftist books banned for years.

The programme of the association remained the same: resistance till victory, maintenance of national unity, political and social reforms. The group considered itself a mean between the conservatism 1 of the Kuomintang and the radicalism of the Communists. Many consider it China’s closest approximation to western liberalism. Most of its members came from China’s middle class. The National Salvationists knew they were in for trouble in the spring of 1938 when the Government suppressed the militant student movement, which originated for the same purposes and in similar circumstances as the association. The student movement was crushed by the simple ex-

[By HUGH DEANE] (Published by Arrangement with the "Christian Science Monitor")

pedient of forcing all youth organise tions to register with the Government, Registrations were hard to secure. Since then, political repression hai ebbed and flowed. The current tide started long before the attack by the Kuomintang forces on their erstwhile allies, the Communist New Fourth Army. In the summer and fall of 1949 an increasing number of political arrests were made. Life bookshops closed, censorship tightened. In October, the Government announced that the oft-postponed constitutional assembly, scheduled to convene on November 12, was once more to be deferred. On November 1, new censorship regulations were promulgated, according to which every article, short story, or poem appearing in any periodical must first receive the censor’s chop. In December a new police regulation in Chungking restricted political meetings and conferences. Noted Economist Gaoled In December, Ma Yin-chu, perhaps China’s best known economist, was arrested in Chungking for criticising the Government’s economic policy. Ironically enough, the open sale in 1937 ol Ma’s “China’s Economic Reconstruction,” which the Kuomintang previously had suppressed at the instance of the Japanese, had been hailed as an indication of the growing freedom of the press in China. Officially Ma was not arrested, but sent “on an inspection tour of the front.” Actually he is in Kweiyang with such other illustrious prisoners as Chang Hsueh-liatjg, the Young Marshal who once ruled Manchuria, and Yang Hu-cheng, leaders of the Sian Affair. Ma's student! have agitated for his release; the Chancellor resigned in protest. On February 12, Ma’s birthday, his student! openly sent him a telegram of congratulations. Simultaneously with the New Fourth, Incident in January, the attack on dissident groups went into high gear. It is estimated that within a month 700 political arrests had been made, Communists, Leftists, National Salvationists, and unattached liberals or unorthodox thinkers of one sort or another. All arrests are secret, are made without warrant and by a number of organisations. This spring one report, unconfirmable, stated that as many as 100,000 are in prisons or “retraining 8 camps throughout Free China. In Chungking the prisons are dugouts, built for air raid protection. The National Salvation Association has been badly affected. Its ranks have been depleted by arrests. Many prominent members or sympathisers have fled. In Hong Kong and Rangoon are growing colonies of expatriates. Others have moved to the villages, where they hope to remain in obscurity. Forty bookshops (all save the on« in Chungking), of its publishing organ, the Life Book Company, have been closed, some of the staff members were put in concentration camps. Its magazine. Mass Resistance, has been suspended. Its editor, Chou Tao-feng, fled to Hong Kong early in March, resigning from the People’s Political Council.

Other Leftist and liberal groups, the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives for instance, other publications, other, bookshops have suffered as much'as the National Salvationists. The travails of the National Salvationists are more significant merely because they have enjoyed a wider following and more prestige than any other group besides the Kuomintang and the Communists.