CHUNGKING AND COMMUNISTS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24763, 2 January 1946, Page 5

CHUNGKING AND COMMUNISTS

CHIANG PROPOSES CONFERENCE

PROCEDURE TO END HOSTILITIES

(Rec. 9 p.m.) CHUNGKING, Dec. 31. The Chinese Central Government has countered the Communists’ truce offer by proposing that it and the Communists appoint representatives to confer with the United States envoy (General George Marshall) on procedure for halting hostilities and restoring railway communications. Marshal Chiang Kai-shek has convened meeting of' the Political Consultative Council.

In a New Year message to the Chinese people. Marshal Chiang Kaishek announced that the Chinese Government was ready to invite the leaders of other political parties to participate in the Government either in its policy-making councils or its executive branch. They would be welcomed into the Government before the National Assembly meets, on May 5, to consider a new Constitution for China. The only condition was that other political parties must not maintain autonomous armies to serve as instruments for the forcible seizure of power. Marshal Chiang said the Government would use every possible peaceful means to solve China’s internal conflicts. , The Nationalists and Communists have each claimed that the other is taking the offensive. A Corrimunist spokesman said that 225,000 Government troops had captured Kupehow, on the border between China and Inner Mongolia in a drive to conquer Jehol province. A Government dispatch said that 50,000 Communists since the middle of December had been attacking Kufow, in Shantung, birthplace of Confucius. The Communists claimed that more than 6000 fully armed Japanese were sent to the fronts north and south of Taiyun to participate in attacks on the Communists. The Communists controlled a 30-mile section of the canal between Kaoyu and Nanking, and had also captured five strongpoints on the Tientsin-Pukow railway, but had lost Tasoyang, a highway centre 140 miles north-west of Hankow.