COALITION FOR CHINA

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24960, 22 August 1946, Page 5

COALITION FOR CHINA

NO DISCUSSION BY COMMUNISTS

END TO HOSTILITIES DESIRED

(Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, August 21. The Chinese Communists have announced that they will not discuss a coalition Government for China until an end is put to the fighting with the Government forces.

A Communist spokesman (Mr Wang Ping-nan) told the Associated Press correspondent in Nanking there was no desire to overthrow the Government. Mr Wang, commenting on the broadcast by the Communist Yenan radio urging Communist areas to demobilise, said the broadcast was not a declaration of war. It was not mobilisation of troops, but merely moral mobilisation.

The Chinese Government has confirmed that it sent a memorandum to the Communists threatening to attack the Communist strongholds of Yenan, JKalgan, and Chengteh to relieve the Government troops who are defending besieged Tatung, which is a coal and rail centre 125 miles west of Peiping. The Yenan radio, reporting the Government threat, said that such attacks would mean the start of a full-scale civil war. The Communists have established an independent administration in Harbin for that part of Manchuria which they hold. “The Yenan radio described the new Government as a provisional supreme administration for democratic Manchuria, composed of 86 elected delegates from all sections and aspiring to ‘a peaceful and prosperous Manchuria by uniting all,’” says the Associated Press correspondent in Nanking. There is no report that it is operating directly under Yenan, which is the Communist capital, but its avowed goals are similar to those of the Yenan Government.