SHANGHAI DEFENCES; NO U.S. AID

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25796, 6 May 1949, Page 7

SHANGHAI DEFENCES; NO U.S. AID

Heavy Communist forces have been deployed in a semi-circle around the north-western and south-western approaches to Shanghai. Yesterday, General Tang En-po, Nationalist commander-in-chief for the Shanghai region, appointed General Kiu Shi-ku as commander with full responsibility for maintaining intact the 730-mile Nationalist deience line from the Yangtse to the Tsientang. General Tang’s action followed reports that the Communist leader. General Chen Yi, had deployed at least four armies in a semi-circle around Shanghai, as the prelude to a major offensive!. One Chinese source claimed that nearly 100,000 American-trained and equipped troops had already arrived from Formosa to participate in the defence of Shanghai. In Washington yesterday, the United States Secretary of State (Mr Dean Acheson) said that the official American attitude to Nationalist China had . not been changed by new Sleas for aid. The State Department ad taken the view that further military aid would be useless now. Reporters had asked Mr Acheson to comment on a proposal by MajorGeneral Claire Chenhault, the former United States Air. Force commander in China, to give China immediate aid worth 350,000,000 dollars. Reported Transfer of Specie The Nationalist Government’s treasury hag been flown from the mainland to Formosa, according to reliable but unconfirmed reports reaching Hong Kong to-day from the Chinese seaport of Amoy. The Government’s assets in gold and silver bullion and foreign currencies were said to amount to about 300,000,000 United States dollars. A shuttle service of freight aircraft, operating at night from Amoy, is re-

ported to have moved the specie in 1500 cases. Mr Yahei Oba, a former majorgeneral in the Japanese Air Force, told ‘the Tokyo correspondent of the United Press to-day that 40,000 Japanese were fighting in the Chinese civil war. Thirty thousand of them were fighting for the Communists. Mr Oba said they were former members of the crack Kwantung (Manchurian) Army. He believed that Russia was deliberately delaying the repatriation of Japanese war prisoners because it wanted a “liberation army” to land in Japan in case of war with the United States.