NATIONALIST BARRAGE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27471, 4 October 1954, Page 11

NATIONALIST BARRAGE

Heavy Fire From Quemoy

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) TAIPEH, October 2. Chinese Nationalist forces on Quemoy Island, about three miles °“ the China mainland coast, "heavily pounded” the Communist port of Amoy this morning after the Communists announced through loud-speakers that they would take the island by October 15, a Nationalist Defence Ministry spokesman said today. The spokesman, Lieutenant-General Chang Yi-ting, described the Communist warning as “routine propaganda.” He said: “We will have to wait and see if they could do so, because they originally broadcast they would take Quemoy on the mid-autumn festival” (September 11). The spokesman said the Chinese Communist Air Force yesterday intensified its activities along the East China coast. He believed this was to counter any possible Nationalist attack on Communist mainland points on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist regime. General Chang also said that a “certain. amount of activity” was going on on Communist-held islands near the Nationalist-held Tachen Island group, off the Chekiang coast, mid-way between Shanghai and Taipeh, but he declined to elaborate. “Assembling of Fleet” The Chinese Communists, with Soviet advisers, yesterday were reported assembling a fleet of military craft on the approaches to the Tachen Islands, northern anchor of Nationalist bases off the Communist mainland. The report was published by the official “Central Daily News,” which said Nationalist planes and warships were watching for any possible move by the enemy fleet. The newspapers said gunboats and other battle craft had massed in sizeable numbers in the Chu Shan Islands, 100 miles south-east of Shanghai and only about 100 miles north of the Tachens.

The Nationalist Chinese Prime Minister, Mr O. K. Yui, today assured Chinese residents on Formosa that the Nationalist Government, would use all its financial resources to carry out a "gigantic dispersal plan” in case the Chinese Communists should start systematic air attacks on the island. Mr Yui appealed to all military personnel and civilians to be alert for such an eventuality and not to treat the matter as a joke. He said an over-all nation-wide dispersal plan, backed with the nation’s financial resources within the limit of this year’s budget, was being seriously studied by his Government and was expected to be completed in the immediate future.