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CHINA IS TOUGH

PARALLEL 'l’o RUSSIA China is to Japan very much what Russia is to Germany. Elsewhere the Allied forces have been driven by an Oriental blitzkrieg into a position ol great difficulty. In China alone, at present, is a direct offensive against the Japanese either in progress or possible. But China, though she has ample man-power, has no such industrial and material resources as Russia. The balance is somewhat restored by the fact that Japan is also far less well supplied than Germany. China s greatest military asset is her determination to defeat the Japanese. This spirit has been thoroughly tested for over four years. In that period every advantage of superior supplies lay with the Japanese, including the ability to import munitions and materials from overseas. In spite of this handicap, the Chinese have held the invaders to very limited areas of the country running along some of the principal railways. Only the Japanese control of these transport routes has made their continued occupation possible; in the enormous spaces around and between them the Chinese continue to live and work, and build up lighting forces which, on a. large scale or small, continually nester the invaders.

Chungking, hundreds of miles from the sea. has been described as the most bombed city in the world: but it is safe from attack by a Japanese army: here. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek has not only his headquarters, but a great new city, of intense industry, as well as the depot in which the Burma Road terminates. Chungking is lough, because its people are tough’. The Japanese have failed to realise that they can bomb it for years without much effect. A special correspondent in Chine, wrote for “The Times" an article in which lie described the general posiion a few months ago—a position which has since changed for the better, owing to the Japanese diversion to the China Sea. Chungking, he wrote has the lines, passive air defences in the world. Dug-outs are built in solid rock capable of sustaining direct hits by the heaviest bombs. The elaborate system, 'of alarms throughout “Free China’ allows ample warning for the populace to take shelter. When it conies to bombing, the Chinese can take it like ihc British, in a different way, perhaps, but with equal stoicism. Although scarcely a building has remained undamaged in the whole of Chungking, the city rises again as fast as the Japanese can knock it down. The bombing of the war capital can cause a certain amount of death and destruction, but no matter how long it is maintained, it cannot affect the war of resistance.

BURAIA ROAD Similarly the bombing of the Burma Road may hamper but cannot stop the flow of supplies into “Free China.” Travellers have come the whole way from Lashio by road without once being forced to use the river ferries. After the destruction of the bridges over the Makong, the Chinese constructed a new suspension bridge in seven weeks. Even if the new bridges are destroyed, the Chinese can resort, as before, to ferries made of timber with empty petrol drums for floats. These home-made craft, which are almost unsinkable, can be constructed in a few hours. As soon as th’e new traffic reforms now being put in hand take effect it is’hoped to double the present volume of goods coming over the road. Handicapped in some of their theatres of war through lack of equipment, the Chinese are still largely unable to resist major Japanese attacks in the field. With the vast number of troops at their disposal, however, they can constantly form new concentrations in different parts of the country,

which the Japanese are compelled to break up in order to remove threats to the bigger cities in their hands. Japan is thus forced to expend her energy in retaking towns which she has captured three or four times before. Usually the Chinese succeed in slipping out of her “vast pincer movements,” but even when they are caught napping they inflict losses which add to the steady drain on the invaders’ resources. Since that article was written, great things have happened, as everyone knows, and the tide has turned against the Japanese in China. The great battle at Changsha has had a shattering effect upon the invaders in that region, and its sequel, a Chinese offensive, is in full swing. Efforts by the Japanese to enlarge their hold upon the country around Canton are being strongly resisted. Every extra effort that the Japanese are forced to make in China is an indirect defence of the hard-pressed Imperial and American positions in the Western Pacific.

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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GEST19420124.2.54

Bibliographic details

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 January 1942, Page 7

Word Count
775

CHINA IS TOUGH Greymouth Evening Star, 24 January 1942, Page 7

CHINA IS TOUGH Greymouth Evening Star, 24 January 1942, Page 7

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