“TEST FOR REGIME”

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 February 1947, Page 6

“TEST FOR REGIME”

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS IN CHINA HOPES FOE AMERICAN AID NEW‘YORK, February 14. “Further soaring prices are considered certain to follow the present slight easing of the wild markets,” says the New York Times correspondent in Nanking. “The spectators’ momentary caution is believed 'to be caused by the Chinese Government’s promises that drastic action will soon be taken. “Government leaders admit that the situation is critical and that it will thoroughly test the Nanking regime’s capacities for control of the administration. However, it is contended that since the Chinese economy is predominantly agrarian the crisis in the main cities does not necessarily mean that the nation is facing economic ruin. “Government leaders hope they can obtain American assistance, and many attribute the present situation to the fact that China has not received the international aid that a country ravaged by war for eight years might have expected.” A Shanghai message says that three UNRRA workers recently evacuated from the Communist-held area of Shantung Province declared that the people in the area were abysmally lacking in medical supplies. Malaria epidemics often wiped out whole villages, and in Shantung the sick had to drag their own beds to the few medical wards. There was only one paid of obstetrical forceps in the area, in which 14,000,000 people live. The UNRRA workers claimed that in 14 months less than 2 per cent, of the UNRRA supplies sent to China had gone to the Communist occupied districts, and most of this was food, which was not needed in an agrarian area. The three UNRRA workers were evacuated when their lives were endangered by increasing Nationalist air raids.