U.S. COMMENT ON FAILURE OF CHINESE REGIME

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 April 1949, Page 8

U.S. COMMENT ON FAILURE OF CHINESE REGIME

NEW YORK, April 24. “The United States Government sees the defeat 'of the Chinese Nationalist Government as complete and irretrievable,” says James Reston, diplomatic correspondent of the “New York Times.” Reston endeavours to explain why the United Government, which was committed to the Truman Doctrine of containing the spread of Communism, did nothing and explained nothing about the Communist victory. Reston continues: “The United States Administration does have an explanation, but it is not making it publicly, because it is a violent condemnation of the Chinese Nationalists, and the State Department does not want to embarrass the Chinese Government at the height of the Chinese crisis. Historic Importance

“The State Department believes that the events in China mark a failure of profound and historic importance, but it is primarily a failure not of the United States, but of the Chinese Nationalists, who have lost the confidence of their people, have squandered the aid the United States gave them, and have displayed administrative and military incompetence unequalled .in modern history. . , “With the United States’ financial and military assistance, the Nationalists put into the field armies equal in manpower and superior in equipment to the Chinese Communists, but during the last ,six months more than 1,000,000 Nationalist troops and all their equipment have been surrendered to the Communists. “Not a single engagement was lost to the Communists through lack of equipment. Through incompetence and corruption in high places, through poor leadership in the field, and through defiance of all United States military advice, more than 90 per cent of the equipment the United States made available to the Nationalists has been lost to the Communists. '

“Strategic Morass” “The State Department believes that the Communists can conquer Southern China whenever they choose. It believes that this will be an additional reverse which will encourage the Communists in IndoChina, Burma, Malaya and Indonesia, but it does not believe that the situation is hopeless, because it sees China, not as a strategic springboard, but as a strategic morass. “Officials of the United States Administration believe that China cannot be conquered as the Communists have conquered some of the nations of Eastern Europe. They see China as a vast, unconnected, poorly organised country, population by an undernourished, highly individualists people, and they believe that Mr Mao Tse-tung and other Chinese Communist leaders will rapidly show signs of ‘Tito-ism’ once they are m control.”