TWENTY RED ARMIES IN CENTRAL CHINA

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 August 1949, Page 6

TWENTY RED ARMIES IN CENTRAL CHINA

HONG KONG, August 19.—Though there is no panic yet, the evacuation of Canton has begun, but unlike 1938 when the populace fled before the Japanese, the colony does not anticipate an acute refugee problem. This time the evacuees are moneyed Chinese and foreigners. The British and American Cqhsul-ates-General in Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, have advised their nationals to evacuate Kunming immediately reports the Nationalist Central News Agency. Most officials of the consulates and their dependants will also be evacuated. Twenty Communist armies have been thrown into the Central China front, according to a Chinese Government military spokesman. On paper the armies would total approximately 600,000 men, but in fact they totalled little more than 300,000, he said. Sickness and large-scale desertions were responsible for this. The spokesman added that many of the troops who surrendered to the Communists in Peking, had crossed back to the Nationalists or returned home. The Communists in Central China were not numerically superior to the Government forces. Reports that the chairman of the Chinese Communists Party (Mr Mao Tse-tung) had died were indirectly quashed by the Peking radio, which stated that Mr Mao had sent a telegram to the officers and men who recently revolted against the Nationalists in Changsha, telling them to prepare for reorganisation into the People's Liberation Army.