PACHAI RETAKEN

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21581, 7 December 1944, Page 6

PACHAI RETAKEN

SUCCESS FOR CHINESE CRACK REGIMENTS MOVING FROM NORTH CHUNGKING, Dec. 5. Chinese troops have regained Pacliai, 05 miles south-east of Kweivang. The Japanese had previously penetrated within 60 miles of Kweiyang. A communique announced that crack Chinese regiments from the north-west moved towards Kweichow. Tushan, which the Japanese previously claimed as captured, remains in Chinese hands. The Chinese press gives prominence to Marshal Chiang Kai Shek’s statement that the Japanese would make another strategic error if they went deeper into Kweichow province. With unusual frankness the newspaper Ta Kung Pao criticised Chungking’s “puzzling and inaccurate communiques which are causing the public uneasiness. Consequently the people do not believe what they are told and rumours are advancing more quickly than the Japanese.” The Ta Kung Pao urged the Chinese Command to move towards Kweiyang to show a fighting spirit, movdng forward and not backward. Observers in Chungking, however, are more concerned with the possibility of a Japanese advance to Kunming. The Japanese are known to have thrust up the Yu River, but the communiques have not mentioned this important development. General Wedemeyor's communique reports that General Chennaults aircraft in the central and south China areas destroyed river shipping and much railway rolling stock in the Tungting Lake area and bombed bridges on the Salween front.