The Gisborne Herald. IN WHICH IS INCORPORATED "THE TIMES". GISBORNE, FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1948. UNITED STATES AID FOR CHINA

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22584, 12 March 1948, Page 4

The Gisborne Herald. IN WHICH IS INCORPORATED "THE TIMES". GISBORNE, FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1948. UNITED STATES AID FOR CHINA

THE Chinese Government has made quite plain its opinion that any United States assistance conditional upon special provisions would not he welcomed in Nanking—in other words, that China will appreciate aid only when there are no strings attached to it. No doubt this attitude has been encouraged by General Wedemeyer’s statement in Washington that the United States would “pay in blood” unless it acted immediately to halt communism by giving military as well as economic aid to threatened countries. “It is too late.” he declared, “for economic aid alone to save China, because the vast movement which has engulfed Poland and Czechoslovakia, and probably will engulf Finland, is sweeping down towards China from the north.” The difficulties of taking so strong a stand on behalf of the Nanking Government are rather more obvious than in the ease of European countries which have come under the shadow of lied totalitarianism or even in the case of Korea, where there is reported to lie a definite cleavage between the American and Soviet forces. Although the Americans have a great deal of personal respect for General Chiang Kai-shek, they have not yet persuaded all the influential politicians in Nanking to reconstruct their Government on a broader basis away from one-party lines. General Wedcmeyor himself admits that, although the ultimate aims of the Chinese Government are the same as those of the United States, it is hard at, times to obtain its official co-operation. The reproaches against Chiang Kai-shek for his alleged “selling” of China to “U.S. Imperialism” make it politically very difficult for him to accept American aid with any strings attached. On the other hand, without numerous and plainly visible strings, it will be difficult, for the American Government, however convinced it may he of the need for bolstering up the Chinese Government, to justify to Congress large expenditure for China. The Government’s past record and the maladministration of funds also make it difficult to ensure that any assistance to China achieves the ends for which it is intended. There will inevitably be a strong American demand for strict supervision of the use of further money and supplies which may be provided. According to The Economist, the whole China problem is not merely—or perhaps even mainly—a military one. “The Chinese Communists,” says this well-informed journal, “undoubtedly have a strong popular following, and in North China they have a record of local political power and administration independent of any Russian support. In Manchuria the situation is rather different, for there the Communists were not only helped into power by the friendly Russian occupation but continue to stand in a special relation to the Russian authorities in Port Arthur and Dairen and in the management of the Manchurian trunk railways. But, in general, the Chinese Communists are not so obviously tied to the Soviet Union as their brothers in the Eastern European countries of the Russian bloc.” It may be that if China is to be rebuilt with American aid, it will have to be done by groups of provinces, starting from Canton. If is only a prosperous South China that can in the long run give the Kuomintang the power and political attraction which would enable it to emerge victorious in its struggle to rc-unify China.