CHAOS IN CHUNGKING: MIDDLE CLASS HIT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23218, 1 April 1950, Page 5

CHAOS IN CHUNGKING: MIDDLE CLASS HIT

(N.Z.P.A, —Reuter —Copyright.) (11 a.m.) HONG KONG, Mar. 31. Grim tidings of oppression, unrest anil starvation in Western China were brought to Hong Kong today by Chinese travellers from Chungking, reports the N.Z.P.A.Heuter correspondent, William Parrott. The travellers, who were among the first to reach the colony since the Communists occupied Chungking four months ago, said that economic chaos reigned in Chungking and the surrounding Szechuan. China’s most populous province and, normally, its most productive. The unrest was widespread. Many middle-class people, including shopkeepers, industrialists and Government employees, had been forced into bankruptcy through heavy taxation and compulsory loans. Poor people crowded Chungking's main streets offering personal possessions for sale.

The travellers quoted Communist officials as saying that 30,000 Chungking residents had registered for permits to leave the city. Following the mainland defeat of the Nationalists, the Communist policy in West China appeared to be aimed externally against the “American imperialists” and internally against the middle-class.

Observers in Hong Kong believe that much of the current unrest might be fomented by the powerful Elder Brother Society, a secret organisation based in Szechuan, which traditionally opposed constituted authority. The abbot of a leading Buddhist monastery in Nanking said today that Communists had forced 400,000 Chinese monks and nuns to give up the active practice of their religion. The abbot, who has just arrived in Hong Kong, said that many monks had been drafted into the army or into forced labour. Some had become street hawkers. He alleged the Communists had taken over most of the temples and monasteries.