WAR IN CHINA

Grey River Argus, 28 February 1947, Page 5

WAR IN CHINA

Communists Advance Near Chantung Capital SHANGHAI, Feb. 25. Pro-Government newspapers report that Communist spearheads advanced to within seven miles of the Shantung province capital, Tsinan, while Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was visiting the city yesterday. Reports from Hsuchow state that Tsinan was placed under martial law and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek flew back to Nanking to-day. The Yenan radio, describing the fighting near Tsinan, said that the Communists won a major victory over the Nationalist armies which advanced from the Tsinan- fsingtao railway. The Communists annihilated the Seventy-seventh Division of the Nationalist Seventy-third Army between Liawu and Paochan, and also were continuously attacking three surrounded divisions of the Seventy-third and Twelfth Armies. Other powerful Communist forces are reported to be attacking Tsinan’s outer defences, with patrols reaching within twelve miles of the city. COMMUNIST OFFENSIVE. (Rec. 5.30.) NANKING, Feb. 27. Government field despatches state that nearly 125,000 Chinese Communists launched a savage new offensive in Manchuria, driving io within fifteen miles of the capital of Chang dhun. The Governments Central News Agency said that the Communists, with a limited number of tanks and armoured trucks, had over-run Nungan, thirty-two miles north-east of Chang Chun, advance units then drove south-ward to Wanpaishan, fifteen miles north of the capital. _ The Communist drive places the advance guard more than forty-five -'files south of the Sungari River, which served as the unofficial dividing line between the Government and Communist forces during the winter. Military observers believe the Chang Chun garrison, which includes the Government’s powerful new First Army, is strong enough to withstand any immediate threat to the capita . arrests of communist SYMPTHISERS IN PEKING NEW YORK, Feb. 25. A New York Times correspondent at Peking stated: A protest by _ a dozen of Peking’s leading university professors and other Liberals reac - ed a climax in a week-long series or midnight raids, wholesale arrests and kidnapping of local Liberals by Kuomintang secret police. Mass arrests of all persons suspected of being even remotely connected with Communism began on the night of December 17 when, according to Peking papers, 1657 persons were seized. Arrests and raids thereafter continued night and day, and even homes of Soviet citizens were broken into and searched. Russians have protested to the Soviet Consul-General against this intimidation. The bulk of those arrested, however, are Chinese Liberals. The police have announced that raids will continue. It is considered highly probable that, despite the much-vaunted political amnesty proclaimed by Marshal Chiang Kaichek on the announcement of the new constitution on January 1, the Kuomintang is anxious either to arrest or frighten into submission a large body of Liberal opinion throughout North China before the Nationalist spring offensive begins. If cities like Peking, 'Tientsin, Mukden and Changchun can be garrisoned by small forces of local militia without the danger of a Communistled uprising, the Nationalists will be able to deploy possibly three million troops against the Communists on all fronts. The most dangerous elements in cities like Peking from the Kuomintang viewpoint are in the university student body, which is reliably reported to be from 60 to 85 per cent, against the Kuomintag. Large numbers of students are reported to be Communists or to be Communist sympathisers. It is reliably reported that one anti-Kuo-mintang student group in Peking gained possession of a secret police black-list containing the names of many students suspected of Communist leanings, and marked for arrest two days before wholesale raids began. These students immediately brought the list to the attention of the highest Peking authorities, and made such a vocal fuss that the seci’et police decided to begin their campaign with the Liberals.