ROADS TO CHINA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25565, 19 June 1944, Page 4

ROADS TO CHINA

There are very hopeful developments in north-eastern Burma, where the Ledo road must join the old Burma road before an inland route can be established to take supplies from the Western Allies to China. At no time in, seven years of war with Japan have the Chinese been more in need of assistance, which can come only from the modern, industrialised world; but at no time in the long-drawn struggle .have their prospects of receiving effective relief been better., The Burma offensive centred on Myitkyina will, if it is fully successful, provide the conditions in which the Ledo road can .be pushed forward to a junction with the highway to China. If the estimate of the leader of the Chinese military mission to the United States is correct, a route from Assam Province across Burma to Chungking may be completed within six months after Myitkyina is fully possessed by the Allies. And this spokesman for the Chinese raises the interesting prospect of an additional route into China being established by way of the Turkestan railway, through Sinkiang, or Chinese Turkestan, the northwesternmost province of the Chinese territories. If, as is stated, an agreement has been reached between the Soviet and the Chiang Kai-shek Government to establish a supply route, with the possibility of Russian material aid to China, the development may be regarded as politically of immense interest to all the Allies, apart from its hopeful import for the Chinese. It would imply a relaxation, to say the least, in the carefully preserved state of armed neutrality between the Soviet and Japan; with the prospect that, from this first concession to Allied desires, Russia should identify herself as in opposition to Japan. For China—the China of the Kuomintang, which is the Allies’ China to all practical purposes at the present time —a Sinkiang supply route could be assured only by agreement with the Communist 'China of the outer provinces, and so again the unifying possibilities of the Turkestan route are presented. The present cleavage between the Communists in the north-western provinces and republican China has not only prevented the use of China’s full potential against the Japanese aggressors, but actually is reported to have tied up as many as half a million of Chiang Kai-shek’s troops along the Shensi borders, maintaining a “ blockade ” against the Chinese Red guerrilla armies. It is certainly in the interests of the Allied cause, and of the future progress of China among the United Nations, that political unification, at least to the borders of Sinkiang, should be secured. This is apart from the urgent, and by reports from Chungking, even desperate, need of the Chinese for the materials of war, from food and munitions to tanks and aircraft. The “Burma Road of the Air,” the air transport route across the Himalayas which

now serves as China’s lifeline, has performed wonders, and is credited with having carried to China more military stores than ever were transported over the Burma road. But the demands of modern war cannot be fully met by air transportation, when there are 5,000,000 Chinese troops to be equipped, and when air forces have to be built up to provide the bombing approach to occupied China and the Japanese mainland. The sooner that land roads are reestablished, with the possibility ever-present that a sea route to the China coast may also be won by the fleet attached to the Southeast Asian Command, the sooner will the Allies’ way to final victory be clear.