THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, January 5, 1946. THE CONTROL OF JEHOL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26043, 5 January 1946, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, January 5, 1946. THE CONTROL OF JEHOL

The sequel to the announcement by the Central Government in China that it has decided to take over Jehol is not free from the confusion in which the contemporary history of the country is commonly shrouded. The Communists are reported to have declared that the occupation of Jehol would mean civil war. The only construction that can reasonably be placed upon such an assertion is that the Communists attach a special importance to their retention of that ancient province. It is replied, however, on behalf of the National Government, that there were no Communists in Jehol prior to the collapse of Japan, and that in consequence they have no justification for resisting the step that is contemplated. It will be most unfortunate if the efforts that are being made to establish an accommodation’ between the National Government and the Communists should break down and be defeated over what may well be a fanciful claim on the part of the latter body. The hopes upon which unity in China may be founded must rest very largely upon thjp terms of the treaty which Chiang Kai-shek’s Government entered into with Russia in August last. For it is to be remembered that the Communist Party is the direct offspring of Moscow and therefore of non-Chinese origin, while it is also a powerful movement of purely native derivation.. Its driving force, it is explained in a magazine article by Sir Frederick Whyte, who was political adviser to the Chinese National Government for three years in the past century, is derived from the widespread agrarian discontent' in many parts of rural China.' During the past few years the party has gained some reinforcement from the younger generation of the intelligentsia who had chafed under the “ realistic ” leadership of Chiang Kai-shek and who felt that the official party, the Kuomintang, had lost its early fire and momentum. There was, moreover, as Sir Frederick Whyte observes, a belief in many minds, neither closely reasoned nor clearly formulated, that the Soviet Union was the natural ally of the Chinese Revolution and a partner more suitable for it than the capitalist democracies of the west. In such circumstances the danger was always to be envisaged that a struggle for power might be joined in a new civil war on the collapse of Japan. On the other hand, the fresh relations into which the Communists had been brought with the National Government were not wholly inconsistent with a possibility that the conflict would not be fought in civil war, but in the calm atmosphere of a representative chamber, in which the need for agrarian reform would be emphasised and recognised.