ACCEPTANCE IMPROBABLE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26473, 29 May 1947, Page 7

ACCEPTANCE IMPROBABLE

KUOMINTANG’S POSITION WEAKENING

Rec. 9.30 p.m. NEW YORK, May 27. The United Press foreign news editor, Mr Harrison Salisbury, says that Marshal Chiang Kai-Shek’s dramatic appeal to the Communist leaders today for negotiations to halt China’s civil war indicates a growing realisation that China is on the edge of chaos. The appeal was broadcast over all Government radio stations at the unanimous request of the People’s Political Council, and specifically invited Communist delegates to discuss China’s crisis with the council. There are strong grounds for the belief, however, that the Communists will ignore this eleventhhour appeal because they believe that the Kuomintang is tottering. They see the Government’s position—politically, economically and militarily—steadily sinking. Inflation has been making great strides, particularly in Shanghai, and military difficulties are intensified by the dwindling store of American ammunition in the face of Communist successes. Communications have been cut in a score of places, and the Communists have virtually cut off Changchun , the capital of Manchuria. The Communists believe that in a few more months the civil war, inflation and student agitation will bring about the Government’s downfall, thus creating a situation in which they would be able to extend their control over large areas of China. In this event, independent observers predict that China will separate into fragmentary units, some ruled by the communists and some by a weakened Kuomintang—a situation probably paralleling the state of affairs which followed the first World War until Chiang Kai-Shek, with Communist support, succeeded in crushing most of the provincial military governors and then in turn crushing the principal Communist strongholds.