COMMUNIST TROOPS INTENSIFY DRIVE TOWARDS CANTON

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27166, 23 August 1949, Page 5

COMMUNIST TROOPS INTENSIFY DRIVE TOWARDS CANTON

NZPA—Copyright

Rec. 10 p.m. HONGKONG, Aug. 22. General Liu Po-chang’s Communist troops, after capturing Tayu, on the Kiagsi-Kwangtung border, are reported to have taken Hsinfeng, in Southern Kaingsi. approximately 180 miles north of Canton. In northwest China, the Communist Sixth Army has reached the outskirts of Lancnow, Kansu provincial capital. * More British troops moved yesterday from Hongkong to frontier camps, to make room in the receiving barracks for reinforcements which arrived by the troopship Devonshire. These reinforcements bring the garrison’s strength to more, than 20,000. Most of the garrison is either quartered on

Hongkong Island itself or in the new territories —on the Chinese mainland and on the border of Chinese territory. The troops are often drenched by the torrential seasonal rains as they carry out exercises over the rugged hills and water-logged paddyfields, but they are fast learning the terrain which they have been sent here to defend.

In Canton, 80 miles north of Hongkong, hundreds of firms and private people are packing in preparation for evacuation to Hongkong. Two Communist armies threaten Canton —one down the Hangkow-Canton railway and the other along the coast from the north-east.