CRISIS IN CHINA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 19, 24 October 1944, Page 4

CRISIS IN CHINA

AS the,outcome of a revived offensive in China the Japanese have seized the whole: length of the Peiping-Hankow railway, the most strategically valuable line in Chinese territory and further have established themselves in Foochoo and other principle Chinese centres after bitter fighting with the forces of Chiang Kai Shek. That Japan plans a maior invasion aiming at the total subjugation of China seems unlikely at this juncture. She baulked at the enterprise when her hands were comparatively free prior to December, 1941. She will scarcely launch it now, with Anglo-American forces converging on her home base from the Bay of Bengal to the Aleutians, and with- Soviet Russia poised in Siberia. From the outset Japan recognised the impossibility of conquering and holding down China, in area and population almost equal to Europe. The strategy has been, by seizing the ports and inland centres, to exploit the chief Chinese sources of wealth and to blockade Free China, slowly strangling her. To judge by the low condition of China in the past year, the strategy is doing the fell work it was designed to do. Seven years at war with a ruthless foe have not left China unscathed, physically or morally. It is well to recognise the fact. The tendency to, idealise Free China and to magnify her achievements has served her jll. Hopes have been built on her capacity that she cannot fulfil. A more realistic estimate, a fairer estimate, is now being brought to bear on her military potentialities. China's main riches consist of manpower. General Stilwell is proving in Burma that the Chinese can be made into good soldiers when well-fed, well-equipped, well-trained, and well-led. But ill China all these essentials are lacking, even with a few exceptions to leaders. China 'is short of food. Apart from small arms, she does not possess the means of making modern war. She is.poor in the raw materials of industry, and her industrial development is backward. By European or American standards her transport system is sketchy in the best areas 'Xnostly controlled by the enemy —and virtually non-existent elsewhere. Her pre-war economy has been laid in ruins and her finances reduced to chaos. Inflation goes unchecked. To restore China as a vital factor in the war against Japan, she must receive a rich infusion of blood in the .form of every sort of supply. Air transport over the Himalayas cannot carry nearly enough. Nor would the opening of the Ledo and Burma roads suffice. Those Americans are in the right who contend that Chinese recovery must wait on the opening of her ports to the Allies. Short of that, it is not fair to China, nor true to reality, to build high hopes on what she can accomplish in the overthrow of Japan.