COMMUNISM IN CHINA.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 43, 13 November 1937, Page 4

COMMUNISM IN CHINA.

So far as Shanghai and its immediate surrotindings are concerned the week's news indicate elearly that the Japanese have now secured complete cOiltrol, with very little prospect of their being OiiSted from the Strong positions they hold. Whether they will press their success mueh further or, for the time being be content with retaining posSession of the city remains to be seen. It may be that by this time they are finding their hands pretty full with military operations further north and will be. glad, once they have made their position secure, to call a halt in the Shanghai area, which has given them a very great deal more trOuble than they had expected. iWhat is to happen with regard to the International Settlement, in Which so m&ny foreign interests are centred, cannot yet be gUessed, but there is nothing very reassuring in General • Matsui's annoUncemcnt that he ''feels free to take any steps dictated by military neceSsity'' and "Wili not aeeept any responsibility for the protection of the rights and interest of the various RoWers concerned." Possibly something definite as to intentions may emerge from tliC promised Tokio restatement of Japan's fundamental policy iti China. No doubt Japan will feel her hands considerably strengthened by the so-termed antiCommunist pact intO which Germany and Italy have entered with her, and this will probably be reflected in the new policy statement when it is issued. Meanwhilo it may be of interest to note what Communism really means in China. For this we may be fairly safe in having reeourse to an enlightening article contribnted by a well informed American Writer to the "New Repnblic." The Chinese. Communist Party, we are told, had its origin in 1920, some eight years after Dr. Sun Yat-sen started the revolution that resulted itt the deposition and expulsion Of the Manehu dynasty and the institution of a Chinese Republic. It grew rapidly in strength till 1923, when Dr. Sun, head of the Kuomintang, or . Nationalist Party, entered intO an understanding with Soviet Russia. This led in turn to an Understanding between the Chinese Nationalist and Commnnist Parties under which Dr. Sun accepted two basic revolutlonary prittciples adopted by the latter. They were really of no very extreme type, being directed to the pursuit of an anti-imperialist policy, the realisation Of a democratic revolution against warlords and landlords and the construction of new forms of social economic and political life essentially democratic in character, and with a special eye to improving COttditions for the peasatttry, forming so big a proportion of the population. Ijnhappily Dr. Sun Yat-sen died before this policy could b£ carried to full fruition, and it was not very long before anything iike cordial co-operation between the Communist Party ^nd the Nationalist Party— noW under new leaders, of militanstic tendCncies and dominated by foreign influences---be-came impracticable. The final split came when the right wing of the Kuomintang, under .General Chiang Kai-shek, set up a regime at Nanking which the Communists regarded as having repudiated the agreement made with Di\ Sun and as being bent on establishing something in the nature of a dictatorship rather than true democratic rule. Then followed the. long years of civil war, largely fomented and encoUraged hy the numerous local warlords out for plimder. So far as concerns the internal fighting the reSttlt has beCn that the Communists now occupy a vCry ocnsiderable atea of Chinese territory in the north-west, where they have beett trying to carry out their own conception of democratic govcrnmcnt, of a type greatly differing from that which is ordinarily suggested to most of us by the word Communism. One of the main complaint^ Of these so-Gallcd Communists t has been that the Nankirtg Govefnment had been altogethor too much inclined to a policy of compromise with Japan, cthus greatly encouraging that country's aggressive aiid acquiSitive moveinents in Manchufia and pther North China provinces. That they WCre sincere in this is evidettced by the way in which the Communist forces have YalliCd to the support of Chiang Kaishek once he began to make some real show of resistance to Japan's' ititrusioib "The Communists," says the American writer, "pecition for a united front. against' the aggressor and submit their army to the authority* of Nanking provided, however, that Nanking agrees to establish democratic fepreSentative gOVernment, op--poses Japan and guarantees civil liberties to the masses." There is nothing very desperate iii that kiiid of Communism, but it is very easy to see wliy Japan is making such great play with Ihe word.