SOUTH CHINA INVADED.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 October 1938, Page 6

SOUTH CHINA INVADED.

SOMETHING of a surprise has been sprung by the Japanese in the-latest development of their still undeclared waF'against China —the landing of a. strong force at Bias Bay under the covering guns of a powerful fleet. In its landing and in an advance some twenty miles inland, to a point where the Chinese are said to have rallied on a defensive line, the invaders have had an easy task, but. they may now .find themselves faced by much greater difficulties. The immediate object of the Japanese is to cut the railway which runs from Kowloon, on the mainland opposite Hong Kong, to Canton, and so close the only convenient and commodious avenue by which China' is still able to import military and other supplies from abroad. Apart from the fact that Japan’s latest enterprise may raise international complications, of which Britain has already given warning in a diplomatic Note, a Chinese army of powerful strength, reasonably well equipped and provided with material, is said. to be available for the defence of Canton. The Japanese, however, may be hoping to cut the Kowloon-Canton Railway without engaging in operations on the greatest scale. A well-informed American correspondent in the Far East, Mr W. 11. Chamberlin, observed in a recent article that a strong section of Japanese naval opinion always had favoured a blow against Canton, but added that: — Hitherto the idea of a land offensive against Canton has ■encountered the opposition of the Army, which dislikes the dispersion of forces so far to the south. It is opposed by civilian members of the Government, who apprehend possibly serious international incidents as a result of the employment of large naval and land forces near Hong Kong and French Indo-China. Whatever risk.s the enterprise entails are now being taken, though the scale on which it is intended to develop the southern invasion has yet to be disclosed. If they succeed in cutting the railway they have now closely approached, the Japanese no doubt will weaken the defence ol Hankow, on which already they are gradually closing in, and il they are able to deprive Canton of a trading outlet they will command the whole eastern seaboarfl ol China, whose only important communication with the external world will then be by the railway which runs into the western province of Yunnan, from French Indo-China. At an immediate view the landing in Bias Bay and its neighbourhood opens up sufficiently serious prospects and conceivably might mark the beginning of the end of resistance by organised Chinese armies. On the other hand, this stroke in the south entails new demands on Japanese resources which already are being subjected to a tremendous strain in the effort, to reduce China to submission. After more than a year of warfare in which terrible losses have been suffered on both sides, Japan is far from being in sight of her goal in China. With increasing effort, ami at increasing cost, she has taken in their turn Shanghai, Nanking and Suchow, the main railway junction in Northern China. Al a price she will no doubt, take Hankow and its neighbouring cities and probably she is in a position to win some measure of military success in Southern China as well. Her military successes are and seem likely Io remain extremely unproductive, however. Throughout the vast area of the Chinese provinces she has occupied she controls as yet little more than the cities and railway lines. It was reported a day or two ago that her grip on Northern China, and particularly on Shangtung, was weakening, and other reports declare thar the Chinese are fighting in the defence of Hankow on much more even terms than in the earlier battles in the Shanghai zone. In view of the great continuing strain imposed upon her resources, it is possible 1o attach some credence to reports of threatened internal upheaval in Japan, and to believe that her invasion of Southern China may have been dictated rather by desperation than by the hope of‘pushing her attack on China to a successful conclusion. ■ -