LOSING BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 September 1943, Page 4

LOSING BATTLE

BEING FOUGHT BY JAPAN IN OCCUPIED TERRITORIES IN CHINA. INVADERS GETTING DIMINISHING RETURNS. (By Guenther Stein, in the “Christian Science Monitor.”) CHUNGKING, China, May 26. Japan is at present losing one of its most imporant battles and its rulers are probably glad that the outside world is paying so little attention to it. This battle, fought with a certain amount of success until some time ago but now in a most critical stage, is for the fullest possible use of the vast occupied territories of China. It always had two aims—to make them a going concern on which Japan could rely for economic, political, and even military support, and second, to maintain in them a greater measure of security and prosperity than in the poorer regions of Free China as a means of undermining the confidence of the Chinese people everywhere in their National Government. Most of the material odds in that battle have been in favour of Japan. The occupied areas, with almost 200,000,000 persons, comprise the larger part of Chinese agricultural surplus areas, practically all modern means of communication, all modern manufacturing industries and most of the country’s developed raw material resources. The total number of Japanese and puppet troops that have to live on that “better half” of China has always been very much smaller than the vast number of Chinese Government troops living with difficulty on the other half ,of the territory. RAPID RISE OF INFLATION. Finally, occupied China is not nearly as isolated from the outside world as Free China because of its contact with industrial Japan and with the rich raw material resources of Japans old and new conquests. It was not surprising, therefore, that until some time ago, material conditions in occupied China in many inspects were somewhat easier than in Free China. It is a fact, however, that conditions in Japanese-occupied China have deteriorated so rapidly in recent months that hey are now infinitely worse than in the rest of the country. Inflation has been more rapid; prices are higher; shortages are more acute and more widespread; semi-starvation is rife in cities like Peiping, Tientsin, Shanghai, Hankow and Canton. Corruption is increasing all the time among the Japanese as well as their puppets. Production and employment are falling because of the dearth of raw materials for the factories. Many Chinese who for more than five years had been unwilling to leave their old homes and properties are now daily arriving from all parts of the occupied areas in the cities and towns of Free China. They cannot stand the privation any longer. The rapidly growing economic crisis in the occupied parts of China reflects the increasing difficulties of the Japanese at home and the failure of their attempts to develop, stabilise and assimilate the rich territories they have conquered in China. PREPARATIONS FOR SIEGE. It also reflects the hurried preparations the Japanese are making for a long siege of their own islands. Food confiscation in occupied China has become more and more widespread even at the expense of reducing the production of the Chinese farmers. An increasing part of the loot is being exported to Japan proper, where, according to the reliable information from people who have just arrived in Chungking, stores of Chinese grain are being piled up in the northern island of Hokkaido as reserves for the time when Japan will be blockaded at short range. An intensified campaign has been started by the Japanese in China for the collection of scrap metal, not only copper, lead and other metals not produced in the conquered Pacific countries. but also iron and steel. Ferroconcrete buildings are being pulled down in Hankow where hundreds of coolies are extracting steel from the debris and much potentially useful machinery in China is being scrapped for the Japanese blast furnaces. Imports to China of Japanese manufactures have been stopped almost entirely. Only the barest minimum of Japanese ships’- are still calling at Chinese ports. More and more of the raw materials and finished goods that occupied China produces are recklessly grabbed for export to Japan. The need for all those goods seems to be so great that the urgent warnings of the puppet authorities about the inevitable political consequences of confiscatory policy are being ignored by the Japanese despite their undeniable anxiety to secure their rear by making things as easy as possible for the puppet government. OUTRIGHT PLUNDER. The Japanese armies at different Chinese fronts have made foraging raids, on small scale, the determining factor of their strategy. Most military action in recent months is therefore explainable by Japanese designs on certain towns or rich agricultural areas which are held as long as it takes to clean up foodstuffs, metals or other goods. The recent increase of emphasis on outright plunder in Japan’s policy in the occupied areas naturally makes the failure of Japanese attempts at developing them into a going concern more and more complete. It hastens the advent of the day when their troops will no longer be able to live on the country and when even their most obedient puppets will turn against them as an ever-increas-ing number of isolated units of puppet troops are doing already. This desperate policy of plunder is therefore actually becoming an important contributory factory to the circumstances that will eventually drive the Japanese out of the country.