Bid for Power
TIME, Monday, Jun. 18, 1945
In Kwangsi, where Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's resurgent army harried the retreating Japs (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS) provincial authorities executed four Communist guerrilla leaders for "rebellion." The rebels, it was charged, had operated under a Communist order to direct "propaganda against the Kuomintang Government . . . using charges of corruption of officials to shake the confidence of the people in the supreme military and administrative leaders of the country."* More & more Chinese Communist guerrillas were filtering through Japanese lines in Central China, fighting here & there with Central Government troops. Chungking's War Minister, General Chen Cheng, deplored the clashes, declared that Government troops had orders not to fight Communists unless first attacked.
March on Shanghai. This minor military collision highlighted a major political fact—China's Communists were bursting out of their original area of power around Yenan. Their main objective: Shanghai and the China coast, where they expect U.S. armies may one day land.
The advance from Yenan began about a year ago, while Chungking's armies were staggering under Japanese military blows.
Last year the Communists claimed to dominate 80,000,000 people, to command 470,000 regular troops and over 2,000,000 guerrillas. Now they claim control of 95,500,000 people, 910,000 regulars and 2,200,000 guerrillas. (They also claim to have fought over 92,000 battles against the Japanese in seven years ; this would be about 36 battles a day.)
However exaggerated Yenan's claims might be, it was clear that their forces had seeped across North China, from the Yellow River to the Shantung Peninsula and down the coast. Though they had been poorly armed in the past (they even used wooden cannon—see cut—which they actually fired from), they now seemed better armed. They had already begun a surreptitious investment of Shanghai, China's biggest city and biggest port, near the mouth of the Yangtze River, control of which carries with it control of most of southern China.
North of the strategic city, the Communists claimed control over the coastal villages not garrisoned by the Japanese. In Shanghai itself their underground had organized students, waterfront and factory workers. The political pattern was similar to that in Poland, where the Communist-controlled underground clashed with the underground loyal to the Polish Government in Exile. In Shanghai the Communist underground was fighting a bitter, no-quarter battle against Chungking's underground, organized by keen, self-effacing General Tai Li, head of the Central Government's secret service. It was a battle in the dark, a focus of China's undeclared civil war, with both antagonists hunted by the Japanese, and hunting each other against a background of Japanese-inflicted misery, desolation, hunger and brutality.
March toward Power. The Communists marching down the China coast were not merely racing Chungking's new U.S.-trained army for possession of Shanghai. They were heading straight into the purview of U.S. Far Eastern policy. Their plan was to move in as the Japs moved out, to make themselves indispensable to the U.S. armies, to win U.S. military recognition and thereby take a long step in their bid for power in China. Should such a situation arise, the U.S. would face a momentous political decision.
* In Moscow, Izvestia attacked the Chungking Government as corrupt, defeatist and reaction ary. In San Francisco, Tung Pi-wu, Communist member of China's delegation to the security conference, issued a 31 -page memorandum extol ling the Chinese Communists and berating the Chungking Government.
Sources: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,775922-2,00.html
