THE REAL STORY OF CHINA

...Whenever Stalin has a specific policy which he is determined must be followed, they follow it...

...Many county officials have become wealthy in the course of the war...

...And in every time of crisis, they have followed the leadership of Moscow...

...But the President is evidently unwilling to fight for a democratic policy worthy of our Republic...

...It was a delicious feast, with the many varieties of delicacies prepared as only Chinese cooks could prepare it...

...They have seen the utter callousness of Chinese officials, the shameless racketeering along the Burma Road, the profiteering in every possible form...

...Their occupation of one American air base after another is a real move ahead for theni...

...And the observer interested only in immediate conditions is quite properly impressed by these things...

...But the Chinese field is as great as all Europe taken together...

...Chiang Kai-shek's brother-in-law, is not only the Chungking regime s Finance Minister but also head of the Central Bank and of the Bank of China—giving him unparalleled opportunities, especially in view of the fact that he is also Mr...

...He had not yet recovered from the shock of seeing the gray shadows of what had been human beings, but which were now moving skeletons half-covered with rags, clustering like the shades of hell around the American visitors, begging for a tiny piece of bread or anything else...

...Not only is there the rival Kuomintang dictatorship headed by Wang Ching-wei at Nanking, collaborating with the Japanese in occupied territories, but there are a number of local warlords whose "allegiance" to the Chiang-Soong regime is definitely dependent on what they can get out of it...

...It was financed as a dictatorship, and as the "protector" of American "treaty rights" in China —"rights" which have now been lost...

...e., people opposing the continuation of the war...

...They are strong in their own areas, and they know that with Stalin now freer to act than he has been since June 1941, the Kuomintang does not dare attempt anything against Moscow's wishes...

...Morgenthau at the Bretton Woods Conference...

...Our subsidies started with the purchase of Chinese silver (for which we had no use whatever) at inflated prices, in exchange for which the Chiang-Soong regime agreed to accept our "leadership" in foreign policy...

...And the signs are ominous that China may become part of the ever-widening ascendancy of Stalin over Europe and Asia...

...Morgenthau, who is not likely to let down Mr...

...Communist China To cite the actual differences between the Kuomintang areas and the Communist areas lays one open to the charge of Communist propaganda...

...And in 1940 Gen...

...But Chiang is a more civilized man than those who have financed him even as they tricked him...

...Sometimes they did not do so well...

...The Chinese Communists, like the Communist Party elsewhere, look with the warmest affection upon what they consider the "Communist fatherland," the Soviet Union...

...Deep in their memories were the thoughts of the famishing people, the women eating their own children, outside...

...This rouses bitter hatred among the survivors, but also makes them homeless people, many of whom either join the guerrillas or become helpless dependents upon them...

...The problem does not concern China alone...

...This civil war was brought to an end by the Communist-Kuomintang agreement, the two groups forming an alliance against Japan...

...And that is, to "reward" the Chinpse people by turning them over to the tender mercies of Joe Stalin and his Chinese agents...

...There is rationing of such food and other requirements as exists...

...And in one place after another the Chinese officers and officials had to deal with what were termed "Japanese agents"—i...

...But there are grimmer things as well...

...She did not deny eating it...

...Such things are not new in China, though the dimensions of famine have increased...

...They were a subject of discussion, however, at the People's Political Council...

...This, however, would require the cooperation of Mr...

...His presence would be quite welcome at Nanking, where Wang Ching-wei would be most pleased to accept him into the ranks of Japan's collaborators...

...And the organized guerrilla forces expand and strengthen their organization, and gain ever greater numbers of followers and ever greater control...

...For four of those years we financed and supplied the Japanese as well...

...Teddy White reported in the same story the banquet given visiting newsmen by the local Chinese officials...

...The Communists have watched with pleasant anticipation the weakening of the regular Kuomintang forces before the Japanese drive this year...

...China, indeed, in some ways may be compared with Yugoslavia a year ago, when we were still aiding Gen...

...Thousands of soldiers, deserted by their officers, went into business for themselves...

...Stalin's game is not obscure—except to the feebleminded...

...Kung is a shrewd gentleman who would refuse to be let down...

...But as the war against Japan continued, it was seen that the Communists were not fighting the Japanese on behalf of the Chiang-Soong regime, but in order to expand their own power and control...

...Somehow, some of the American newsmen could not appreciate it...

...The same thing takes place with another village, and another...

...East of this "special area" there are smaller areas, scattered through country nominally under Japanese occupation, where Communist-led guerrilla forces carry on local regimes with no real control from Chungking...

...But the GPU is powerful, and the party is pretty well kept in line...

...Her defense was that it was already dead before she ate what was I'll of it...

...Since 1928 the American Government has been the main patron of the Kuomintang regime...

...And force disintegrates as the army itself is broken up in areas of Japanese advance, and thousands of its lost soldiers take to the hills to make a living in the time-honored way of hard-bit men with guns...

...But we are no longer dependent upon the reports of Communists and fellow-travelers for news of actual conditions...

...And, also, in Shensi and Kansu provinces to the north there is the autonomous area ruled by the Chinese Communists...

...They used to get rich on the opium business, but now racketeering in rice is even more profitable than opium...

...Indeed, Mr...

...The proposal was made, indeed, that such deposits and investments in the United States be liquidated, and the proceeds used to feed and supply Chinese soldiers...

...Chiang corresponds to Mikhailovitch, Chu Teh or Mao Tze-tung to Tito...

...The goods which "disappeared" from the Burma Road made some persons quite wealthy, as also the goods which disappear when shipped by the remaining railways (which are all Government-owned...

...But a democratic policy is something for which the Roosevelt Administration is making no fight, in China any more than in Europe...

...Gangsters' Paradise There is crisis in China today...

...Not only civilians but many soldiers are starving— sometimes in consequence of their officers selling their food supplies...

...So serious is the crisis that is now shaking the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek at Chungking, that the censorship was for a little while relaxed by the weakening hands of the rulers...

...Only One Alternative The worth-while alternative to this kind of dictatorship, in China as in Europe, is not Communism but democracy...

...Teddy White of Time Magazine last year gave a report on his actual visit to Honan province...

...Sometimes they fell into the hands of local peasants who "disarmed" them—¦ as it is put with due understatement...

...Japanese Military Advances The Japanese military advances in recent months have been in reply to the increasing American use of air bases in Chinese territory, and the increasing attacks by our sea and air forces on Japanese-held islands...

...They want power—for themselves but also for their Great Leader in Moscow—and are determined to get it...

...The Chinese troops, underfed and miserably supplied, seized more and more food from the already distressed peasants while their officers sold their supplies...

...Our Chinese Payroll How many hundreds of millions of dollars H. H. Kung and other high officials have salted down in American banks can only be estimated...

...An absolute dictatorship such as that of the Kuomintang can be maintained only by force, propaganda, and prestige...

...Both as military operations and "morale operations" the Japanese have done seriously effective work...

...They have no intention of taking over responsibility for a moribund regime...

...We are faced with perilous choices...

...It is the same technique as Tito has used so well in Yugoslavia...

...What is new is that in recent years American correspondents have gone to China, fresh from the Western world, and seen with their own eyes the stark reality of what is still referred to in official propaganda as "the great Chinese democracy...

...For they can see in this the shrewd moves of Stalin in world politics...

...The Communist-ruled areas are comparatively bleak and "poor," but no one is starving...

...It is political and military and social and economic...

...It is estimated that our great air field at Kweilin cost us no less than $70,000,-000...

...The Kuomintang dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek does not rule everywhere...

...Since 1933 we have been making outright subsidies to that regime...

...And some have seen, recently, something of the "scorched earth" policy which has deliberately destroyed cities and towns and villages and granaries and farms and crops...

...It has always been a dictatorship...

...The Chinese Communists are not merely a dictatorial party with more equalitarian and less corrupt rule than the rival Kuomintang dictatorship...

...There is a People's Political Council in China...

...Chinese to fight Japan...

...There is popular education much more widely spread than in Kuomintang areas, and an organization of the people into various •'societies" and "associations" in a disciplined way that contrasts markedly with the loose despotism of the Kuomintang...

...They have welcomed the approach of the Kuomintang leaders for discussions, and have regularly increased their demands upon the Kuomintang...

...The Army's destruction of such things, of course, was to prevent the Japanese invaders getting anything...

...Since 1935 our Government has been its financial mainstay...

...These are facts...

...And propaganda appeals often fare badly when faced with enemy propaganda of "Asia for the Asiatics," and the appeals of Wang Ching-wei and other collaborationists that the "Chinese must not fight Chinese" and must not supply cannon-fodder for a "White Men's war...

...Kung, who is Gen...

...But it was the Chinese peasants and other common people who died...

...And only one thing remains for us to become the most bitterly hated of all nations and peoples in China...

...They also make out well from "transportation" through their districts, though the "higherups" get their due share of this...

...Mikhailovitch but beginning to deal with Stalin's man, Tito, also...

...For guerrilla warfare is not only a method against the military enemy, but a political weapon as well...

...They had no desire to be edged out of power in China...

...And when the terrible and increasing shortage of goods is accompanied by ever-increasing racketeering by officials, and the most ruthless plundering of the starving and helpless people, and military disaster in a war against incomparably stronger forces—when j-hese things happen, internal crisis is inevitable...

...For a couple of years, the Japanese had been marking time, hoping for a diplomatic settlement with some of Chungking's leaders...

...Stalin Looks Eastward The tactics the Red guerrillas have been using against the Japanese were basically similar to those they previously used against the Kuomintang forces, during the period of civil war from 1928 to 1936...

...Thousands of these were executed...

...Some individuals, indeed, have left the party at times over one or another issue...

...Their first loyalty is to that government...

...They could not do anything about it, but for a little while they could talk...

...For more than seven years we have financed and encouraged the...

...He has demanded and obtained American diplomatic support in China, as part of his price for continuing his collaboration with us elsewhere...

...All these and many other things were brought out at the PPC meeting...

...Chiang and his associates cracked down upon the Red Army...

...But prestige declines Vhen the regime shows itself to be tied to what appears—to the common people in China itself—to be the losing side in a war between the Powers over the living body of China...

...But money alone is inadequate, when it cannot be used to buy commodities...

...If Stalin and his men gain ascendancy here as well as in Europe, he will be well on the way to world domination...

...Morgenthau's "white-haired boy" and the go-between for the American funds which are the main financial resource of the Chiang Kai-shek regime...

...Many Americans may not know these things, but all informed Chinese know them...

...Not that this is "necessary...

...The actual horror of starvation and cannibalism has been witnessed by some American reporters in China's famine areas...

...For the past nine years, the United States Treasury has been the financial mainstay of the Chiang Kai-shek regime...

...Kung...

...When cities and towns fell, the officers used what trucks they had to take out thei.r own household and other personal effects...

...It became ever more clear that the districts they were taking over and organizing politically would never submit to Kuomintang rule again...

...He had not yet re- covered from the sight of the dead in the street and along the roads, or from his visit to a court where a woman was on trial for killing and eating her own child...

...It is always the enemy who does the destruction and extermination...

...But the new American offensives demanded a reply—both the military reply of seizing our most important air bases in China, and the propaganda reply to showing the strength of the Japanese land forces in China to counteract our victories in the western Pacific...

...And Stalin's prestige has become ever stronger than before...

...The majority of its members are chosen by the ruling party, in Chungking direct or in the provinces, but there are Communists and others, and at the session of the PPC last month there were bitter challenges to the weakened dictatorship, and one speaker after another rose to ask pointed questions of the Government...

...With gasoline in Chungking as precious as blood, said one inquirer, why was it being wasted in providing transportation for the wives and mistresses of officials on shopping trips ? Was it necessary to build a half-mile road in front of the mansion of a highway official for the daily strolling of his foreignized wife...

...But while honestly setting forth and criticizing the nature of the Kuomintang dictatorship, let us not forget whose protege this dictatorship has been...

...One of the bitterest points of attack was the Finance Minister, H. H. Kung, who gave such loyal support to Mr...

...Wanted: A Democratic Policy This year they have seen a quite unprecedented thing —the Vice-President of the United States coming to Chungking to suggest a demilitarized Chinese-Soviet border, relations of "trust" with Moscow, and better relations with the Chinese Communists...

...It is probable that many were not...

...Coal is assigned to the railways, but much of it is sold by railway officials to private persons...

...China was in effect being divided into two main areas: those under control of the Japanese and their Chinese collab_orators, and the increasing areas under Communist rule...

...Since December 1935 the U. S. Treasury has furnished the major portion of the Kuomintang regime's revenues...

...And he is looking forward with confidence to the establishment of his ascendancy in the interior of China, in the way he is already gaining it in Yugoslavia and other areas in eastern and eastern central and southeastern Europe...