TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/40s/40china

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 9KB | 198 lines

                o-┼                                                          Communism in China


  [China had suffered terribly during the eight years of war
with Japan, twice as much as any other nation. But a large part
of the reason for China's defeats lay in its social and
political deterioration as a nation, which had helped spawn the
Communist movement there. For a while during the war, Chiang's
Nationalist armies and the Communists under Mao Tse-tung had
maintained a ceasefire and turned their weapons against the
Japanese. But even before the war was over, despite the vigorous
efforts of American envoys trying to salvage something from
years of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. aid,
the Communists and Nationalists went for each other, as both
tried to move into territory vacated by Japanese troops being
repatriated.

  Some Western observers had a boundless faith in the ability
of Chiang Kai-shek to reverse the deterioration and anarchy in
China. But the problems of the country were so enormous, and ran
so far beyond the mere military and political, that Chiang was
unable to cope. The U.S., which had poured good money after bad
over the years in China, watched with growing dismay, then began
to distance itself from a regime that was patently incompetent.
The slow-motion disintegration in the face of Communist pressure
was chronicled in TIME with great detail and great despair.]


(June 18, 1945)

  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.

  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.


(November 12, 1945)

  Civil war spread across North China. So far it was an
undeclared and limited war--a military offshoot of the unity
negotiations between the Central Government and the Communists.
But at any time the war might become open and unlimited.

  Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's armies, moving to restore
Central Government authority above the Yellow River, had
collided with Communist forces moving from their strongholds in
the same region. The Communist aim: to control a belt of
territory reaching roughly 500 miles form Soviet-occupied
Manchuria. Success would give the Communists, long established
in landlocked Yenan, an overland link with Russia and an outlet
to the sea. It would also block the Central Government's chance
to unify China.


(July 28, 1947)

  U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall's policy of
splendid isolation from the China civil war had led to a
deadlock: neither the Government nor the Communists had enough
strength for a knockout punch. As the opposing forces clinched
wearily last week, China, bled white by the long struggle, took
a new breath. The U.S.'s three-star General Albert C. Wedemeyer
was on the way to see what could be done to retrieve the losses
that followed from five-star General Marshall's indecisive
decision.

  North of the Yellow River it was all the Government could do
to protect the big cities and keep the main rail lines open. The
Chinese Communists, who lacked the strength to take Peiping,
Tientsin or Mukden, controlled the countryside of North China
and Manchuria. They could, and did, tear up rail lines
(sometimes within ten miles of Peiping).


(October 25, 1948)

  Not since the worst years of the Japanese war had China faced
a prospect so bitter. The Communist autumn offensive had
overwhelmed the Nationalists in Manchuria; the vital North China
corridor was under heavy attack. For the second time in a
generation, a great Nationalist retreat was under way. Isolated
outposts would now be evacuated and lines shortened to save men
and materiel for a long war of attrition.

  One exception to the Nationalist strategy of evacuation was
Mukden, site of the best arsenal in all China. Twice in the last
fortnight Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had flown north to
confer with General Wei Li-huang, Mukden's commander, and stir
him to a more active defense. As the garrison from starving
Changchun hacked southward to join the Mukden forces, Wei's
columns drove down to retake the port of Yingkow, reopening
Mukden to direct sea supply. More of Wei's troops thrust west
to relieve Chinhsien.


(November 8, 1948)

  Mukden was lost. The Nationalist withdrawal had turned into
a rout. As Communist troops took over the government's main
Manchurian stronghold last week, Nanking received the radio
message: "No more reports. Cannot get out of office. Goodbye."
Nationalist planes began to bomb the city.


(December 6, 1948)

  The Communists were overrunning China like lava. Mukden and
all Manchuria were gone--and 60% of China's best troops had gone
with them. In the great rust-red plain between Nanking and
Suchow, the last government armies in Central China confronted
an enemy that had beaten them before. U.S. military experts had
given Nanking "ten days to three weeks."


(December 27, 1948)

  Barring miracles, Chiang Kai-shek was beaten. Most (if not
all) of China would soon be added to the eleven countries of
parts of countries run by the Communists. Control of all China,
together with the areas he already held, would place 40% of the
world's population in Stalin's grasp.

   Last week Chiang still held (nominally) far more territory
than he had in the worst years of the Japanese war. Then,
however, most Chinese wanted him to keep on resisting the enemy.
Now, it seemed, most Chinese wanted him to quit.

  The conviction of defeat was strongest among the educated,
the influential, the rich. The peace-at-any-price tide welled
right up to the door of Chiang's study. His indomitable will
directed China to go on fighting, but in the absence of the
people's confidence, one man's will was not a resistance.


(January 31, 1949)

  Defeated and helpless, Chiang Kai-shek, for 22 years the
dominant figure in China, stepped down last week. His retirement
symbolized one of the great shifts in the 20th Century's
turbulent history: some 460 million Chinese, a quarter of the
human race, were passing under the domination of Communism.


(May 2, 1949)

  It was a week of stunning, swift disaster in China. Nearly a
million Communist troops along a 400-mile front poured across
the broad Yangtze, Nationalist China's last great defensive
barrier, and swept government positions aside like puny
earthworks in a raging tide. The Communists moved in with
impressive speed. In four days they took Nanking, cut off
Shanghai, and captured half a dozen strategic Nationalist
cities. They were driving hard for the rest of the free China
not yet engulfed in the Red flood.


(May 9, 1949)

  Slowly but inexorably, the armies of Communist General Chen
Yi bore down across the flatlands of the Yangtze delta. In the
second week of the South China offensive the Reds' pace had
slowed down somewhat, but they triumphantly reported eight
Nationalists armies crushed and trapped between the Yangtze and
the coast. Hangchow, last coastal railroad gateway to the south,
was deserted and lay open to the conquerors. Red armies also
bore down on Shanghai.


(October 3, 1949)

  After a quarter-century of conspiracy and struggle, the great
day came at last for China's Red conquerors. In Peiping's
crumbling Imperial Palace, under the golden tiles of bygone
Mings and Chings, the Communists last week proclaimed their new
dynasty. Cried Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung:

  "We have a feeling in common that our work will be written
down in the history of mankind. It will say: the Chinese,
forming one-quarter of humanity, have risen...We announce the
establishment of the People's Republic of China...We must unite
with all countries and peoples loving peace and freedom, first
of all the Soviet Union... Let the reactionaries at home &
abroad tremble."


  [Totally defeated, Chiang Kai-shek fled ignominiously to the
offshore island of Taiwan in December 1949.]