CHINA: Or Cut Bait

Most U.S. military observers had thought that the Reds would crush Chiang Kai-shek’s forces at Suchow, and take his capital, Nanking, in a matter of days. When this did not happen last week, they could hardly believe it.

Chiang held nothing back from the Suchow battle. He concentrated his armies east of the city, relying on the fall floods to defend the swampy plain to the north and northwest. He guessed right. The Reds concentrated their attack on the east, and Chiang’s men were there to meet the assault of 400,000 Communist troops in one of the greatest battles of China’s history.

Chiang’s air force, which has scored no previous spectacular success, stopped the Reds. Cloudless days & nights with a full moon helped his flyers play havoc with the Red supply lines.

After twelve days of bitter fighting, both sides were in precarious positions. One of Chiang’s armies had been cut off, and two others that tried to rescue it had exposed salients. The Red generals Chen Yi and Liu Po-cheng were trying to reinforce their badly mauled forces; the Communist supply lines from the north were long, and open to air attack in coverless terrain.

If Chiang had won anything at Suchow, it was only a breather. The plight of the Nationalists was still desperate, both on the Suchow front and in the north. Chiang had, however, proved against expectations that there was still plenty of fight left in his army. Whether that spirit would be enough to save China from going Communist depended on how much help it got from the U.S.

China’s Communists, well aware of the danger to them of increased U.S. aid to Chiang, blustered and threatened. “If the American government should dispatch its armed forces, whether for all-out or partial protection of the Kuomintang government, this would constitute armed aggression against . . . China … All the consequences thereof would have to be borne by the American government.”

Meanwhile in Washington, U.S. officials studied a report which recommended what the Communists feared most. Former Senator D. Worth Clark had gone to China as investigator for the Senate Appropriations Committee. After a hardworking month of travel and talk with Chinese on all levels, he came back with a program based on these points: “Immediate and extensive” direct military aid, combat advisory aid, financial aid for military operations, financial aid to stabilize the currency, and strict U.S. supervision of the distribution of U.S. money and supplies. Clark’s conclusions: “Piecemeal aid will no longer save failing China from Communism. It is now an all-out program or none; a fish-or-cut-bait proposition.”