CHINA: Grudge Government

A pack of Southern generals, all with bitter personal grudges against Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, broke with his Nanking Government last week and declared the secession of the coastal province of Fukien, styling themselves gloriously “The Chinese National Great Allied Revolutionary Government.”

Since Fukien is only 150 miles from Japan’s great tea & camphor island of Formosa the ugly possibility of Japanese intervention loomed, should the new “Government” grow obstreperous. Chances of this were good. Adjoining Fukien on the west is “China’s Soviet Sore Spot” (TIME, April 27, 1931), pululating with Chinese Communist generals. Should they enter into friendly relations with Fukien they would have for the first time a direct and easy access to the sea. Ominous seemed the fact that the Foreign Minister of the Fukien Government is notorious Chen Yu-jen (Eugene Chen), long the Communistically inclined stormy petrel of South China politics. As War Minister the new state has General Tsai Ting-kai, famed commander of the 19th Route Army in its deathless defense of Shanghai (TIME, Feb. 22, 1932). Governor Li Chai-sum of Kwangsi Province was styled the “Chairman” (President) of the new Government but Chinese called him a mere front for Red Eugene Chen.