CHINA: Jokes on Japan

Few diplomats of the humorless Japanese Empire ever know quite how impudentlythey are being negotiated with by silkily-polite Chinese statesmen, all of whom seem to have a sense of humor as irrepressible as the Chinese countenance is expressionless.

Last week Nanking was roaring at the latest exploit of Chinese Foreign Minister Chang Chun in “kidding” the Imperial Japanese Government. Tokyo had demanded that Japanese troops be permitted to join the anti-Communist forces of Chinese Premier and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in any Chinese province into which these may be sent (TIME, Nov. 9). To this demand China’s Chang replied that, while it would be premature for China to grant such rights to Japan in all Chinese provinces, the Chinese Government would permit Japanese military co-operation in assisting it to exterminate Communism and banditry in the Chinese provinces of Manchuria, Jehol, East Hopei and Northern Chahar. The point of this uproarious Chinese joke could not entirely escape even glum Japanese Ambassador Shigeru Kawagoe upon whom it was sprung with the utmost Chinese decorum—for Mr. Kawagoe well knows that the areas specified are precisely those which Japanese soldiers already dominate and have detached or are trying to detach from China.

Joke v. Blow. Lacking though it is in humor, the Japanese Army knows that any joke can be answered by a sufficiently heavy blow. Last week the Japanese Army proper did not move, but Japanese sent 30,000 of their puppet Manchukuoan troops and Mongolian allies on a thundering raid from Chahar, northwest of Peiping, into Suiyuan. The invaders were equipped with tanks, armored cars and battle planes of Japanese manufacture. Actual news from this remote region was scant but early and Chinese-censored dispatches made world headlines thrilling to thousands of Chinese laundrymen and other expatriate Celestials: CHINESE DEFEAT 30,000 INVADERS!

Next the Nanking Government dispatched formal notes to all States having relations with China. These were told that the immediate withdrawal of all their nationals from the provinces of Suiyuan, Ningsia and Chinghai is “necessitated by bandit suppression operations.” This was another owlish Chinese joke, designating as mere “bandits” the Manchukuoan and Mongol soldier puppets of Japan.

Chinese Joan. With Chinese everywhere feverishly excited by their Premier’s new boldness, there arrived in Manhattan last week to collect funds attractive Miss Loh Tsei, who is known by the cash-compelling sobriquet “The Joan of Arc of China.” In December of last year, Chinesestudents outside Peiping were trying to unite with Chinese students inside Peiping for a demonstration against Japan. In those days the policy of Premier Chiang was not yet strong and his police had locked the City’s gates to keep the two groups of Chinese students apart. In this emergency, Miss Loh wriggled her small body under one of the gates and into Peiping, intending to open the gate from the inside if she could escape police notice. Instead, as Miss Loh related in Manhattan last week: “The policemen became very mad. They rushed to me like crazy and beated me. They beated me very violently with the handles of their guns. A hundred and more other students also were attacked most brutly. They mainly hurt my head and it became very swollen.”

When Miss Loh got out of the hospital, the All China Students Union elected her to one of the five seats on its directorate, hailed her as “The Joan of Arc of China” and sent her to the recent World Youth Congress in Geneva. There, warned by typical Geneva pussyfooters that she must not attack Japan, she delivered a flaming speech in denunciation of a country which she left unnamed.