CHINA: A House Divided

In Chungking another parley between the Central Government and the Communists ended in deadlock.

Encouraged by jovial U.S. Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley, the Communists’ ace negotiator, smart, suave General Chou Enlai, had flown down from Yenan for one more try after almost a year of bootless words over issues as broad as China itself. For two weeks he had talked long and earnestly with Chungking’s ace negotiator, scholarly, liberal Information Minister Wang Shih-chieh.

Dr. Wang had offered what he called “important concessions.” They had been formulated by himself and T. V. Soong, Acting President of the Executive Yuan and the Central Government’s crack trouble shooter. To meet Yenan’s demand for a democratic coalition government, Chungking was ready to give the Communists legal status and minority posts in the National Defense Council and Executive Yuan. To meet Yenan’s demand for an all-party constitutional convention, Chungking offered to convoke an all-party meeting to consider “military and political unification pending a national congress.” But when Chungking asked Yenan to put the Communist Army under Generalissimo Chiang, General Chou balked.

At the last moment, the Generalissimo personally took part in the talks. He could not, he pointed out, tolerate an armed state within the state. He was the steward of China’s destiny. His charge had come from the great Sun Yatsen, and he would yield nothing of the ultimate responsibility for China’s government. General Chou would not budge either. In Chungking’s concessions he saw no termination of “one-party dictatorship.” But the political crux of the matter was that Yenan’s one-party dictatorship dared not, any more than Chungking, surrender control over the military forces on which its power is based and its survival depends.

At week’s end General Chou emplaned for Yenan. In the Communist capital, for the first time since 1934 a Party Congress was gathering; momentous decisions might be reached. When would Chou En-lai return to Chungking? Darkly he answered: “Not so soon.”

And as General Chou headed north, U.S. Ambassador Hurley flew south. He was bound for Washington, presumably to report the failure of a mission.

This week a powerful voice echoed General Chou. Growled Moscow’s Pravda: Chungking’s recent governmental reforms were “no more than a reshuffling of the cards.” China’s war effort lagged because Chiang Kai-shek had failed to solve Chungking’s “internal political crisis” and “democratize the state.”