CHINA: Battle Joined

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 from Soviet-dominated Outer Mongolia to Soviet-occupied Manchuria (see map).

Success would give the Communists, long established in landlocked Yenan, an over land link with Russia and an outlet to the sea. It would also block the Central Government’s chance to unify China.

The Communists were not likely to succeed, but the effort in the field increased their chances of partial success — or, at least, of survival — at the conference table in Chungking. They were bound to make the effort, and Chiang Kai-shek was duty-bound to forestall them where he could, fight them where he must.

Into Manchuria. Within limits, the U.S. was helping the Government of the Republic of China. Off the Manchurian coast, aboard transports escorted by war ships of Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid’s U. S. Seventh Fleet, hovered Central Government troops. They had come to take over from the Soviet Red Army, as agreed in last August’s Sino-Russian pact. But, for no given reason, Red Army commanders balked at opening Manchuria’s main ports of Dairen and Port Arthur. Hasty parleys were called at Changchun.

Up from Peiping flew a bevy of crack Central Government troubleshooters. One of them was affable General Tu Liming, Chungking’s military commander for the Northeast. Another was Russian-speaking Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek’s elder son, who has a Russian wife and used to be at odds with his father, but is now one of the National Government’s up-&-coming younger men and the Foreign Affairs Commissioner for the Northeast. A third was liberal Chang Kia-ngau, a Shanghai banker and ex-Minister of Communications, who has become one of the Generalissimo’s close advisers. The Russian conferees were headed by their Far East commanders, Marshal Alexander M. Vasilevsky and Marshal Rodion Y. Malinovsky. Vague reports said the talks were “most cordial.”

General Tu reported that the Russians had “guaranteed” a safe landing in Manchuria—but not at Dairen and Port Arthur. The port of entry was Yingkow, a minor harbor with rail connections to the interior. The Russians gave due warning that, elsewhere in southern Manchuria, presumably at Hulutao and Antung, Chinese Reds might not be so agreeable.

When Generalissimo Chiang’s troops arrived off Yingkow they found a Chinese Communist garrison. U.S. Vice Admiral Daniel E. Barbey, in charge of the transports, and General Tu promptly conferred with the Russians to arrange the transfer or neutralization of the Communists.

Other Central Government troops, preceded in the North China port of Chin-wangtao by U.S. marines, met strong Communist resistance when they tried to march beyond the Great Wall into Manchuria. The Government troops skirmished fell back and waited for reinforcements.

The Communist forces along the Great Wall were part of the famed Eighth Route Army. After taking over the ancient crossroads city of Kalgan, some 215 miles inland from Chinwangtao, and making it the capital of a new border government, the Eighth turned its energies to Manchuria. A Communist spokesman blandly explained that the Russians, observing the letter of their treaty obligations in Manchuria, had forbidden the Eighth to enter —as an army. But the Russians had welcomed Communist “civilians.” Said the spokesman: “There is a possibility that these civilians armed the people.” In any event, strong Communist forces were grouped in Manchuria across the path of entry for Central Government troops.

Below the Great Wall. South of the Great Wall, the great old cities of commerce and culture, which mean so much to all Chinese, were solidly in Central Government hands. U.S. air forces had just finished transporting Chungking’s Ninety-Fourth Army from Shanghai (see ARMY & NAVY) to Peiping, the stately northern capital. Twenty-five thousand U.S. marines were in Tientsin, where they had accepted the Japanese surrender.

Along the railways leading south from these key Hopeh cities fighting had been going on for weeks. Last week the news burst into the open, and General Ho Ying-chin, Chungking’s chief of staff and commander in chief of all field forces, went to the north. He flatly declared that the Government would reopen communications “as soon as possible.” So far it was primarily a political and economic war; the military phase was incidental.

If communications were not opened, all China would suffer. The great popular migration home would be delayed, galloping inflation would be harder to check, industrial reconstruction would lag. Above all, a bleak, fuelless winter would lie ahead. For North China’s railways tap the nation’s great coal mines. Only one of these—the Kailan fields, lying on the line between Tientsin and Chinwangtao —was open last week. U.S. planes and Central Government guards were on the alert to bar any Communist attempt to block Kailan shipments.

Farther south, in the strategic Shantung peninsula, communications were paralyzed. There the Communists held the important harbor of Chefoo. But the more important harbor of Tsingtao was occupied by U.S. marines, under able Major General Keller E. Rockey. In the hinterland Central Government provincial troops struggled with Communists astride the main railway running “south from Tientsin through Tsinan, Shantung’s capital.

To the west, in the inland provinces of Honan, Shansi, Suiyuan and Chahar, the Communists were on the offensive. They had attacked at least a dozen provincial towns surrendered by the Japanese to Central Government forces. At week’s end they were storming two important places: Tatung, North Shansi rail junction; and Kweisui, capital of Suiyuan.

Continuation of Politics. Said Chungking’s No. 2 ranking officer in North China, General Li Tsung-jen: “There may be a small war now in China, but major differences can be decided by negotiations.”

In effect, the “small war” was a Clausewitzian extension of the political talks begun in August by Communist Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Generalissimo Chiang’s negotiators, and recessed last month. The suspended but by no means abandoned negotiations and the military maneuverings were inextricably intermixed. The more either side could gain in the field, the less would be left to negotiation. The more they finally settled by negotiation, the less they would have to fight about.

The Great Hope. Despite the shooting, all China shared a universal, overwhelming desire for peace. Statesmen, generals, common soldiers, peasants, townsmen wanted only to end the fighting—all fighting—and get on with the rebuilding of China’s individual and national life. This vast yearning pressed alike upon the Generalissimo in Chungking and upon Mao Tse-tung in Yenan. In it lay the best hope that China would find national security short of all-out civil war, and that the thousands of Americans within the sound of Chinese guns would come safely home.