CHINA: End of a Symbol

The retreating Chinese Communists, leaving behind their legendary capital, Yenan, filtered northward to other centers of Red strength. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist troops, commanded by stocky, dependable General Hu Tsung-nan, marched in, took down the huge poster of Communist Chieftain Mao Tse-tung flapping by the south gate, raised the twelve-rayed sun flag of the Government. After ten years, Yenan (“Permanent Peace”) had fallen.

Karl von Clausewitz had said, “Public opinion is won through great victories and the occupation of the enemy’s capital.” The fall of Yenan was no great victory, but it would have a marked effect on Chinese opinion, strengthen confidence in Chiang’s ultimate victory.

Red Dust. For a decade Yenan’s loess caves had generated the trained personnel and the gospel of Red China. Young Communists of other Asiatic lands (including Sanzo Nozaka, brains of the Japanese party) had sheltered and studied there. In remote corners of Asia, the faithful would hear of the fall of Yenan with something of the inner shock that word of the fall of Mecca might bring to the Moslem world.

Distant, dusty, and millennially old, Yenan had been the ideal Communist capital—equally inaccessible to invading Japs and preoccupied Nationalists. Now that it was indefensible against Chiang, the Communists would continue the fight in other areas, such as the Communist pocket in coastal Shantung Province and, preeminently, on the Manchurian front. (Last week Shanghai heard that Russian troops were at long last pulling out of Dairen.)

Said Chief of Staff Chen Cheng: “We expect to achieve defeat of the main Communist strength within three months.” This did not mean “the end of all armed Communists—naturally there will be pockets left.” But it did mean, Chen thought, that “the enemy will cease to exist as a formal armed opposition.” Nanking generals were unworried about guerrillas, considered that guerrillas never gravely bothered the Japanese.

Red Faith. “Somewhere in North Shensi” the old Yenan radio came back on the air. It repeated the months-old line that the Reds were “trading empty cities for Kuomintang casualties,” although four months ago the Communists said they would defend Yenan “to the death.”

One of the last handouts from Yenan put this Red faith confidently: “The more Chiang concentrates his forces . . . the more he will expose himself.” Another Yenan handout of the penultimate period contained a puzzle for those who still think that Chinese Communists are merely agrarian reformers without connection with Communist movements elsewhere. Yenan based its faith in the future on “factors of decisive significance” in the outside world. These included an inevitable “American crisis” and “victories of the Soviet Union in economic construction and foreign policy.”