CHINA: On the Great Wall

Chiang Kai-shek won his greatest’ victory in years over the Communists last week: General Fu Tso-yi’s army marched into scorched and abandoned Kalgan, the Reds’ Great Wall “show place.” Because Kalgan’s fall convinced many that Chiang could take Harbin or any other large Chinese city (as long as he had U.S. help), the victory held a happy political significance for Chinese Nationalists who believe with Chiang that the Communists can be beaten into agreement.

However, U.S. General George C. Marshall and Ambassador Leighton Stuart have been impressed by the Communist threat that if Chiang took Kalgan the Reds would begin all-out civil war in a “total national split.” For those who started from that premise, the fall of Kalgan held an unhappy political significance.

In spite of his conviction that China “could be effectively unified by military victory, the Gissimo had, just before Kalgan’s fall, acquiesced to Marshall’s proposal for a ten-day truce that would have javed the Red city. Communist negotiator Chou En-lai turned down the truce and let Kalgan go, though its loss drove a wedge between Communist Yenan and the Reds’ Manchurian rampart. Kalgan’s capture was the climax and the symbol of six months of campaigning in which the Government army had been more successful than impartial observers had expected. In addition to several Red cities (notably Chengteh ana Changchun) they had cleared many miles of economically vital North China railroads.

But in Yenan, defiant Communist Leader Mao Tse-tung called for unlimited guerrilla warfare from hundreds of Red village bases. In Manchuria, Communist Li Lisan, who had opposed Mao in internal Communist politics 20 years ago (TIME, Sept. 9; Sept. 23), was urging a separate, Soviet-backed state.

Within the next month the Communists would have to make up their minds between 1) guerrilla war, 2) a separate state inaccessible to Chiang’s armies or 3) peace on terms in which a Chinese Government can function without a Communist veto (see below).