THE LIBERATION: Bright with Hope

TIME’S Chungking Correspondent Theodore H. White last week cabled: “China’s hopes of peace are brighter than they have been for 20 years.

“The negotiations between Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Communist leader Mao Tse-tung take place in a land obsessed by the vision of peace and victory. Pressure upon both negotiating parties . . . comes . . . from the very depths of Chinese political consciousness. People are sick to death of war, profiteering, exile, bloodshed and malnutrition. They are entranced by a vision of China in its entirety, handed back to them intact, its industries unravaged by wars of liberation, its sovereignty total and absolute.

“Anything can happen if only peace exists — it will be possible to ride a railway train from Canton to the Amur River under a single flag ; possible to irrigate the fields of Hunan with the waters of Szechwan; possible to warm the homes of Shanghai with the coal of Shansi, possible to fuel the trucks of Yünnan with the oil of Sinkiang. The vision is too great, the hope too high for any group or any individual to dare to flout it with impunity.

The first party that strikes a blow to open civil war will stand condemned in the eyes of the entire nation. Leaders of all parties know this and the compulsion on them to achieve a solution is almost over whelming. . . .

“There has been a remarkable degree of secrecy achieved so far in the negotiations.

This is an extraordinary and encouraging sign. Usually each side has sought to beat the other to the punch by releasing the in formation with which to defend itself against the breakdowns which marked each former fruitless session.” Cooperation from the North. Russians in Manchuria waited for representatives of the Chinese Central Government.

Meanwhile Chungking heard — and half believed — that the Red Army gave the back of its hand to Manchurian Communists, forbade them to attempt any organization.

Near Kalgan in Inner Mongolia, Chinese Communists joined up with the Red Army’s Mongol units, were chagrined when they got a cold reception.

Communists around Shanghai were even more bitterly disappointed. For the past year the party had based its plans on expectation of a U.S. invasion north of Shanghai. U.S. forces, they thought, would be dependent on guerrilla aid, and this dependence could be translated into political recognition. When surrender came without an invasion, some Shanghai Communists wanted to seize the city. Just after the Moscow treaty was announced, Yenan headquarters ordered the Shanghai Communists to avoid armed conflict with Chiang’s authority.

Help from the West. U.S. aid to China in the postliberation period might prove more valuable than in war. U.S. air forces hauled Chinese troops to key points, establishing the Central Government’s control. U.S. occupation troops might help garrison Shanghai, Peiping and Tientsin until Chinese troops arrived in force.

U.S. help was necessary in another of China’s immediate problems: there were 1,090,000 Jap troops and 685,000 civilians in China (exclusive of those captured by the Russians in Manchuria). It would take at least three months to disarm the soldiers. U.S. shipping experts estimated that the last of the Japanese civilian horde might not be removed from China until 1950.

The gap that these departing Japs would leave was a reminder that not all was rosy in China’s postwar prospects. There were 18,000 Japanese skilled workers in key industrial jobs on Formosa alone. China would have a hard time replacing them with trained men, to say nothing of the scores of thousands of skilled Jap workers in Manchuria.

But last week the ancient land of China was bright with hope.