The Civil . War in China The fall of Chefoo and
Chinchow (at the latter place a Nationalist general and the armoured force under his command are reported to have been taken by the Communists) ought on current form to seal the fate of Mukden in the near future. The city has been virtually beleaguered for more than a year and from a material point of view is a liability to the Generalissimo, just as Berlin is a liability to the Western Powers. But its fall will mean a grave loss of face, and the extremely low prestige, both at home and abroad, of his Government can ill afford a blow of this kind. In any other country the condi- tions now prevailing in China would be described as desperate ; even by her own standards they are subnormal. Large parts of the country are ravaged by a desultory and unending civil war which adversely affects the whole of it. Uncontrolled inflation fans the embers of unrest, while a discredited administration and an underpaid and corrupt bureaucracy can do nothing to restore confi- dence either in themselves or in anything else. The Generalissimo, though it is never wise to underrate him, shows signs of losing his grip, and but for the astute old war-horse, General Fu Tso-yi, the Nationalists might well have faced before now the loss of Peking, a contingency which, if Mukden goes, cannot be regarded as remote. The Chinese Communists, unlike their co-doctrinaires elsewhere in Asia, are not pawns moving forward at Moscow's behest. For some twenty years they have fought their own battles with little help from Russia, and their direct Russian contacts are still tenuous and unim- portant. They have converted Communism to a creed which is clearly capable of appealing to large elements of a highly individualistic race and represent a force whose expansion no amount of arms and equipment from America will check unless the present rulers of China can offer the country something much better than mis- management. Dr. Wang Shih-chieh, the Chinese Foreign Minister who is now discussing Anglo-Chinese relations with members of
the Government in London, is a welcome visitor ; but evidence to support his optimistic forecasts about his country's future is almost wholly lacking.
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