Nanking and Canton General Chiang Kai-shek appears to have won
a signal victory over the " anti-Japanese " movement prepared in the Southern Provinces of Kwangsi and Kwangtung. Now for the first time in ten years at Canton, he has sent an ultimatum to the Kwangsi generals, Li Tsung-jeu and Pai Chung-hsi, requiring them to leave the province immediately. If they refuse; he has 300,000 regular troops ready to invade the province, while the Kwangsi generals are financially bankrupt and have been deserted by their air force; whose commander has gone over to Chiang. The victory may prove to be more than another move in the endless Chinese game of intrigue and counter- intrigue ; its results may justify Chiang's long continued policy of temporising with the Japanese. For by the dismissal of the Political Council, which ruled Southern China -from Canton,- and the appointment of his own Governor, Chiang has ended the division between Nanking and Canton which has been one of China's most fatal weaknesses. His success may be, like many Chinese victories, only formal and temporary ; yet it is a step, and a necessary step, towards the real unification of Central and Southern China which is the main object of his policy. At the same time, in North China, he continues to seek some modus vivendi with the Japanese.
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