Fiasco on Hainan
In order to be defeated in war it is necessary to obtain the use of a -battlefield ; and for this reason the Chinese Nationalists may not have many more opportunities of exhibiting their singular talent for staging military collapses. The latest of these is now in progress en the island of Hainan, where five Nationalist armies, totalling probably some 100,000 men, have been dispersed in a few days by Communist invasion forces acting in concert with guerrillas long established in control of the interior. This debacle was as usual accompanied by claims, artlessly concocted in Formosa, of resounding Nationalist victories. The ease and celerity with which General Lin Piao's forces achieved their objectives in the face of Nationalist supremacy suggests that, particularly if the Communists can muster with Russian help some sort of air cover, the much longer sea-passage may not deter them from attempting an assault on Formosa in the fairly near future ; and the prospects of the Nationalist defenders of that island putting up a stouter resistance than they did on Hainan are slender. Meanwhile British commercial interests on the mainland are in a desperate plight, and unless something happens to save them from extinction we may well have lost the whole of our stake in China before the summer is but. It is difficult to see what can be done now, or indeed what could have been done earlier, to rescue them. Our recognition of Mao Tse-tunes Government has led to nothing save a procedural deadlock in Peking. The Chinese doctrinaires cannot be made to admit—though they probably see quite clearly that they are injuring their long-term interests by strangling the western trade to which they owe so much and which the Russians cannot effectively replace. The only hope is a sudden change in the " party line," and there is unfortunately little reason to expect that.
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