The Last Round in. China
In Canton, which offered virtually no opposition to the Japanese in 1938, discretion rather than valour seems once more to be the keynote as the, Communist armies close in from the north. The Nationalist armies are no longer even pretending to fight, and the Government which the world at large still recognises as responsible for the destinies of the Chinese Republic has moved what is left of its administrative machinery to Chungking. Foochow and Amoy, on the mainland opposite Formosa, are in Communist hands, but the Nationalists' coastal blockade, though based to a large extent on bluff, still cuts the life-lines of Shanghai, where the present conditions and future prospects of the foreign community continue to deteriorate. In the North West, Communist forces have captured Lanchow with unexpected ease, and though the Moslem Generals Ma Pu-Fang and Ma Hung-Kwei may be expected to fight hard for their own provinces of Chinghai and Ninghsia the fate of these remote and ill-found regions is of small concern to the rest of China. The lot of the British trading community at Shanghai is peculiarly hard. Encouraged by their own Government (wisely, as it seemed at the time and may seem again) to remain at their posts, they are now suffering not only from the manifold restrictions and exactions of Communist rule but also from the effects of a blockade which the British Government, though it does not recognise the blockade as legal, can do nothing to mitigate. There are now, moreover, signs that America, whose Far Eastern policy since the war has been alternately bemused and volatile, has decided that any measures calculated to revive the economy of Shanghai would further the cosmic interests of Communism ; and it is felt, both in Shanghai and in London, that Washington has succeeded in imposing this • far- fetched conception on Whitehall with an ease which is surprising in view of the discrepancy between the size of our respective interests at Shanghai, where the British stake is, of course, very much larger than the American.
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