Spring Comes to Chiang Kai-shek

Grimly last week President Chiang Kai-shek prepared for May Day, rampage day for Reds.

In Shanghai dragnets carefully spread for months by the Government's secret agents were jerked tight in a series of raids. Police seized cache after Communist cache of rifles, ammunition, machine guns, seven complete field radio sets, a supply of artillery range finders and military binoculars, electric batteries for igniting dynamite, four printing presses, 500,000 Communist leaflets and documents.

The documents showed that in Kiangsi, one of the five interior provinces where Communist banditry has made a sore spot (see map), there now exists a Soviet Provincial Government.

The pamphlets, propaganda to be sure, declared: "Today 50,000,000 Chinese are living happily under the Soviet banner!

"Whole divisions of Government troops are deserting to our cause! The Communist armies have captured dozens of field guns, hundreds of machine guns and tens of thousands of rifles since the first of the year.

"An anti-Communist land-war is being waged on the Chinese masses by their Nanking and Shanghai masters. An anti-Communist river-war is being waged up and down the Yangtze by foreign gunboats and the armed steamers of the Imperialist Powers.

"The armies of Chiang Kai-shek and his Nanking government are tools of foreign Imperialism, the Chinese landlords and the Chinese bourgeoisie!"

Land the Issue. As in Russia under Tsar Nicholas II, land in what is now China's sore spot has been leased by the peasants from rich Chinese landlords.

"Death to the rich!" Communist agitators exhort the peasants. "Take what you want instead of paying rent. Land to the poor!"

In northern provinces where each Chinese peasant owns his own small farm, such Communist doctrines are not understood. The spread of the Red ripple is checked.

On the Spot. Few large Chinese cities have remained long in Red hands, even on the sore spot. Troops loyal to President Chiang Kai-shek police it, operating from Hankow, with somewhat less success than U. S. Marines have had in Nicaragua.

Several Red bandit armies are constantly on the move, integrating their movements by means of field radio. While one or two armies engage Government troops one or two others sack a city, massacre, carry off prominent citizens to be held for ransom, after which all four armies withdraw banditwise to the mountains, split spoils.

Plainly Chinese peasants did not spin all this organization out of their own heads. Most brains, much money are provided by Moscow's Third International. Brawn is easily picked up among China's thousands of out-of-work soldiers (China is "at peace" this spring, for the first time in ten years has no formal civil war going). Peasant support for the Red bandit forces has been won by propaganda, bribes even by putting firearms in peasant hands.

Frequently, after Government troops have marched through what seems to be a peaceful village, it opens fire on their rear.

River Wan What Red leaflets call the Imperalist "river-war" on Communists is primarily defensive firing by British, U. S. and Japanese river steamers where they are fired on, not always by Reds.

Latest U. S.-owned steamer to get in Yangtze trouble is the Iping. Scuddling down the river's rapids, she bumped herself on a rock, limped on, ran a gauntlet of Communist fire, escaped toward Ichang. Next day "friendly" Government artillery suddenly surprised the Iping with shrapnel, desperately wounded two Chinese passengers, put a slug in the leg of Leo Bradley, able seaman U. S. N. Promptly other U. S. Naval guards on the Iping got her guns into action, silenced the Chinese battery with an Imperialist cannonade.

Sheepishly the Chinese commander later said he supposed the Iping had misunderstood his "signal to stop."

Bill of Rights. So comparatively peaceful is China this spring that President Chiang Kai-shek has at last had time to put in shape a Constitution and Bill of Rights--something Chinese have never had. Just now the text is secret, but soon it will be laid before the People's (Nationalist) Congress at Nanking. There will be, said Government spokesmen last week, no right of Red speech in the bill, no excessive guarantees of freedom.

In the past twelvemonth potent, progressive President Chiang has brought peace to most of China by driving two rival War Lords out of China, bringing a third into his regime. Nos. 1 & 2 are ex-Governor Yen Hsi-shan of Shansi ("The Model Province") and ex-Generalissimo Feng Yu-hsiang of "The Largest Private Army in the World" (TIME, Sept. 29).

Yen is taking his ease in Japanese Dairen; Feng is skulking in Honan with only 50,000 troops. Thus the 300,000 farmer soldiers of Yen and Feng constitute a stiff "disbandment problem." Last week this problem was being tackled in Shansi by able Dr. H. H. Kung, Disbandment Commissioner Extraordinary, unique in prestige as he is the 75th lineal descendant of Confucius.

No. 3. The smart young War Lord who has joined the Nationalists is "Chang Jr.," son of the late, barbaric Lord of Manchuria, Chang Tso-lin, he who reclined elegantly with one or more of his wives on a couch of tiger skins while an executioner, for his amusement, chopped off a head-- any head would do.

Chang Jr., despatches said last week, has now bought himself a trimotored Ford plane, commutes in it between Mukden, his inherited Capital of Manchuria, and Peiping (once Peking). At Peiping his official style is "His Excellency Chang Hsueh-liang, vice Commander of the Army & Navy with Jurisdiction over Four Provinces & Governor of Manchuria."

Opium. Finance Minister T. V. Soong cheerfully declared last week that China will soon have "a new and realistic opium policy."

Stimulus for this has been provided by the opium expose of the U. S.-owned Shanghai Evening Post which mailed out questionnaires, got back answers from 170 Christian missionaries in more than 18 provinces.*

According to the missionaries, not only is opium grown and consumed without restriction in six provinces (see map), but elsewhere and in provinces where it is barred by law bootleg opium and smok-easies flourish. More serious, illegal "taxes" are collected on opium in many places, graft and corruption flourish on the weed.

From northeast Yunnan a missionary reported that in his district 98% of the men smoked opium, 40% of the women. Two-thousand-horse opium caravans "frequently" (according to another missionary) trek north from the "Opium Capital" in Szechwan, the city of Chungking which boasts 100 morphine factories, 150 opium shops and 4,000 dens--all licensed, legal.

Under such circumstances a "realistic" opium policy, according to Minister Soong, cannot be one of prohibition. Consequently Chinese Treasury officials have been sent to Formosa to study Japan's opium system: restricted sales under Government monopoly. If shrewd Minister Soong does harness opium to his Treasury chariot, he may find a way to balance the Chinese budget for some time to come, may find opium an aid in standing off the U. S. silver producers who want to unload on China a silver loan (TIME, Jan. 19). Last week Senator Key Pittman of silver-surplussed Nevada announced in Washington that he will sail next month to confer with Dr. Soong.

Famine. Significantly China's Red provinces are not her famine provinces. Misery there is too enervating, too catastrophic to produce social revolt.

This subject (since the American Red Cross had refused succor [TIME, Dec. 10, 1928], and since the U. S. now has its own drought-hunger problems) has become taboo in despatches. Nevertheless 8,000,000 Chinese have starved to death in the present Great Famine (TIME, Jan. 23, 1928 et seq.) and 1,000,000 more soon will starve to death, the China Famine Relief (Manhattan) estimates.

Statesman Mo. Statesman Stimson tried, failed two years ago to make peace between China and Russia by invoking the Kellogg Pact (TIME, Aug. 5, 1929). Ignoring him, Chinese and Soviet statesmen made their own peace at far away Habarovsk on Soviet soil (see map). But this peace has been followed by a host of complications, mostly about Russia's half interest in the Chinese Eastern Railway. Last week China's statesman Mo Teh-hui was busy tying up loose ends of the Peace in Moscow. Statesman Mo called at the Soviet Foreign Office, got down to exceedingly brass tacks with Commissar Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov who hates and professes to scorn Statesman Stimson (TIME, Dec. 16, 1929).

Statesman Mo, it was understood, dickered for the purchase of Russia's half interest in the Chinese Eastern Railway, an interest which by treaty will lapse to China anyway in 1956.

To get Russia out now, Statesman Mo was believed to have offered $40,000,000. To help Statesman Mo raise his offer to $80,000,000, the Soviet Government has lately massed troops again on the Chinese frontier.

Business. Chinese goods were more tempting than ever last year, priced as they are in Chinese silver money which is steadily declining; but the Occident, due to Depression, is refusing to snap up China's bargains. The U. S. bought 38 1/2% less in 1930 than in 1929. China bought 28% less from the U. S., and Chinese importers are now unhappy about one of smart Dr. Soong's shrewd moves. The Finance Minister, although silver is legal tender everywhere in China, has put through a decree that goods entering from abroad must pay duty in gold. But for this step, Chinese economists say, silver's depressed value would soon bankrupt the Government.

*Ransom values of U. S. missionaries to Chinese bandits fluctuate widely. Thus the Lutheran Mission at Hankow paid $2,350 plus $1,300 worth of medical supplies last week for Rev. K. N. Tvedt; but Mongolian bandits let Rev. Allie Godfrey Lindholm of the Scandinavian Alliance Mission go cheap for $600. Murdered recently by discharged Chinese servants at Yunnanfu were two Seventh Day Adventlst missionary-wives, Mrs. Victoria Marion Miller & Mrs. Vera Mosebar White.

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