Puppets' Progress

The puppets danced last week in Occupied China. Behind the scenes the Jap pulled the wires. Obediently representatives of Vichy and Nanking signed a document that surrendered the old French concessions in Tientsin, Hankow and Canton to the puppet Chinese Government of Wang Ching-wei. Bleated the Tokyo radio: "Conclusive evidence of collaboration in a new order in East Asia."

New Puppetry. The Jap has long fought his great Oriental neighbor with three arms -- military, economic and political. Political pressure he has exerted through puppets. The shadow regime of Henry Pu Yi set Manchurian Chinese apart from their southern countrymen. Similarly the regime of suave Wang Ching-wei, Japan's No. 1 puppet since March 1940, was designed to wean Chinese from allegiance to Chiang Kaishek. For three years the Mikado's generals stupidly sought to give Traitor Wang "face" without a pretense of authority. Chinese derided the puppet premier as "the prisoner of Nanking." Now the Jap has turned to a policy of blandishment. On paper he has granted Nanking breathtaking political and economic concessions, such as the nominal surrender of foreign extraterritorial rights, including Japan's. He has tried to curb inflation in the occupied zone. He has altered his propaganda against Chiang Kaishek: no longer is the Generalissimo painted as a fiend destroying China, but as the tool of Anglo-American plotters. Most alarming, he has pushed the organization of Wang's puppet army, now several hundred thousand strong.

New Threat? A dribble of hungry, ragged, ill-armed Chungking soldiers has trickled into the Nanking camp. The Jap last week claimed the desertion of 70,000 Free Chinese troops on the Honan front, about 400 miles northeast of this week's fierce battle for the Yangtze River gorges (see p. 33). The Chiang Government hotly denied it. Wang's army is not a trustworthy army; despite purges, it is honeycombed with Chiang sympathizers. But it has relieved regular Jap units of garrison duty, helped Tokyo meet a serious manpower shortage, may some day take the field against Chiang.

The progress of puppetry is not yet a dire threat to Free China. The Jap still clings to his ancient arrogance; to the bulk of China's masses he is still a "monkey thief." But the danger is serious.

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