Friendship Lost?

How stands U.S. prestige in China? From Shanghai, TIME Correspondent William Gray cabled:

Fifteen years ago this week Japanese marines marched into Shanghai's Chapei district to "protect Japanese nationals and preserve order." In the weeks of fighting that followed, 35,000 people died. The 15th anniversary of this bloody affair was observed in Shanghai this week by a mass meeting at a Chinese Y.M.C.A.

Considering the course of some very vocal Chinese sentiment recently, it probably will not surprise anybody to know that this anniversary occasion turned into an anti-American demonstration. Anti-American leaflets were scattered through a crowd of students and leftish politicos and were avidly scanned for proper insults.

Shanghai's fastest-growing newspaper, Wen Hui Pao, which has built its circulation by articulating the current anti-American position for Chinese readers, explained: "The memorial meeting should have been anti-Japan, but . . . in the minds of the Chinese people the United States has taken the place of Japan and has become the objective of hate and disgust. . . ."

This latest anti-American demonstration occurred one day before Washington announced the end of American mediation and the early withdrawal of U.S. marines. There is small indication yet, however, that this announcement will reduce the hostile suspicion with which many Chinese, believing swelling propaganda, now regard every American move.

Arrogance & Greetings. In Shanghai's alleys this week, street urchins sang this little rhyme: "Mei kuo lao, Chen pu hao! (American fellows are really no good!)" Defensive psychology is such that Editor Randall Gould of the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury has begun to use the term anti-foreignism instead of anti-Americanism whenever possible in editorials. Said a tall young American Navy officer: "We are beginning to understand what our minorities in the States feel like 24 hours a day."

"American imperialism" has replaced both "Japanese imperialism" and "British imperialism" in the average Chinese intellectual's dictionary of opprobrium. Americans are the 1947 examples of "arrogance"--despite continued evidence of U.S. good will.

This week marine airplanes began dropping more than a million pounds of UNRRA clothing, blankets and medical supplies into the destitute areas of Communist China. Shanghai witnessed the arrival of 800 cows, donated through the Church of the Brethren by farmers in Illinois, Indiana, North Dakota, Idaho, California and other states. A Guernsey heifer named Buttercup had this message attached: "Greetings of brotherhood from St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Modesto, California, U.S.A. May the milk of human kindness gladden your heart as the milk from this heifer nourishes your body."

That was probably expecting too much. Yet, as American mediation ended, Shanghai's Ta Kung Pao commented: "We wish here to thank our American friends and to hate our own stupidity. . . . The weather of dying winter is changing. Smoke, fog, wind, rain, snow and hail have concentrated in the skies above China. A lot of changes, perhaps, will take place before the warm spring comes."

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