Paralysis in Shanghai

For three months the U.S. State Department had tried vainly to evacuate some 1,600 foreigners (including 300 U.S. nationals) from Communist-held Shanghai. Last month the Reds had given a green light for the evacuation, then arbitrarily switched signals at the last minute, leaving the evacuees and their baggage waiting at the Shanghai docks. Last week in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson decided to call it quits: all plans for a sea rescue from Shanghai were off. He would, he said, ask the Communists to let the Americans travel overland to Tientsin or Hong Kong and try to get private shipping facilities from there.

That same day, in Hong Kong, 83 Shanghailanders (including four U.S. citizens) walked down the gangplank of a Danish freighter and onto British soil. The travelers had gone by rail from Shanghai 700 miles north to Tientsin and thence 900 miles south to Hong Kong by ship. Their report on Communist Shanghai described a slowly dying city.

Parades & Taxes. Said a Briton: "A gradual paralysis is setting in, a paralysis of commerce and spirit." There are few automobiles on the streets. Shanghai's factories are limping along at less than half their capacity production. Many shops stay open only by cutting prices below cost and unloading inventories to pay taxes and buy Communist victory bonds.

The early enthusiasm which sent daily parades of workers and students caterwauling through Shanghai's streets has worn thin. There are few parades now. A Chinese student who had greeted the Communists eagerly now tells his foreign friends: "I am going to school to learn to be an engineer. But we are learning very little. All we do is attend meetings."

The biggest sufferers from Communist policies in Shanghai are petty merchants and owners of small factories. Last month this class was hit by triple taxes (land, income and inventory), along with a higher quota in the "voluntary" bond drive.

The Russians Arrive. As the Westerners leave, the Russians are moving in. Shanghai's new Russian residents all wear civilian dress, are seen on the streets only occasionally. A few Russian trucks, patterned after U.S. Army six-by-sixes, have appeared, carrying boxes of ammunition with Russian labels. Shanghai's Chinese, long contemptuous of the city's White Russian colony, are no more favorably impressed by the Soviet citizens. "Before the war it was the British," said one Shanghai Chinese, "then the Japanese. Then came the Americans, and now it's the Russians." After a Communist-sponsored celebration of Stalin's birthday, another Chinese asked: "We didn't ever celebrate Truman's birthday, did we? Why all this?"

Nevertheless, some of the travelers who stepped ashore in Hong Kong last week were optimistic, after a fashion, of Communism's future in China. One Briton put it this way:

"As soon as the Communists get over their current troubles, you will see material progress, more than China has ever made before. I think it's clear the Communists have the power to do anything they please with China. But to a Westerner, and to my Westernized Chinese friends, it will be at the cost of almost everything that makes life worth living."

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