A Simple Robbery?

In Hong Kong these days, retired Chinese Nationalists have suddenly become as sought after as elderly bachelors in June. Red China's emissaries work overtime, attempting to kindle in them a new rose-red love, while the agents of Chiang Kai-shek try to respark the old flame.

Retired Nationalist General Yu Ching-man lacked the high distinction of his Hong Kong neighbor General Wei Li-huang, who defected to the Communists last March. Nevertheless, as a onetime commander of the Nationalist 26th Army in Yunnan and leader of the long-drawn-out defense of Changteh against the Japanese in 1943, he was a soldier worth wooing to any cause. He had prospered outside Red China with his investments in Hong Kong real estate, in Macao fisheries and Chinese trading firms.

Recently, General Yu received a secret visit from old friend and new Communist, General Wei, who came back under an assumed name to stir up other defections. Soon afterward, General Yu received a visit from another old friend, General Li Mi, onetime commander of Nationalist troops in Burma, who now occasionally visits Hong Kong incognito from Formosa. Both left his house without any commitment from General Yu and presumably without any certainty that Yu had not committed himself to the other.

Last week, Yu got a third visitation: three unidentified ruffians waited in the shadows of his doorway as he drove up to his house, ordered him inside and shot him dead. Called by a fleeing servant, the police arrived in time to kill one assailant while the others fled. Loath to borrow trouble in matters involving Formosa and Peking, the Hong Kong police at first attempted to dismiss the whole incident as "a simple robbery," but later, thinking better of it, posted a whopping reward of $3,500 for the missing murderers.

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