MORE FIGHTING IN CHINA

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 94, 7 April 1930, Page 4

MORE FIGHTING IN CHINA

It is a good few weeks now since we were warned of an early approaching fresh clash of arms in China, but so far nothing of outstanding moment would seem to have happened. One of Saturday’s cables, however, spoke of the so-called rebel advance from the North towards lhe seat of Government at Nanking causing considerable anxiety in the latter quarter. A letter written some six or seven weeks ago by the Shanghai correspondent of a Sydney paper gives us some idea as to why there has been no very definite development. From this it would appear that the particular revolting general, Shih Yu-san, who had then been threatening trouble had been bought off for the time being. “The usual thing has happened,’’ he wrote “General Shih was given some 200,000 dollars to clear up arrears of pay Jue to his troops, and was, with wholly unconscious irony, appointed Commissioner for the Suppression of Bandits. Also he was announced by .he Nanking official news agency to have expressed ‘contrition.’ Thus once again the Nanking people, under Chiang Kai-shek, have bought a continuance of office, but. as has previously been pointed out, not of power.” There was threat from another direction under the leadership of Tung Seng-chi, but he fell out with his colleagues, and he, too, was found “open to reason,” another 200,000 dollars inducing him to desist from his expressed purpose and take a trip abroad.

The correspondent goes on to say that the policy bf buying oft rebellions generals at 200,000 dollars per head would be sound enough, given two conditions. The first is an extremely well-furnished Treasury, and rhe second a limited, or at all events a fixed, number of generals. Whatever the private wealth of the Nanking authorities may be, the Treasury is not able to meet tho ordinary calls upon it. Defaulting on foreign obligations —a thing unknown in the days of the Manchus—has become customary under tho Republican regime. The number of generals is also far from small, and it is certainly not fixed. Even to-day a bandit chief who can. collect a few hundred followers and make himself sufficiently unpleasant and difficult to suppress by force, can rely upon being made a “general” and placed in command of his bandit followers, who become a unit of the national army Despite the fact that, as mentioned General Shih had accepted lhe Nanking hush-money, there was still suspicion that he was conspiring with two other “tuchuns," General Hau Fu-chu and General Yen Hai-shan. to bring about the downfall of Chiang Kai-shek and his Government Hun Fu-chu, just mentioned, is the man whom Chiang bought off last year in March—previously one of the notorious Feng Yu-hsiang’s most trusted lieutenants. Tho relations between these three conspirators were not very clearly defined, hut there seemed to be no doubt that they would combine against Chiang. If. as seemed likely, the whole force of the Kuoniinchun joined, there would be about 750,000 men ranged against the Government force*. Having told ns so much of the indications for the time being, the correspondent makes the following enigmatic but significant reservation: “The foregoing is written on the assumption that the great civil war has started, or is about to start. But thirty years of knowledge of this country, and close association with a good many of the foreigners and Chinese who have been prominent in that period, have taught the writer caution. What is least expected in China may happen—but. again, as that has been taught ly experience, it would be just like China to upset that preconception, and for the expected to happen/’