The Far East

ON THE WORLD TODAY

IT TOOK from three to five years for the results of the First World War to develop a full head of political pressure in Asia. It is therefore not surprising that only now, a year and a half after V-J Day, is it becoming possible to measure political events and trends in Asia after the Second World War with sufficient accuracy to make meaningful comparisons with the post-war Asia of twenty or twenty-five years ago.

Already two great changes stand out. Russia, which for some years after the First World War was a wavering question mark, has become a solid exclamation point. And in the field of Asiatic nationalism, there has been a major shift from the plane of theory to the plane of action.

A quarter of a century ago, a man like Sun Yat-sen could see clearly, in theory, what he wanted, but methods were still experimental. The personnel of nationalist revolution was top-heavy with generals and colonels and fatally weak in steady, dependable sergeants. Today, nationalism is a going concern. Both its conservatives and its leftists know how to tap and organize political manpower by deliberate selection along lines of social and economic interest.

These two great changes must be analyzed in combination. A quarter of a century ago the great powers had not yet conceded the ability of the Bolsheviks to survive even in Russia. The powers which invaded Russia and backed the Kolchaks and the Denikins were also the major colonial powers. The Russians, in their struggle for survival, therefore shouted the most bloodcurdling slogans they could think up, in order to incite the colonial peoples and create a diversion in the rear of the governments which were trying to stop the Revolution. In the colonial countries, however, and among the colonial peoples, Russian policy had no real roots. Even the most radical colonial leaders who began to call themselves Communists were not Russiantrained. They were intellectuals, few in number, who had been in contact with Western European radical thought, and they were labor leaders, even fewer in number, who had learned something of the technique of trade-union organization. The Russians could in fact do very little in the way of creating colonial unrest; all that they could do was to take advantage of colonial unrest already existing.

The shift in combination can thus be well expressed by pointing out that now it is the colonial nationalists and revolutionaries who are in a position to take advantage of the fact that Russia exists. Russia — and not just Russia, but the Soviet Union, under Communist leadership and with a socialized economy — is a solid fact.

Asia’s leadership

Leftist leaders in Asia now believe that they can speed up the emancipation of their own peoples either under conditions of world hostility toward Russia or under conditions of world coöperation. If coöperation is to be the policy, they can take part in the general coöperation. If hostility is to be the policy, then they can put pressure from the rear on any country that has turned its face in hostility against Russia.

Moderate leaders believe that the balance of world power between Russia and the Anglo-American bloc leaves them room for maneuver. They have long abandoned the Gandhi dream of a return to an idyllic, unmechanized, pre-Western — and unreal — Asiatic past. They are convinced that, however much they dislike their rulers, they must borrow techniques of political organization and economic production from these rulers if they are to survive in the modern world.

Many of them believe that they can also borrow from the Soviet Union short-cut methods of education, political mobilization, and speeded-up economic progress without being captured themselves by Communism, or even Socialism. They can maintain freedom of choice, however, only as long as the balance between the Russians and the capitalist countries remains a balance.

The moderate leaders therefore resist Russian infiltration and excessive leftward trends within their own countries; but they also resist pressure from the outside to make them climb on any anti-Russian bandwagon. They feel safer with a capitalist world to hold Russia in check; but they also feel safer with a Russia strong enough to prevent capitalism from reverting to wide-open imperialism.

For the moment, however, it is the rightists of Asia who are most active; and they, too, take advantage of the existence of Russia. Last thing at night, the rightists of Japan remind General MacArthur to look under the bed for subversive trade-unions.

They have maneuvered Mr. George Atcheson, MacArthur’s political spokesman, into the weird position of defending not only the state of affairs in Japan but Japanese aims as “virtually identical with the Allied aims.” Allied aims are presented and defended as aims which allow the Russians no elbowroom. Since the anti-Russian Japanese are also the Japanese who financed and abetted the Japanese militarists from the Mukden Incident to Pearl Harbor, the effect of such special pleading is to make Mr. Atcheson the best spokesman of the Japanese militarist point of view since the ineffable Matsuoka.

The Philippine revolt spreads

In the Philippines, the drive of the rightists is to get American equipment and aid for the suppression of agrarian unrest. Although an old directive from President Truman, now forgotten, urged considerate treatment for the agrarian guerrillas, on account of their considerable services against the Japanese, the present drive for law and order defers the satisfaction of even legitimate grievances, and gives priority to the suppression of those who have grievances.

Thus far, the result has not been a narrowing of the area of revolt, but a spread of revolt to new areas. Several thousand former guerrillas have seized plantations which once belonged to the prosperous Japanese colonists in Mindanao, and are now squatting on them.

Title to these plantations had been transferred by the United States Alien Property Custodian, for one dollar, to the Philippine government. The conflict with the squatters has thus become a direct conflict between the people of the Philippines and their government.

President Roxas has made some statements, which read excellently, on the subject of distribution of farm lands, but the trouble lies in an old and deeply intrenched technique of political abuse. New farm lands cannot be opened up without new roads; when new roads are to be built, knowledge of them is leaked to those who are politically on the inside, and the adjacent land is taken up by landlords before claims can be filed by bona fide homesteaders.

Since the most powerful supporters of President Roxas regard this kind of graft as a legitimate perquisite, the only way in which he could restrain them would be to increase the political rights and representation of the peasants, who are his only strong, organized opposition; and since this is exactly what he is not prepared to do, the war of internal conquest against the peasants goes on.

The Korean experiment

In Korea, the rightists also jumped into the lead at the beginning of the American occupation; but because the Korean rightists, in addition to having almost no popular support, are unbelievably incompetent, the increasingly agonizing headache of the American occupation problem threatens to outweigh the satisfaction of blocking the Russians. The word has already been spread in Washington to lay off expressions of admiration and support for Syngman Rhee, because the Military Government is now ruefully convinced that the more he is supported, the more unpopular the Americans become.

Disturbances in Southern Korea are becoming more and more widespread. Responsibility for disorder is attributed to “inspiration” from across the border in Russian-occupied Northern Korea. The rare Americans who get into the Russian zone report that the Russians are also unpopular, and that Koreans there will take the risk of sidling up to Americans to whisper, “Russians bad; Americans good.” But for some reason, in the dismal competition to see which of the two occupying forces can make itself the more thoroughly disliked, the Russians have not had to face the kind of widespread, open, and popular manifestations of resentment which harass the Americans.

This may be because the Americans do not organize “inspiration” in the southern zone for infiltration into the northern zone. Or it may be because the Russian occupation forces are much larger, and able to crack down on popular resistance before it gets organized. Or it may be that the Russians are more intensely disliked, but by small groups of people, such as the landlords, while the Americans are more vaguely disliked, but by larger groups, such as the peasants. At any rate the situation cannot be cleared up until it is thoroughly aired; and Americans returning from Korea are outspoken in saying that it is high time for an airing.

Chinese puzzle

It is in China, however, that all issues linked with the position of Russia, the influence of Russia, and even the mere idea of Russia lead up to the biggest crisis. And this crisis tends more and more to become a crisis in American politics.

Already the gloves are off. Criticism of the extent of American intervention in China will increasingly be counterattacked as appeasement of Communism and of Russia. Demand for all-out support of the Kuomintang as the “only legitimate and recognized” government in China will increasingly be identified with a policy of hostility to Russia on all issues and in all countries, throughout the world.

The first subject of debate is General Marshall’s mission. Has General Marshall failed? It is noteworthy that those who were the first to say that General Marshall had been sent on an “impossible” mission, and the first to advise that he be withdrawn, are those who demand, on all issues, a policy of hostility to Russia. On the other hand, the Chinese Communists have been increasingly reckless in accusing General Marshall of condoning aid to the Kuomintang to an extent that invalidates his function as an impartial mediator.

The truth is that General Marshall’s mission has neither failed nor succeeded. It has merely been tacitly suspended. The real issue is not the monthto-month aid we are giving to the Kuomintang. That aid has been far too little to constitute a decisive intervention. It has in fact merely kept the Kuomintang from collapse and made possible the prolongation of a military stalemate which is still evenly balanced, in spite of the loss of Kalgan by the Communists.

To say this, is the same thing as saying that the real issue is whether to grant an enormous increase in aid to the Kuomintang, in order to enable it to assert a clear military superiority over the Communists, or to decrease American aid very slightly, which would instantly force the Kuomintang to make concessions to popular demands for a coalition government. It is because this fundamental decision has not been taken that General Marshall’s mission can be regarded as in suspension; and it is a fair inference that policy in China has been under review at the White House level.

The importance of the loss of Kalgan or Chefoo by the Communists should not be exaggerated. The “prestige” troops of the Kuomintang, its Americantrained and American-equipped divisions, were fought to a standstill in the mountains between Peiping and Kalgan, suffering heavy attrition, which meant the acquisition of a lot of American equipment by the Communists. Kalgan was entered by the troops of Fu Tso-yi, a semi-independent war lord. Thus while the Kuomintang “won,” it won without prestige for its crack troops, and in a way which encourages independent warlordism.

Moreover the Communists, while losing Kalgan, swung around and tore up a big stretch of the strategically important Peiping-Hankow railway. By disrupting Kuomintang communications more effectively than they had ever disrupted Japanese communications, they demonstrated once more that the Kuomintang is not so formidable an enemy as the Japanese were. The military situation, in fact, is still a stalemate.

Conscription, inflation, poverty

A military stalemate can last indefinitely, but there is no such thing as a political and economic stalemate. In politics and economics, a situation either gets better or it gets worse. In China, the situation is getting worse for the Kuomintang. When Kalgan was “liberated” from the Communists, no less than a quarter of the population, instead of waiting to greet the liberators, fled into the mountains. Of those who remained, Benjamin Welles cabled to the New York Times that “it was obvious that the Chinese civilans who were drawn up along the main streets to cheer the arrival of the Nationalist officials were not moved by any overwhelming emotion.”

Hesitation in welcoming Kuomintang liberators is explained by the fact that the Kuomintang, for lack of popular support, is being forced to increasingly harsh measures. Heavy losses in the field have led to the resumption of conscription with full wartime rigor, in a war-weary country.

Two new measures are especially ominous. Communist currency is being repudiated, instead of exchanged, in areas recovered from the Communists. As a result, inflation and poverty are flooding regions which, under the Communists, had been prosperous and had been secure against inflation. Even more drastic is the cancellation of Communist land reforms — a cancellation which all too often penalizes the peasant, who fought against the Japanese, in favor of the landlord, who either ran away or collaborated with the Japanese.

Such measures bear most harshly on all nonCommunists who prospered while the Communists were around. Worst of all, they make it nakedly clear that all the Kuomintang’s financial and material aid from America is being used for civil war, and none of it for much-needed reform.