Source: The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 51, 20 December 1948, p. 2.
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The Truman Administration, it appears, is nearing a decision on what to do next in the Chinese civil war.
The policy of trying to bolster the ultra-reactionary dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek has ended ip disaster. Few voices in the capitalist press still, insist on an all-out-effort to keep this despot in power. Virtually all are forced to confess that the Chinese people will have no more of this hated regime and that a change is imperative.
That is why Madame Chiang Kai-shek, sent here to plead for guns, dollars and moral support, received a studiously cold reception. This was designed to show the disappointment of the Truman Administration in Chiang and its readiness to make a tactical change in policy toward China.
Already Washington is extending feelers to the Chinese Stalinists. This was the meaning of the Dec. 13 declaration in Shanghai of Paul G. Hoffman, Economic Cooperation Administration chief, that in case the Chiang regime falls the United States will support a new government provided it is a coalition government and not a completely Stalinist Government.
The State Department, of course, denied that Hoffman’s declaration represents official policy and the press explained it as a “blunder.” This is the usual routine, in handling a trial balloon.
The Kuomintang officialdom immediately interpreted Hoffman’s declaration as a sign that Washington has written off Chiang. Rumors circulated that high-ranking Kuomintang figures are pressing for Chiang’s resignation and trying to negotiate with the Chinese Stalinists.
The line of Hoffman’s proposal is not a new one. When Marshall was in China after the war, he pressed Chiang to set up a coalition regime with the Stalinists. Marshall’s obvious objective was to gain time, postpone the civil war, strengthen Chiang’s position, undermine that of the Stalinists, and when the time became ripe crush them.
In Europe this flexible tactic paid big dividends to the European capitalists and their American backers. They welcomed the Stalinists in office as the masses in Italy and France and other countries surged forward. In the coalition governments the Stalinists used their key posts to push back the revolutionary-minded workers and thus saved capitalism from going down.
American imperialism used the breathing space to rush aid to their beleaguered class brothers abroad. When reaction became sufficiently strong, then the Stalinists were booted out of office.
A coalition government today in China would probably give the Stalinists more favorable posts than one formed when Marshall first proposed it; but it would still give American imperialism the point of support it seeks. Moreover Washington’s terms undoubtedly include limitation of reforms in China and particularly the safeguarding of foreign investments. As the Dec. 17 U.S. News phrases it, “Over the longer term, the big problem is whether the Communists, if they win out, will expropriate private companies and especially foreign companies.”
Washington hopes, with good reason, that the Chinese Stalinists,will not carry out a program of revolutionary socialism, but will safeguard capitalism in China. On that condition, the Truman Administration appears ready to make a deal with the Chinese Stalinists.
The monarchist Netherlands government has abruptly broken off negotiations with the Republic of Indonesia as a preliminary to launching a full-scale war of conquest to crush the young Republic and reimpose full colonial status on the Indonesian fighters for national independence.
In a Dec. 10 note to the United Nations Good Offices committee, the Dutch Cabinet indicated that it had a choice of withdrawing from Indonesia or “fight it out,” states N.Y. Times correspondent David Anderson. “The latter course has been accepted.”
The Dutch imperialists, while pretending to negotiate with the Indonesian Republic, have been systematically strengthening their beachheads and military forces in Indonesia preparatory to opening their offensive whenever they feel the time is ripe.
So extensive are these preparations, that the Netherlands government is begging off from supplying its share of troops to the newly-created Western Union military alliance. David Anderson reported in the Time [sic] of Nov. 8 that “heavy military commitments in Indonesia will absorb the manpower of this small country until 1952, perhaps even longer—unless there is an evacuation of Java before that year.”
The Dutch cabinet is planning to introduce a supplementary budget plan to cover military outlays in connection with its western Europe commitments. Its present “normal” budget of 500-million guilders $188,500,000 for 1948 will be continued for 1949 “because of the continued crisis in Java.”
It is no secret that the United States, through the Marshall Plan, is supplying the war-ruined Netherlands with the finances and materiel required for the imperialist invasion of Indonesia. Senator George W. Malone, interviewed in New Delhi, India, on Dec. 15 after a trip to the Dutch East Indies, flatly charged that U. S. money through the Marshall Plan is supporting the wars of colonial oppression against freedom movements in Indonesia and Indo-China.
Refuting the claim that the Netherlands imperialists are battling “communism,” Senator Malone said of the Indonesian freedom fighters,
“If the only army they can join to fight for freedom is the Communist army, they will join it. The Indonesian Republicans recently gave the Communists a licking, but if we keep on financing the Netherlands there is no telling what movement the Republicans will join to get rid of the Dutch.”
Last updated on: 29 March 2023