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From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 43, 24 October 1949, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The fall of Canton brings to a close the two-and-a-half-year civil war in China. Except for the rice bowl of Szechuan, deep in the Yangtze valley, every major section of traditional China is in CP hands.
The Nationalist government, founded by Sun Yat-sen and buried by Chiang Kai-shek, is split into three major factions operating from as many separate centers, while the largest section of the Kuomintang bureaucracy has gone over to the Stalinists.
A new national state has been proclaimed in Peking, the old capital which faces the regime inward and northward toward Russia, just as Nanking as capital in its time signified that the KMT faces seaward toward the imperialist concessions.
The new state is the political monopoly of the CP leadership, which is in the process of using this new power to expand and consolidate its bureaucratic-collectivist hold on China. Many military problems still face the regime but they are secondary and will no longer require primary concentration of energies.
President Li is established together with his personal clique in the southern province of Kwangsi, which is his home base. It may be that these warlords can hold out indefinitely in the wild hills and jungle just as the inner province of Yunnan, which Chiang recently consolidated for loyalty to himself by the simple means of bribing the ruling warlord, may resist the CP armies indefinitely from the tribal wilderness and impassable hills.
There is also Tibet, both inner and outer, a vast area with sparse, impoverished nomadic peoples living under a theocratic tyranny, whose capital Lhassa has become the center of diplomatic intrigues, with India extending offers to strengthen the hands of the separatists. There are parts of the Chinese Northwest which have not yet been captured for the CP, but here it is only a matter of time.
Szechuan, which supported the KMT during the war, is split politically. Half of its warlords favor adherence to the CP to save what they can and the other half have been put on Chiang’s seemingly inexhaustible payroll and their loyalty is decidedly measurable. This catalog of what remains outside of Stalinist control is enough to indicate that the CP is master in the land.
The Kuomintang now has its official capital at Chungking, capital of Szechuan province, but actually only a handful of minor clerks have been sent there as a token government. President Li, in Kwangsi, has only his personal troops to support him and has been reduced to the status of a local warlord. On Formosa sits Chiang Kai-shek with the remnants of his private army and air force and the loot of twenty years, still the master of the chaos that surrounds him, still hoping to gamble against the advent of war between Russia, and the U.S.
Whatever opposition eventually takes the field against the CP, this Kuomintang will never again play a role in China. Its latest ignominy was the silent disintegration of its armies before the capital at Canton.
The entire southern campaign has had an eerie character. Not one battle was fought, not one sizable skirmish. Kuomintang lines held until the CP armies got ready to march, and as they advanced the KMT armies simply melted away. The Nationalist armies no longer exist. With each step backward, the Southern armies broke up into their component units, each general taking refuge for himself. Up to the last scandal, bribery and personal looting were the order of the day.
The commander-in-chief defending the entire strategic coastal province of Fukien was found to be collecting a payroll and supplies for an army roster of 40,000 while he had with him some 2,500 officers and several hundred men. The supplies were sold on the black market and the money was divided among the officers. This happened only a few weeks ago. Not even the decadent state of czarist Russia sank so low in its fall.
This was the party of the nascent capitalist class of China. With its disappearance an epoch comes to an end. Never will this class have another opportunity to impose its aims on the country.
Canton is not simply another city. It was the heart of native capitalism. As long ago as the middle of the 16th century this city became the major trading port with the Portuguese and later with the Dutch and British. During the last century, it was here that the only major popular resistance was organized by the commercial classes over the heads of the corrupt imperial government at Peking.
Canton was the heart of the Kuomintang and the city where Sun Yat-sen was first able to set up a nationalist government. And in the great revolution of 1925–27 Canton supplied the armies for the northward march. Shanghai, by contrast, was always a foreign city, which grew to power around the imperialist concessions. Until 1927 the city was administered by foreigners. Canton was just the reverse. The British set up their concession on the island of Hong Kong outside the city, and the local tradesmen continued to flourish.
This week the leading citizens were negotiating the city’s surrender to the CP. They raised no objection to the desertion by the KMT nor did they demand that it defend them. The KMT was no longer their party or state. They showed no compunction in welcoming the new rulers.
Canton also has been the fortress of the working class. While for many years disorganized, this situation now presents a serious test in social relations to the CP. Since few of the industries there are immediately nationalizable because of their small size, it will be labor-capital relations. The problem will be how best to conquer the workers, crush them in the party’s embrace and still maintain good relations with both classes.
In Canton the national class conflict is posed most sharply. The CP alliance with the national capitalists will be tested here.
At the mouth of the Pearl River, which runs through Canton, is Hong Kong and its adjacent British holdings on the mainland. The policy the CP adopts toward this imperialist outpost will indicate its immediate intentions in international affairs more than any declaration.
The British, for their part, have indicated quite clearly that Hong Kong is a test for them too. If Hong Kong is left alone recognition is almost certain to be quick and the British colony will be the window of Chinese Stalinism toward the West, as its main port. It appears probable that that will indeed be the CP policy, though this is by no means certain. Such an eventuality would not, in any fashion, modify the Russian orientation of the state in international politics. The entire situation will be extremely revealing, however.
Finally, Canton brings the Chinese party to the Viet-Namese border for the first time. It can now make liaison with the forces of Ho Chi-min, and this would alter the relations between the various factions in the Viet-Nam national alliance. It is yet to be seen how Ho will react to the new situation and whether the Chinese CP will make direct overtures.
In any case, the French are faced with a new urgency in Indo-China. American policy has thus far followed the French to the present brink of disaster. But there is no way to turn with this policy any more. Long postponement of an American policy for Southeast Asia is no longer possible. No doubt Nehru’s current tour of the capitals of the imperialist world is related to this matter. The State Department’s White Paper offered no guide. These events tend to force the hands of capitalist imperialism, and the U.S. and France will be forced to reorient their policies in Asia.
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