The Pittsburgh Press (September 9, 1946)
Russia bosses Chinese Reds, stalls peace, group says
Truman urged to back Chiang government and shake up American State Department
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
WASHINGTON (UP) – A group of Americans familiar with conditions in the Orient charged today that Soviet Russia for months had been directing Communist followers in a program of stalling peace efforts in China.
The charges were made by the American China Policy Associates, Inc., in a letter delivered last week to President Truman. J. P. Powell, the American journalist who was permanently crippled while a war-time prisoner of the Japs, is president of the association.
The letter urged Mr. Truman to shake up the State Department’s Far Eastern Division to place in authority there persons who would enthusiastically support the following policies:
-
An immediate demand upon Russia to yield unqualified political control of China’s territories to the Chinese (Chiang Kai-shek) government in accordance with the Yalta agreement.
-
Denunciation of the program of the Chinese Communists and withdrawal of all U.S. support for them.
-
Full and unqualified support of the Chinese government in suppressing the Chinese Communist organization.
This proposal was accompanied by a translation of a document which the policy group said proved that Moscow’s Communist Internationale controlled Communist activities in China.
The translated document said the Communist Internationale’s Eastern Bureau had adopted on March 12, 1946, a resolution of general policy with respect to the Communist program in China. The China Policy group said the Central Political Bureau of the Chinese Communists should “use revolutionary tactics to estrange relations between the United States and Chiang Kai-shek.”
The document continued: “At the same time, we should use delaying tactics not to solve any problems by consultation with the Kuomintang (Chiang’s political party), in order to shake the confidence of the people in it and to bring it political instability.
“We should, while negotiating in order to secure the sympathy of the American government, continue fighting so as to arouse the abhorrence of American public opinion. Only by so doing can we break American loans and assistance to the Kuomintang. Thus, the culmination of our revolution and victory will soon arrive.”
Cards were marked
If the document is genuine, it shows that the cards were marked against Gen. George C. Marshall, who has been in China for months as Mr. Truman’s representative seeking to bring Communist and factions to peaceful agreement.
The document also states that the Communist Internationale was busy at its old-time job of fomenting revolution throughout the world as recently as last March. If so, the Moscow announcement of 1943 that the Communist Internationale had gone out of business was a phoney along with the implied assurance that the Soviet Union had abandoned the class warfare in other countries.