Rabbit into Dragon

High on a hill above the hurrying Kialing River, far enough outside Chungking town to be safe from air raids, sits the new Visitor's Hostel--a guest house to accommodate the steady stream of foreigners passing through the capital. On New Year's Eve, China's stocky, genteel, old-style Minister of Finance Dr. H. H. Rung gave a party there for the city's cosmopolite society--foreign diplomats, newspapermen, missionaries, native officials. The guests grew mellow on mild-tasting, brain-sieging Yellow Wine.

Up rose Dr. Kung. In perfect English he told the assembled foreigners that in the Chinese zodiac cycle, the old year was represented by the timid rabbit, but the new, auspiciously, by the angry dragon--China's patron beast, sharp of claw and smoky of breath. From a huge clock over a trapdoor at one end of the room sprang a man dressed as a rabbit. A harangue was made on his record during the year. At the stroke of midnight emerged a laughably fierce dragon made of tinsel and crepe, glistening with Chinese lanterns, borne aloft and twisted by six men. Soon Chungking's elite--cabinet ministers, generals, ambassadors, lovely ladies--linked themselves onto the dragon's hindquarters and went into a stamping, winding, lurching dragon dance exactly like those of the antique Ming and Tang and Han dynasties.

Dr. Kung's party and his hopes were both premature. For his foreign friends' benefit he chose the Occidental New Year. Not until last week did 400,000,000-odd other Chinese celebrate the passage from rabbit to dragon. The old year's record made new year hopes look pale.

Rabbit's Year. The old year, despite its symbol of flight and fear, began surprisingly well, but ended in a rout which made Free China's future look black.

As the year opened, the rival forces sat quiescent. There had been a lull ever since the Japanese capture of Hankow in October 1938. The Japanese were waiting for Wang Ching-wei's defection from the Chungking Government and the subsequent collapse (they hoped) of Chiang Kai-shek's regime. Wang fled but Chiang stayed. That meant the Japanese would have to fight some more. Their plan was to try to engulf Chungking in a giant pincer, north and south. A sudden drive, almost unresisted, took Nanchang to the South. But then the Chinese had a series of successes greater than any they had enjoyed in the whole war.

They crushed the Japanese feeler which crept out in May attempting to command the northern approaches to Chungking, with Hanchung (see map) as its ultimate objective. They did the same to a September drive for Changsha, key to Chungking's southern approaches. And they made a bloody, muddy fiasco of a Japanese "cleanup" campaign in supposedly occupied Shansi Province in the north.

In November began the Japanese drive which the Chinese had been fearfully expecting for a full year--a thrust at the southwestern communications system, over which almost 90% of China's war supplies had been moving. This campaign was a sharp turning point.

As usual, the Chinese let the narrow Japanese finger reach towards its objective, Nanning, expecting to flank and cut it later. But the Chinese miscalculated, and let the Japanese reach their objective. The Japanese at once began bombing the lifelines, including the French-owned railway from Indo-China.

The Chinese undertook a counter offensive on all fronts, but they failed miserably. Last week they were still being whipped back in a big battle near Nanning. The Japanese Army claimed that 6,800 Chinese had fallen in the fighting.

Meanwhile the Japanese Navy, besides having contributed to the incredibly bloody bombings of Chungking and surrounding cities, sealed up the China coast almost pirate-tight.

China's famed guerrillas were not as active as the year before, but they were still busy as termites. Last week a Japanese spokesman said that last month there were no less than 295 clashes in the guerrilla-infested area just south of Shanghai. But the guerrillas were fighting a losing fight: their supply lines were failing, and Japanese reprisals were becoming more efficient and severe.

Dragon's Year. Prospects for China are not auspicious. Active aid from friends has practically ceased because of the European War. The U. S. was last week considering a $20,000,000 loan but that was less than a third of what China had asked for and less than a tenth of what she needs.

China, with 200 frontal divisions comprised of 2,000,000 regulars, with another 2,000,000 trained and untrained reserves, with perhaps another 500,000 guerrillas and partisans behind Japanese lines, has the edge in manpower. Japan has in the field 40 divisions, about 1,125,000 very weary men. Galling to the Chinese are the 100,000-odd Chinese puppet troops who are humbly fighting, carrying material, digging latrines for the enemy.

But manpower is not enough. Neither is courage and superb morale. China cannot match Japan's 1,500 planes, her trucks, artillery, rail lines; cannot match Japan's skilled staff-work, mapmaking, and strategy; cannot stop those bombs in midflight. Worst of all--and what may beat China--is the suffocation of choked trade lines.

Japan has just about given up the idea of taking Chungking. Her objectives, all of which she may be able to get, are: 1) Sian, main link between North China and Chungking; 2) Lanchow, key to Rus sian aid to China; 3) a complete cut-through in the Southwest.

It looked last week as if, excepting the unlikely eventualities of extensive U. S. aid for China or of internal collapse in Japan, China's military dragon might suffer the fate of the dragon Fafner in Wagner's Siegfried--be given a good long time to sing its last sad words, then get it in the neck.

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