893.00/15423: Airgram
The Consul at Kweilin (Ringwalt) to the Ambassador in China (Gauss)39
A–11. The following is a summary of certain informal statements made recently by the local representative of the Communist Party to an American intelligence officer:
Chiang Kai-shek, alarmed over the prospect of a major Japanese military campaign in China and exasperated over increasing American military and financial pressure on his government, has finally in desperation come to an agreement with the Japanese (with whom he has been in constant contact through agents of the Nanking regime) under which he will abandon to the Japanese all of east, central and south China on condition that the Japanese leave him unmolested in west China. The line of demarkation is said to be roughly from Tungkwan south to the Yangtze, west to a point near Tali (in western Yunnan), and thence south to the Mekong River. Relations with [Page 419] the United States will undergo a sharp turn for the worse, and an effort will be made to win over Great Britain, even to the extent of giving up all claim to Burma and Hong Kong and of offering to Great Britain permanent bases on Formosa, in exchange for British support at the peace table. The various military leaders within the area delimited as a Japanese sphere of influence are said to have learned of the Generalissimo’s agreement with the Japanese and to have decided themselves to seek the support and friendship of the United States which the Generalissimo has so cavalierly discarded. In their opinion, an attack on south China via Changsha and Hengyang is inevitable. So embittered are they over the Generalissimo’s desertion of them that they are prepared to proclaim the establishment of a “South China Republic” as soon as the attack on Changsha is launched. The troops under their direct command are said to number between 30 and 40 divisions and to include most if not all of the divisions which have received instruction under the Sino-American military program in Yunnan and Kwangsi.
That the Communist representative volunteered the above statements to an American officer may be indicative of a new Party Line being hewn by the members of the Communist Party in China; it is possible that Communist spokesmen in Chungking have already given out a similar story. Nevertheless, his statements are very plausible in the light of increasingly patent disaffection among southern military leaders, and the obvious efforts of dissident generals like Lung Yun, Hsueh Yueh and Li Chi-shen to court the favor of the American military authorities within their sphere of influence.
It is generally believed here that the attack on Changsha from Yoyang to the north and Nanchang to the east will be initiated before the end of May. Every effort is being made quietly and unobtrusively to persuade women and children and men whose presence at their stations is not essential to withdraw to places of safety.
- Copy transmitted to the Department; date of receipt not indicated.↩