32
3=9
-9
Times
-4 PLD 1940
The Chinese Press
1
DR. HOLLINGTON TONG, director of the Chinese Government Information Office in Nanking, sent by cable last week a courteous and detailed dis- claimer of a recent article on this page which argued that the Chinese authorities could not escape responsibility for permitting the nationalist Press to in- dulge in a violent anti-British campaign, aggravating the Kowloon dispute, and helping to bring about the Shameen riots. DR. TONG contends that there has been no censorship of the Press in China since 1945; that no authority in the Chinese Government can control the Press in the interests of official policy; and that Chinese newspaper editors, free to follow their own judgment, would be the first to resent any official invasion.
DR. TONG no doubt gives an accurate statement of the law and constitution of the Chinese Republic. He omits to men- tion that last October there was a restora- tion of war-time mail and telegraph censorship at the discretion of local authorities, and that, even before that time, the military had been accustomed to take action against newspapers publishing accounts of Communist victories or giving prominence to demonstrations by students. In May three Liberal organs were suspended by garrison headquarters at Shanghai. In June a leading Shanghai newspaper publicly protested against the censorship exercised over its editorials and against the official ban upon news not emanating from the Central News Agency.
UNREST IN CHINA
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
WORSENING
FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT
PEKING, FEB. 3 Two recent cases of assault on public officials, followed immediately afterwards by serious riots and loss of life at a factory in Shanghai, are symptomatic of the serious discontent, verging on desperation, among the poorer classes in particular in China to-day.
Whether this kind of control of the Press is legal or illegal is beside the point; what matters is that it goes on. An out- burst of anti-British agitation over the death of a Kowloon hawker has been traced to the issue of an instruction to all Canton newspapers by the local Kuomin- tang. The authorities have in fact from time to time suspended newspapers which incited to violence. Within the last two weeks they have inflicted the same penalty upon a newspaper which affronted Chinese Muslims. A formal censorship | of Chinese newspapers may not be legally recognized, but the executive Government and the Kuomintang can exercise control over any newspaper which fails to con- form to the policy they favour. These
powers, if wisely employed, may be defensible in a country so distracted by civil war and public unrest as China is to-day. The British complaint is that the have not been wisely employed.
The main causes of this discontent are the steadily deteriorating economic conditions and the heavy rise in living costs. These conditions are due mainly to the civil war, which, owing to Communist destructive tactics, is wrecking the economy of Manchuria, of the whole of north China, and of a part of central China, but also to the Government's economic policy, which is strangling what little trade is still possible. The policy is supposedly necessi- tated by the Government's desperate need of foreign exchange for financing the civil war.
There is also the growing antagonism between south and north China; the latter considers it has been neglected by the central Government, which in its view is concerned only with financial and commercial interests in Shanghai and the Yangtze Valley. It is said that one reason for the appointment of General Fu Tso-yi, a northerner, as Bandit Suppression Commissioner, North China, was to allay northern dissatisfaction. The present growing unrest might easily lead to food riots in the larger cities and to unpredictable political changes.
In keeping with the American example, the British Consulate at Changchun, Manchuria, has been closed.
MR Wallace H/535.
R5
R 531-
-put by Bla
Blayers
alimée
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.