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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 5 No. 4, 25 January 1941, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The long-simmering tension between Chiang Kai-shek and the “Communist” armies has come to a boil again. Chiang’s troops and the Stalinist-controlled Fourth Route Army have clashed in Central China and General Yeh Ting, the Communist commander, has been arrested and is being held for court-martial.
This is by no means the first heavy strain on the Kuomintang-Communist Party alliance. Similar clashes occurred in Shansi province, some time ago, although on that occasion the conflict was presented as one between the Communist forces and local Shansi provincial troops, with Chiang Kai-shek intervening as a “mediating” force. That Chiang this time has gone so far as to arrest one of the most prominent Communist Party leaders is an indication that the present strain is much greater and is linked to developments of broad international significance.
For the present incident necessarily bears a direct relation to the Soviet-Japanese negotiations now in progress in Moscow. Stalin is “demonstrating” how useful he can be to the Japanese in China. For such demonstrations he uses the Stalinist-controlled forces in China with characteristic cynicism. The Chinese national struggle interests him only as a function of Kremlin policy. If tomorrow the interests of the Kremlin bureaucracy should require hamstringing that struggle, he and his minions would act accordingly and without hesitation.
Chiang Kai-shek has continued, however, to hold the whip hand in his deal with the Chinese Stalinists and through them with the Kremlin. He has kept the main Communist forces in the arid wastes of the Northwest and it was his effort to send Yeh Ting’s forces to the same area that precipitated the current clash. Meanwhile in the area under Chiang’s control, Communists enjoy little more freedom than they did in the years that Chiang waged ruthless terror against them. And now that he is emboldened by the growing weight of American support, Chiang is tightening his hold still further and is daring an actual test of strength with Joseph Stalin.
It is curiously ironic that Yeh Ting the arrested commander, should be the central figure in the immediate foreground of this development. For Yeh Ting was one of the Army commanders who revolted in 1927 when Chiang broke his alliance of that time with Stalin. Yeh became one of the first “Red” army commanders in Central China and in December 1927 he was the military leader of that fatal three-day insurrection known to history as the Canton Commune.
Thus Yeh Ting in a way symbolizes the successive cycles of Stalin’s twisting policies in China. He fought under Chiang Kai-shek in 1926–27, against him in the years that followed, under him again in 1937–40, and last week against him once more. And each of these military-diplomatic maneuvers has left the Chinese revolution deeper each time in the morass. Each cycle has moved the Chinese Communists still farther away from the aims and policies of a Chinese proletarian revolution. The Stalinist-controlled armies of today bear no positive relation any longer to that revolution. They are merely military pawns that Stalin moves around in accordance with the oft-changing requirements of the Kremlin’s near-sighted and criminal policies.
The armed clash and arrest of Yeh Ting is apparently to be followed by a fresh attempt at conciliation. Chou En-lai, the Communist Party representative in Chungking, expressed “regrets” over the occurrence and promised an end to friction. But Chou En-lai too had to flee Chiang Kai-shek’s executioners in Shanghai fourteen years ago. It looks as though he too is reaching the turn of still another cycle in the ironies and the tragedies of the class struggle in China.
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Last updated: 16 November 2020