THE TRUTH ABOUT THE KUOMINTANG ATTACKS* November %, !($%
In a dispatch from Chungking, dated November 3, the United Press reported that Wu Kuo-chen, Director of the Propaganda Department of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee, had declared that “the government is entirely on the defensive in this war” and had proposed measures for “restoring communications”. 1 A Hsinhua News Agency reporter asked the spokesman for the Communist Party of China about this. The spokesman for the Communist Party of China replied to the reporter as follows: What Wu Kuo-chen said about being “on the defensive” is a complete lie. The Kuomintang, besides occupying the five Liberated Areas evacuated by our troops in eastern Chekiang, southern Kiangsu, central and southern Anhwei and Hunan and trampling on the people there, has moved more than seventy divisions of its regular troops into or close to most of the other Liberated Areas — for example, those in Kwangtung, Hupeh, Honan, northern Kiangsu, northern Anhwei, Shantung and Hopei — and has been oppressing the people there and attacking or preparing to attack our troops. Furthermore, scores of other Kuomintang divisions are heading for the Liberated Areas. Can this be described as being on the defensive? Of the eight Kuomintang divisions which reached the Hantan area in their drive northward from Changteh, two opposed civil war and favoured peace, while the other six (including three U.S.-equipped divisions) were compelled to lay down their arms after the troops and people of the Liberated Areas counter-attacked in self-defence. Many officers of these Kuomintang troops, including war-zone deputy commanders, corps commanders and deputy corps commanders, are now in the Liberated Areas 2 and can confirm the whole truth about where they came from and how they were ordered to attack. Can 65
