Foreign News 1949: China: What Can Li Do? Chiang Kaishek Steps Down

CHINA "What Can Li Do?"

Defeated and helpless, Chiang Kaishek, for 22 years the dominant figure in China, stepped down last week. His retirement symbolized one of the great shifts in the 20th Century's turbulent history: some 460 million Chinese, a quarter of the human race, were passing under the domination of Communism.

When Chiang told Kuomintang officials to support Vice President Li Tsung-jen, one of his hearers asked: "What can Li do?" Everybody in China, including Li, knew the answer.

The Communist Boss Mao Tse-tung had won the war; he could dictate the terms of peace. What Mao wanted was power to put China in the Communist bloc. That he already had. He could proceed along the path of compromise and coalition certain that, with Chiang's passing, the back of anti-Communist resistance in China had been broken.

Mao's victory made a major change in the political and strategic world picture on the western shore of the Pacific. From Bering Strait to the Gulf of Tonkin Communism was now the major force. The western world merely held sentinel positions in Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Indo-China, Malaya and Burma—all three in turmoil—lay beneath the Communist threat.

Not since Hitler had stood on the French coast looking west across the Atlantic had the danger been so great.

Sunset

From dusty Nanking streets, sleek limousines converged on a plain brick residence in the spacious Ministry of National Defense compound. It was Friday afternoon; by 2 o'clock Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's small drawing room was jammed with ranking Kuomintang officials. Tense and silent, they waited.

Clad in a simple khaki uniform without insignia, China's Commander in Chief and President rose to his feet from a sofa in the corner of the room. Slowly, without show of emotion, he made the announcement that all had expected: he would leave Nanking and go to his native home. Then in his choppy Ningpo accent he read from a formal statement: "With the hope that hostilities may be brought to an end and the people's suffering relieved, I have decided to retire."

Next day, after an early morning flight to Ningpo's carefully guarded airport, Chiang bounced and jostled by auto over a one-lane dirt road some 40 miles to Fenghwa, his home town, in the knob-topped Sze Ming Mountains. Nestled on a pine and laurel-covered slope is the Gimo's one-story, four-room retreat. A few feet up the slope is a wood and stone arch inscribed with the legend: "Road to Mother Chiang's Tomb." Through it passes a wide-stepped pebble and flagstone walk.

Chiang ascended the steps and went immediately to his mother's grave, a simple mound of grass-covered earth surrounded by a wall of brown sandstone, where he meditated for 20 minutes. He then turned, entered his retreat.

A Holiday Spirit

More than a fortnight ago, the Gimo wrote Nationalist General Fu Tso-yi in Peiping of his decision to retire. The letter instructed Fu to make his own plans for

North China. Last week, a typical Chinese solution ended the 40-day Communist siege of China's ancient capital.