The Far East

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THROUGHOUT Asia at the end of the war Britain was at an all-time low in prestige — both the prestige of power and the prestige of ideas. America was at an all-time high. There was not a people in Asia which did not look toward America for leadership in ideas and for initiative in action. In little more than a year since V-J Day, the British have accomplished more in rebuilding their prestige than anyone could have predicted, while American prestige has fallen again and again.

The British have been dodging through a maze of tight squeezes. They are far from being in the clear yet, but they have been able to cover their weakest position, which is not at the Suez Canal but in Iran, by demonstrating that they have American backing. In the meantime the concessions which Britain has made in Egypt, India, and elsewhere are really very moderate, and involve little surrender of real power; but with the withering of Asiatic hopes for some kind of Rooseveltian New Deal for Asia, the British policy benefits by appearing more liberal than it really is.

America, on the other hand, has been following policies that are conservative and old-fashioned, or even archaic, rather than calculatedly reactionary; but the American policies appear more reactionary than they really are, because so much was expected of us. Colonial powers are disliked bitterly, and sometimes blindly, by their subjects, with the result that the concessions yielded by Britain have come as gratifying surprises.

America suffers by comparison because everybody in Asia had looked to America, and to no other country, for democratic programs and policies. In Korea, in Japan, in China, and in the Philippines, however, only extreme right-wing individuals and organizations have been chosen as the instruments of American policy, which has caused not only disappointment but disillusionment.

The American fear of Russia has not been accepted as sufficient justification for backing right-wing groups as the only trustworthy guarantors of law and order. With the exception of North Korea and Manchuria, Russian power in Asia is a legend but not a visible presence. It is the American power which is present and visible. Moreover, the right wing is unpopular in all Asiatic countries, with the partial exception of India; and because the right wing is feared as already too powerful, moderates as well as leftists do not like to see American power lined up behind it.

Moderation in India

Most people in Asia still use Britain-America as the axis of comparison, rather than Russia-America, and by this standard some interesting analyses can be made. The British formula for India is working out successfully. The riots in India are not great enough to prevent the Nehru government from functioning, but they are serious enough to make Nehru reluctant to dispense with British military controls.

The question of the Indian Native States and Native Princes has not yet been touched. These states occupy about 40 per cent of India’s territory and contain about a quarter of the population. The princes, both Hindu and Moslem, have no support except the British against encroachment on their power by a government representing the Indian people, and are therefore tools which British policy can use with a free hand.

The residual position of the British in India is very strong, and permits wide room for maneuver. Nehru will not appeal to the left, because of the important backing he gets from Hindu and Parsee industrial and business interests. Jinnah will not appeal to the left, because his Moslems are Moslem landlords, not Moslem peasants.

Jinnah’s opposition is a right-wing opposition of conservative special interests. It is not a left-wing opposition which is trying to hustle the government. In this respect it resembles the opposition of the old-style Chinese war lords who evaded integration under Chiang Kai-shek’s National Government as long as possible after 1927. It is not a popular movement like the Communist-led coalition which is trying to win concessions from Chiang in 1946.

Economic debacle in China

In spite of Britain’s exhaustion and America’s strength, the American position in China is more awkward than the British position in India. Chiang Kai-shek, like the head of any government, calculates in terms of the total support which he can muster. Chiang’s domestic support has dwindled at a terrifying rate, until American policy has become a support without which he would have to surrender a great part of his power and alter his whole philosophy of government.

Even the support of industrialists and businessmen in his own country is now negligible. In the economic debacle of post-war China there are only politicos and bureaucrats mismanaging a financial and industrial structure which is in chaos. Washington is soberly aware of the fact, though of course it is not widely publicized, that the only orderly production of either food or commodities in China is in areas controlled by the Communists, who in theory ought to be subversive and disruptive, but in practice are good managers and administrators.

The awkwardness of the American position is that it cannot be held merely by marking time. The Chiang government needs continuous support just to keep it up to par. The moment support is diminished, it falls below par. As an instrument serving American policy, the Chiang government is nowhere near good enough for the job; yet again and again it has to be paid for at black-market prices. If it were a straight case of American intervention against Russian intervention, the problem would be simpler; but the intelligence coming in still shows no Russian money, Russian equipment, or Russian master-minding among the Chinese Communists.

The Communists are, in fact, putting on pressure by demonstrating that coalition government, which American policy has endorsed in theory, is practicable. They have given arms, as well as political jobs, to non-Communists, with the result that nonCommunists can talk to Communists on equal terms, in a coalition based on common defense against the pretensions of the Kuomintang.
Washington is still hoping that the tension will break in a way that makes a solution possible; but the hope is a gamble. The theory is that if the Chiang government tries to subdue the Communists by civil war, it will be forced to admit that the job is too big. It is hoped that the Whampoa military clique, the C.C. (Chen brothers) machine in the Kuomintang, and the secret police, chastened by failure, will then permit the formation of a coalition government.

Japan: an American Gibraltar?

Aspirin in Japan is one cure that has been proposed for the United States headache in China. According to this theory, the Kuomintang is past saving and should be abandoned; but Japan has a fine military tradition, a fine anti-Russian tradition, and industrial and managerial know-how as a bonus. Japan should therefore be salvaged as an American Gibraltar off the mainland of Asia — superior to Gibraltar in its ability to provide us with a tough, self-contained colonial army.

The theory has been discussed with relish by some of the Americans in Tokyo from the moment thatit was discovered, with amazement and delight, that our fanatical opponents, the Japanese, were as willing to obey American military orders as they had been to obey the orders of their own militarists.

Paradoxically, however, Japan’s unshattered social order is the bane of this theory. The first free election in Japan, held under American protection, was a genuinely free election; but it was held too soon. The ward bosses, who could turn out a bigger vote than anyone else, were loyal to the extremely conservative political machine.

The election therefore put back into power the old industrial, banking, and conservative interests which were technically not “militarist,” but which had in fact organized the sinews of war for the militarists. These men are old hands at running the country; they prefer to run it by fascist methods; and their program is first to convince the Americans that they are trustworthy, and then to engineer a switch from Japanese implementation of American policy to American backing of Japanese policy.

The leftists in Japan

The Japanese leftists have set out to build a wide coalition of all those — and they are many, and their fears are legitimate — who are disturbed by the return to power of the unrepentant rightists.

Japan’s leftists would have made a good showing at the polls if the elections had not been held too soon. Frustrated in the elections, they have turned to the trade unions and to a versatile technique in organizing mass demonstrations. MacArthur’s staff consequently finds itself increasingly plagued by political agitation outside of the parliamentary system, as the penalty for having sponsored an election which did not result in proportional representation within the parliamentary system.

A recent poll shows that the Communists, though they rate only 4.8 per cent of the electorate, have increased 50 per cent over their 3.2 showing in the April election. The most important change is in the growth of the Socialists. In the April election, 18 per cent of the electorate voted for them; 40 per cent would vote for them now, if a new election were held. The significance of this shift is confirmed by the fact that support for the rightists in the Diet has fallen nearly 10 per cent.

The trend shows that in little more than a year, during which time America alone has controlled the administration of Japan, not hesitating to rebuff all attempts at international supervision or even effective international participation, the Japanese have divided into two groups. One group tends to shrink in numbers and at the same time to become more openly reactionary.

The other group is tending to grow in numbers. It appears to have begun to lose hope in an Americaninspired democracy. In its revulsion against the American-patronized conservative parties, this group is constrained more and more to associate both national self-respect and the hope of an ultimate democracy with a left-wing philosophy of politics.

It is this measure of the ground America has lost which provides the best standard of comparison between the American and British post-war records. Britain, like America, has everywhere tilted the balance in favor of conservative groups against groups which are left of center; but on the whole Britain has succeeded in holding political issues within the framework of the rivalry between nationalism and the imperial interest.

America, sometimes unwillingly and sometimes willingly, and to her own disadvantage, has allowed power politics to be conspicuously identified with groups which, in addition to being rightist, are regarded as anti-nationalist in their own countries because of their willingness to be subservient to the American interest. The corollary of this identification is that nationalism and the left wing are encouraged to associate with each other and to fortify each other.

The favored nation

Developments in countries like the Philippines and in colonial possessions like French Indo-China and Dutch Indonesia reflect the trends in the major countries which set the tone of policy in Asia. In the Philippines, policy appears to be less subtle than in any other country in the world except Spain.

The government of President Roxas has ordered the Philippine National Bank to compensate Americans for their pre-war deposits, which the Japanese had spirited away into Japanese banks. The sum involved is only two million dollars, but U.S. Ambassador Paul V. McNutt, speaking in what is now a foreign country, has “expressed the hope” that other Philippine banks will recompense Americans in the same way.

Compared with the billions in which we think nowadays, a few million dollars is only chicken feed; but the favoritism toward Americans is so hasty that Filipinos can hardly fail to draw the conclusion that American chickens feed exclusively on a diet of pounds of flesh. The Philippines have been ravaged by war, and the money will ultimately have to be paid by underfed tenant farmers.

Our indifference in the Philippines

In the meantime President Roxas is continuing to move in on the Hukbalahaps of the rice-bowl area of central Luzon. A thick curtain of American indifference has fallen over this agrarian movement and its demands for the reform of a galling system of peonage. The Huks were originally an antiJapanese guerrilla organization, and the most effective of all the guerrillas in the Philippines. There are Communists among them, but the proportion is not nearly so strong as in the wide popular coalition now led by the Communists in China. A United Press reporter who toured the Huk area found no evidence of Russian influence.

On the whole, the demands for agrarian reform and democratic representation of the Huks are parallel to those of the Communist-led coalition in China. The Falangist trend of the Roxas government is also parallel to the near-fascist bias of the C.C. and Whampoa cliques in the Kuomintang.

The difficulty of suppressing the Huks by civil war, even with American aid, is yet another parallel to the situation in China. The Huks are supported by a population of about 2 million — too large a proportion of the Philippine total of 16 million to be dealt with easily by extermination.

Most important of all, the degree of American involvement on the side of an anti-democratic government, in the Philippines as in China, results in rallying both ordinary colonial nationalism and ideological leftism behind the peasant movement, because it is the Americans themselves who allow the conviction to spread that what the Americans call democracy pays off in privileges for Americans but not in rights for Asiatics.