The Far East

on the World Today

AMERICAN policy has won an advantage of longrange importance in Indonesia, but faces a deteriorating situation in China, Japan, and Korea. The settlement negotiated in Indonesia by the United Nations is a victory for the American view that complete reconquest of the Asiatic colonies of European countries is impossible, while on the other hand complete and immediate independence for the colonial peoples would be premature. Willingness to accept a compromise reflects the Dutch conviction that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and the Indonesian belief that the bush is full of birds on which the Dutch will never again be able to lay a hand.

The Dutch got by far the best of the January cease-fire agreement. In their “police action" last July the Dutch thrust out salients aimed at oil fields and the richest plantation areas in Republican territory. In August they proclaimed a “ Van Mook Line,” drawn in the main by linking up the points of these salients. In the cease-fire agreement, the zone between the Van Mook Line and the line from which the Dutch jumped off is to be “ demilitarized ” by the withdrawal of the Indonesian forces. Part of the zone is then to be policed by the Indonesians and part by the Dutch.

After a period lasting from three to six months, set aside for negotiating political agreement, the Dutch are to withdraw toward the line from which they started. Within six months to one year, plebiscites in disputed areas wall allow Indonesians to choose whether they want to belong to the Indonesian Republic or to one of the other states which the Dutch have set up and which they wish to combine with the Indonesian Republic as the “United States of Indonesia.”

Indonesia joins the constellation of former subject countries in which a somewhat hazy new constitutional status has been achieved or is being negotiated, at the cost of painful and crippling internal subdivision. In each case the withdrawing imperial power has succeeded in making the consequences of its retreat inconclusive, by splitting the forces before which it has had to retreat. In India, Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, and Indonesia every leader who presses for effective national sovereignty with one hand must with the other hand fend off internal separatism and factionalism.

At the same time, there is a marked tendency toward collaboration among the imperial powers. The first Paris meeting of Marshall Plan countries accepted the principle that for purposes of American aid the colonial possessions of a European country should be treated as integral with the economy of the home country. Bevin’s proposal for a Western union in Europe has since reaffirmed the principle of joint colonial policy.

The acceptance of these principles does not eliminate, however, conflicts of interests, aims, and methods which can be classified according to the degree of socialist coloration in the various European governments. The stronger the leaning toward socialism, the greater the belief in economic planning, assignment of categories and quotas for colonial production, and bilateral trade agreements to exclude competition. Such tendencies invite the frown of American policy, which prefers free trade, full competition, and direct access for American investment under colonial flags.

The conflict narrows down to two alternatives: either a joint European “holding company” for colonial interests, or an American holding interest, represented by American financial and economic aid, with the European countries carrying out separate operations, each partly American-financed.

Indo-China the the Communists

Almost unechoed in the American press, developments in Indo-China are of far-reaching significance for two reasons. First, the Communist leadership in Indo-China, though not numerically large, has a clear ascendancy that it does not have in any other colonial country. Second, both the military and the political operations of the Indo-Chinese Communists are clearly modeled on Chinese experience rather than on Russian textbooks.

For about a year the interior of Indo-China has been masked by French occupation of the seaports. There has been only a trickle of news coming out through Siam, Burma, and India. The Viet Nam spokesmen in France have also been at least partly muzzled. Some of them have been arrested, and more recently there have been considerable roundups of Indo-Chinese workers in France, who had links with leftists among the French workers.

Gradually, however, information has been accumulating. The Viet Nam or revolutionary news is slanted; and so is the French news. In fact, there is a strong family resemblance between Viet Nam news and Chinese Communist news, and between French news and Kuomintang news.

It is, however, now beyond dispute that Ho Chih Minh, the Indo-Chinese leader, and his followers have pulled off something really formidable. Like the Chinese Communists, and under even more difficult conditions, they have managed to convert from a purely guerrilla warfare to a mixed warfare in which well-trained regular troops form the hard core, flanked by partisan and guerrilla detachments. This winter a major clean-up drive by a strong French column was first slowed down and then chewed up. The Viet Nam troops are actually beginning to take towns from the French — a turn of the tide as important as the taking of cities by the Chinese Communists.

Inconclusive military operations have been an even heavier drain on the French than the partially successful operations in Indonesia have been on the Dutch. The French have also had less to export, since the war-accumulated stockpiles of colonial produce were much smaller in Indo-China than in Indonesia. With less to offer than the Dutch, the French have been less successful in setting up puppet regimes; the revolutionaries have beaten them in making allies out of minority and tribal groups differing from the Viet Nam or Annamese majority in language and culture.

The China-Japan-Koren triangle

The political and military news of China, Japan, and Korea continues to make the front pages, but economic factors are tending to become the really decisive consideration. Of the 570 million dollars proposed as aid to China, 60 million is intended for the rehabilitation of the Canton-Hankow railway and similar projects. The rest is almost straight relief, which in itself does not set any wheels to turning. At the same time Secretary Marshall, when answering questions about the program, revealed the hitherto unpublicized fact that we are selling thousands of tons of war surplus munitions to China for as little as one cent on the dollar. The working of the economic factor in China can be summarized by pointing out that neither American dollars, American goods, nor American arms can have any effect unless the Chinese government undertakes subsidiary expenditures which include the mobilization of labor, the distribution of food, and all the other activities of administration.

As labor for road building and transportation is for the most part forced labor, and as the collection of food and other things needed for the war is done largely by unpaid expropriation, each wellmeant donation paid for by the American taxpayer becomes an additional burden on the Chinese public, which makes both the civil war and American policy increasingly unpopular. Conversion of any part of the 570 million dollars to direct military aid does not change the economic equation.

Raw materials for Japan?

In Japan the economic factor is a stumbling block even more painful to American shins. American raw materials shipped to Japanese industries mean an American scale of costs. The cheap raw materials from captive areas in Asia, where Japan could dictate costs, are no longer available. The differential has to be taken up either by curtailment of Japan’s industry, which means curtailment of Japan’s ability to feed itself, or by American subsidy, which means more taxes paid by Americans. Raw materials from Asia, at low Asiatic costs, cannot now be made available to Japan except by agreement; and wide agreement in Asia to supply Japan is unlikely while most of Asia remains in turmoil and is afraid that Japan, under American protection, may get a head start in reindustrialization.

The economic factor operates also in Korea. One optimistic early calculation was that North Korea under the Russians would feel the squeeze earlier than South Korea under the Americans, because South Korea is the main food-producing area. However, South Korea, with over two thirds of the population, produces less than two thirds of the food. North Korea is producing about 12 per cent more than its mathematical proportion.

Korea is a sad case of a policy in which hostility to Russia is more satisfactory as an emotional outlet than as a practical proposition. The Russians have now unveiled a large regular Korean army, with modern equipment, in North Korea. They are therefore in a position to withdraw their own troops and challenge us to make ourselves intensely unpopular by backing South Korea, which has no trained army, in a civil war.