Word: chou
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Encouraged by jovial U.S. Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley, the Communists' ace negotiator, smart, suave General Chou Enlai, had flown down from Yenan for one more try after almost a year of bootless words over issues as broad as China itself. For two weeks he had talked long and earnestly with Chungking's ace negotiator, scholarly, liberal Information Minister Wang Shih-chieh...
...Defense Council and Executive Yuan. To meet Yenan's demand for an all-party constitutional convention, Chungking offered to convoke an all-party meeting to consider "military and political unification pending a national congress." But when Chungking asked Yenan to put the Communist Army under Generalissimo Chiang, General Chou balked...
...talks. He could not, he pointed out, tolerate an armed state within the state. He was the steward of China's destiny. His charge had come from the great Sun Yatsen, and he would yield nothing of the ultimate responsibility for China's government. General Chou would not budge either. In Chungking's concessions he saw no termination of "one-party dictatorship." But the political crux of the matter was that Yenan's one-party dictatorship dared not, any more than Chungking, surrender control over the military forces on which its power is based...
...week's end General Chou emplaned for Yenan. In the Communist capital, for the first time since 1934 a Party Congress was gathering; momentous decisions might be reached. When would Chou En-lai return to Chungking? Darkly he answered: "Not so soon...
Impasse. Having thus shattered the ice in a way more formalized diplomats would have disdained (or perhaps have been unable) to do, General Hurley hitched up his chair and took an earnest part in the serious talks that followed. Few days later he brought Chou En-lai south for more parleys in Chungking. Fortnight ago Chou returned to Yenan with a proposal from Chiang Kai-shek for a Chinese united front (TIME, Dec. 18). For all Pat Hurley's war whoops, his easy jokes, his readiness to act as an intermediary, the gulf between the Communists and the Central...