Word: fukien
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...grasses and trees are all soldiers" is an old Chinese proverb denoting a state of extreme nervousness and a feeling that one is surrounded by enemies. Last week Red China was using this hemmed-in feeling to justify its troop buildup in Fukien province across from the Nationalist-held offshore islands of Matsu and Quemoy. The Reds have had heavy troop concentrations along the Formosa Strait for years, but by last week they had added an estimated 100,000 men, raising the total to about 450,000. Belligerently, Red China claimed that Chiang Kai-shek was "preparing for an invasion...
...Real Troubles. Actually, the whole affair was a bit of a grass menace on all sides. The Fukien buildup was real enough, but for the Kennedy Administration, which first leaked the reports about it to the press, it also provided a frontpage diversion from the troubled economy. More significantly, on Red China's part, talk of an unlikely invasion from Formosa was a big smoke screen that diverted the masses from China's domestic troubles and upheavals. For Chiang Kai-shek on Formosa, amphibious exercises by Nationalist troops and the calling up of reservists kept green his often...
...China is seething with revolt and is, in fact, "on the verge of collapse." He is certain that morale on the mainland is at its lowest ebb, cites information relayed by a recently defected Communist MIG pilot and letters received on Formosa from peasants in the coastal province of Fukien who pleaded for liberation. Moreover, argues Chiang, the Sino-Soviet split has be come such a bitter personal rivalry between Mao Tse-tung and Khrushchev that the Soviet leader probably would not run the risk of touching off a general nuclear war by coming to Mao's aid. Concludes...
Born on the island of Negros of part-Chinese ancestry (his last name is a cor ruption of the Fukien dialect and means "sixth son"), Lacson has been an amateur boxer, soccer player, anti-Japanese guerrilla, lawyer, professor and newspaper columnist. During the war he fought in the battles for Manila and Baguio, and was cited by the U.S. Sixth Army "for gallantry under fire." When Japan's touring Premier Nobusuke Kishi asked him if he had learned Japanese during the war, Lacson snapped, "I was too busy shooting at Japanese to learn any." Of Americans, he says: "They...