Word: kai-shek
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...coup backfired, as Li Lisan had predicted. The Chinese proletariat did not rise in support of the Canton Soviet. Instead, Chiang Kai-shek's troops quickly mopped up the insurrectionists...
...Nationalist Government made eleventh-hour efforts for peace. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek proposed a five-man supercommittee (headed by U.S. Ambassador J. Leighton Stuart) to work out a plan for a coalition government with the Communists. The Communists agreed to participate on the committee if they were left undisturbed in North China. Since the Communist grip on North China -and on the main railroad arteries-was a major issue between Yenan and Nanking, this condition was not so simple as it seemed...
...Chiang Kai-shek's demand that the Communists "withdraw from areas where they threaten peace and obstruct communications," the Yenan Communist radio retorted: "What Chiang means, in a nutshell, is 'Countrymen, prepare for slaughter; it is all for your own good.'" The Communist answer: a "mobilization" call (for an army of 1,000,000 regulars, 2,000,000 guerrillas) and announcement of a "provisional supreme administration for democratic [Communist] Manchuria...
Deep in Communist territory to the north, 24,000 Nationalist troops held out in the ancient fortress town of Tatung (now an important rail junction) against a month-long siege by 80,000 Communists. In Jehol, Communists said that Chiang Kai-shek was massing for a drive against Chengteh...
...coalition was merely a dream of men of good will, the only alternative was to try to pry the Reds off China's lifelines. Nanking had few illusions about that job. U.S. military observers had repeatedly told Chiang Kai-shek and his generals that the odds were heavily against a clean-cut Government victory. But responsible Nanking leaders (not merely reactionaries) saw no alternatives, except 1) continued stalemate accompanied by economic stagnation and further loss of popular support, or 2) coalition, which to them really meant postponing the war until the Reds were in a stronger position...