Wang Winged

In trim khaki, eschewing gold braid and gaudy epaulets, the 1935 model Chinese field marshals, generals and satraps gathered in Nanking last week. Almost every Chinese of importance was there. Never before had China's Methodist Dictator, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, drawn around himself quite so many of China's military elite. Even the great has-been among Chinese war lords, strapping, whimsical and always surprising "Christian Marshal" Feng Yu-hsiang, trekked down from his retirement near the Tai Shan ("Sacred Mountain") to announce good humoredly that he is "now a devout Buddhist."

Electric in the air was a feeling that at this year's Congress of the Government Party or Kuomintang, it might be possible to face the realities of China and Japan squarely, or at least as squarely as Oriental minds can face anything. The reality is that a policy of Asiatic cooperation, even with vast China flying for some years as the kite on Japan's string, might get the Orient somewhere a great deal faster than it has ever got before.

To have their group photograph taken last week the militant galaxy took their places on the steps of Kuomintang Party Headquarters with Dictator Chiang, Dummy President Lin Sen and Premier Wang Ching-wei. Among Chinese politicians the Premier rated last week as the most ardent and ablest exponent of the kite & string foreign policy for China and he was not only Premier but also Foreign Minister.

As the official photographer disappeared under his black cloth, Chinese cameramen began to snap. Suddenly out of a Chinese camera was whipped a pistol. Bang, bang, bang! Three bullets winged Premier Wang in the arm, neck and abdomen. As he crumpled, the pantherlike Generalissimo and China's whole quick-triggered elite were returning the assassin's fire.

In the orgy of Chinese marksmanship a janitor and a onetime Minister of Justice fell, their winging being charged to the assassin. Everyone else's bullets hit nobody as nimble Chinese statesmen ran like rabbits and the Chinese militarists formed a hollow square around crumpled Wang.

Unfortunately the assassin's name turned out to be Sun, but he was said to be no relative of the Nanking Government's late, sainted Dr. Sun Yatsen, leader of the revolution which upset the Imperial Manchu Throne in 1911. Last week's Sun was promptly branded a "Communist." Millions of Chinese considered him a patriot, hoped pro-Japanese Premier Wang was dying, regretted that Sun had not shot also China's pro-Japanese Kingpin, the Generalissimo.

In Shanghai, where well-to-do Chinese are cold to the white-hot flame of Chinese patriotism, hospital bulletins on the Premier were anxiously snatched as fast as they came in. Next day, at a rumor that Wang was dead, panic began to sweep Shanghai's Exchange. Solid gold bars-- "the only safe thing"--soared up as everything else fell. Then gold receded as the Premier's condition was said to be "satisfactory." Same day Shooter Sun died of wounds.

"The Deal." Pretending that they were unmoved by the winging of Wang, the Nanking Government & satraps kept on with the motions of getting ready for the Kuomintang Congress last week. In 1931, they recalled, a Nanking mob with unbridled patriotism actually sacked the Chinese Foreign Office (TIME, Oct. 5, 1931) because the Government seemed pro-Japanese even then. Ever since it has seemed progressively more pro-Japanese.

Up north, meanwhile, Japanese had been busy early last week tying their string to the demilitarized area near Peiping in which Japanese "ronin" provocateurs recently stirred up Chinese farmers to revolt and seize two towns (TIME, Nov. 4). Deriving his authority from Nanking, the Chinese satrap on the spot, General Shang Chen, sat down and made a deal last week with the Japanese Army representative in North China, General Hayao Tada. "The Deal," according to General Shang: "General Tada promised me to control the activities of the Japanese ronin now and in the future. He agreed that I shall send my 'peace preservation' troops into the demilitarized zone, which they formerly could not enter, to drive the rebel farmers out of the towns they are holding and install new Chinese magistrates who will work for friendship between China and Japan."

Since the "magistrates" of rural China are its rulers, General Shang, as the representative of Nanking, had agreed, in effect, to put a fat part in North China under men who are as much the puppets of Japan as is the so-called Emperor of so-called Manchukuo. Within 48 hours "The Deal" was followed by the shooting of Premier Wang.

Go Bolshevik? It might be best, some Nanking statesmen were saying at week's end, for China to team up not with Imperial Japan but with Bolshevik Russia. After all, so many Russians, including Stalin, are Asiatics and Bolsheviks have plenty of zip. Guardedly the Nanking Government spokesman said: "China has not yet been forced to decide between Japan and Russia, but some time in the future, perhaps, China must make this momentous decision."

Though shot as pro-Japanese last week, Premier Wang might just as well have been shot a few years ago as pro-Bolshevik. As recently as 1928 he was hobnobbing in Moscow. Soviet gold financed the Chinese civil war which enabled General Chiang to set up the Nanking Government with himself as Dictator (TIME, April 25, 1927). This week prompt Japanese rage at Nanking's fresh talk of Russia erupted in grim remarks by Japanese militarists that at the first real sign of a Nanking switchback toward Moscow, soldiers of the Divine Emperor will drive a Japanese wedge of conquest between the Soviet Union and China by seizing border lands.

2,000 Winged. In Nanking the elite of China could reflect that, for every dollar they have accepted from Japanese, Russians and other "foreign devils," they have seldom returned 3 cents worth of satisfaction. In passing, the Nanking Government blandly revealed last week that on Oct. 20 a stupendous explosion of Generalissimo Chiang's munition dump in Kansu Province killed over 2,000 Chinese. Hundreds of families were buried amid the debris of their collapsed homes and wiped out by the explosion was the military hospital in which wounded might have been treated. Gravely wounded lay German Catholic Missionary Bishop Buddenbrock. The explosion, the Government said, was touched off by Communists in a highly successful super-assassination.

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