Terror's Progress

CHINA Terror's Progress

The blood flowed on & on. Last week Red China's purge of "counterrevolutionaries" reached Manchuria, where Communist rule had seemed unchallenged. In 23 Manchurian cities, including Mukden and Changchun, and even in Russian-controlled Port Arthur and Dairen, police staged large-scale raids, which were reported in detail by Communist news service and radio. Thousands were arrested, hundreds hauled off to the inevitable public mass trials and executions.

Mukden reported that 1,120,000 people --the city's entire population--attended one or another of twelve trials. The main show, at which "hundreds" were condemned to death, took place at the Municipal Sports Stadium. It began with the spectators singing a romantic ballad from Chairman Mao Tse-tung's favorite drama, The White-Haired Woman.* Then Police Chief Ho Yah read the charges against the accused. The audience responded with the usual chants of hate and death. An actress emerged from the crowd, accused her father of heinous crimes, including rape, and demanded his death. The prisoners were loaded in trucks and driven off to execution grounds. The youths of the city formed rings around the trucks and danced the gay yangko (harvest dance). Some 600,000, said the Red press, witnessed the killings.

* A gaudy melodrama, written by six anonymous authors, of whom Mao may be one. It portrays the suffering of Heroine Hsi-erh, a landless farmer's daughter, who is tortured by the landlord's mother, raped by the landlord's son, etc., etc. Her ordeal turns her hair prematurely white. The Red army finally rescues her and punishes the wicked landlord family.

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