The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-08-28
Interpreting
The War
BY JAMES d. WHITE
Associated Press Staff Writer

SAN fAIVO1OSO, aug. Ad.-A1S
30-year pact announced by China
and Russia over the weekend could
serve as world peace stabilizer
second only to the United Nations
Organization itself.
It's chief significance lies in the
simple fact that the two largest
nations in the world, both with we'll
demonstrated determination to re-
main themselves, have faced the
major problems between them and
agreed to keep on facing them.
The pact does not remove all the
possible causes of trouble, but it
does bind the two powers to a
friendly approach when disputes do
arise, as they are bound to.
The mutual land frontier alone
stretches for 1000 miles, is Hide
fined in many places, and runs
through various areas in Central
Asia where Chinese and Russian
political influences - vastly differ
ent in the past at least have
often led to confused situations
among the minority peoples af-
fected.
The pact recognizes Chinese SOW
ereignty in all these areas except
Outer Mongolia (Which a corrupt
Republican Chinese government
lost two decades ago anyway, and
Soviet hands-off promise is
thrown in. This puts upon China
the full responsibility for seeing
that economic and political life in
Sinkiang, Inner Mongolia, Man.
churia and Tibet develops along
orderly lines.
Chinese and China's friends re-
cognize that this did not always
happen in the past. But the Chinese
could very well plead that if their
border regions were politically
chaotic at times it was partly be-
cause of China's own fight against
foreign aggression in the past cen
fury.
But now China has thrown off
many of the unequal treaties. She
now has the first chance in her
modern history to show what she
can do.
1t is a heavy responsibility, parti-
cularly in view of the war-blShted
economy with which she will have
to start rebuilding. Administrative
and technical personnel to take
over Observation-Disclosures Man.
churia is merely one example of
the problems China faces.
There is good reason to think that
American influence has been be-
hind at least some of the general
arrangements of the pact, based on
a belief that Sino-R Russian amity is
essential to world peace.
If this is true, American influ-
ence is therefore behind this final
full emergence of Soviet Aussia as
a Pacific power, with her eyes turn
ed interestedly toward the teeming
millions of Asia as well as those
of Europe.
There is little if anything thus
far to indicate that this means
Soviet Russia will set about COM
munizing Asia - her actions in the
recent past all argue against that,
and so do her rather scrupuIous
gestures toward Chinese sover-
eighty over border areas in the
present pact.
But it does mean that, in the fu-
ture, Asiatics in remaking their
war-shaken political, economic and
social systems, will think about
what Russia has to offer as well as
the so-called Democratic group OF
nations.
And it would be strange if, in
trading with us and other Western
powers, the Chinese, for instance,
do not hold up to us the Russian
alternatives to what we want or are
willing to give.
Russia will have no small advan-
tage here. She was the first volun-
tarily to give up extraordinarily
in China, and the fact is not lost
upon China that America and Bri- |
tain gave up their special rights
only after Japanese conquest had
wiped them out in fact if not On
paper.
So the Soviet promise to stay out
of China's internal affairs has deep
significance in China, designed as
it must be to remove the deepest
Of all Chinese fears about Russians
intentions.
Nor does the pact necessarily
mean the end of the Chinese Com
munists. It means merely that
Russia promises to keep on staying
out of that question.
The Communist question in China
Is fundamental enough that the So
called Reds now claim the al
legiance of probably a quarter Of
China's vast population. They still
want the same things. They just
have less chance of getting them
now.