Viewing page 117 of 137

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

ADVANCE RELEASE    -2-      NB-2954

Definite cooperative steps are being taken by China and the United States to:

Increase war production within China. 

Increase imports of essential war materials from America. 

Help break the bottleneck of inadequate transportation facilities inside China. 

Increase the American and American-trained Chinese staff of technical advisers and technical workers in Chinese industry and transportation.

Train key technical men from China in American industrial and transportation methods and techniques. 

Set up new administrative machinery in China for control of war production and raw materials by establishing, directly under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, an agency corresponding to America's War Production Board. 

MORE TRUCKS FOR CHINA

Internal transportation within China has become progressively more and more dependent upon the coolie bearers and animal pack trains as her initial supply of motor trucks has dwindled. It is estimated that China has only about 6,000 trucks now in operation, a result of hard usage over bad roads and lack of adequate repair parts and facilities. The newest of these is more than three years old. This number is to be doubled as quickly as possible by imports of new trucks from the United States. 

In recent months the tonnage flown from India into China over the Hump of the Himalaya mountains has been estimated at better than 20,000 tons a month. A sharp increase was achieved in November to not less than 30,000 tons. 

An increase has become possible only recently, not only because of previous limitations upon transport of cargoes over the Hump, but because after tonnage had been flown in, it was extremely difficult to move the supplies out of Kunming and distribute them within China. A month's record was cited in which 10,000 tons were flown in, but only 3,000 tons distributed out of Kunming. However, FEA transportation men, working in concert with the Chinese, have succeeded in improving transportation facilities out of Kunming. the average flow of cargo out of the over-the-Hump terminus has been quadrupled as of September1, and still in increasing. 

THE MILITARY SITUATION

Mr. Nelson has said of China's situation in the war: 

"It is magnificent and everlasting proof of the greatness of China, that her people are able to maintain their courage, their fighting spirit, their will to victory in the face of existing conditions. The advance of the Japanese armies....has been like a slow paralysis. Most of China's industrial cities are held by the invader. The major Chinese railroads have been seized or cut....Her armies are hampered by lack of transport....prices soaring in an inflation as terrible for the people as an epidemic disease....They have seen the rice bowl steadily dwindle, they have put up with threadbare clothing....The situation in China is serious, but not hopeless....what I saw in China has renewed my faith in the ability of the Chinese people to emerge victorious from this long and terrible war, and to work out a great destiny in the years ahead."

(more)

X-37382