Peiping, Jan. 10. delay, now of nearly one year's duration, in setting up the new government in China is, as is generally believed, due to certain divergences of view between Mr. Wang Ching-wei and his Japanese military supporters.
At different times these differences have been ascribed to a number of various reasons, But stripped of all the outward trappings of official pronouncements, and newspaper propaganda, the two main difficulties still remaining, which are holding up the proclamation of the new central government appear. to be Mr. Wang's demand for the withdrawal of the Japanese forces from Chinese soil and his unwillingness to concede a special status to certain portions of Chinese territory, such as Inner Mongolia and north China, On the question of the withdrawal of the Japanese forces from China no Japanese government is likely to be able to give way, for purely practical considerations, quite apart from the necessity of preserving the face of the Japanese army. For it is difficult to believe that in a square fight between Mr. Wang Ching-wei and Gen, Chiang Kai-shek, without the intervention of the Japanese army, the former would have a ghost of a chance, One has only to remember what has been happening in China during the last quarter of a century.
If the Japanese army were withdrawn, the situation in China would revert to that existing at the time of the civil wars, when the Nationalists were attempting to unite the country. During the whole of that period any side, that was even suspected of enjoying Japanese backing, invariably went under, in the long run. How much more would that be the case today, after what China has gone through during the last 30 months? It is, therefore, fairly certain that, whatever else may be agreed upon, Mr. Wang Ching-wei will have to make up his mind to swallow the bitter pill of continued Japanese military occupation of China. No doubt the Japanese will try and gild this bitter pill by agreeing to restrict their occupation to certain strategic points and by giving vague assurances of complete withdrawal in the far distant future.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.