Next: Chungking
TIME, Monday, Oct. 24, 1949
With scarcely more than a quiet sigh, Canton last week passed under Communist rule. There was no resistance in the city that had given refuge to China's dying Nationalist government.
Communist forces, completing a 1,500-mile victory march since Mukden's capture almost a year ago, entered from the north. A million Cantonese carried on impassively while the Red underground among them emerged for jubilant street parades and dancing of the yangko.
Before leaving, the garrison of 80,000 Nationalists blew up the Pearl River bridge, damaged the city's power plant, set fire to airfield installations. Then it broke into two fleeing parts. The bulk moved into the hinterland where the Reds had not yet penetrated. A smaller group headed toward the sea and ships that would carry them to Hainan and Formosa.
Acting President Li Tsung-jen and Premier Yen Hsi-shan flew to Chungking, 700 miles northwest on a Yangtze cliffside, were greeted there by thousands of bright "Welcome" flags. But the famed capital of Free China in the war against the Japanese seemed as dispirited as the rest of non-Communist China. It had survived seven years of blockade by the Japanese. Now it would be an isolated capital again, with distance and not much else to guard it from the oncoming Reds.
The best remaining Nationalist army on the mainland, some 200,000 troops under doughty General Pai Chung-hsi, who had screened Canton for six months, was retreating westward to the general's native province of Kwangsi. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had chosen Formosa for his own last stand, though there were reports that he had at last agreed to part with some silver and gold from his war chest for Chungking's defense.
Most of the foreign diplomats still assigned to Nationalist China hurried from Canton to Hong Kong. The British crown colony alerted its 40,000-man garrison, waited nervously for the arrival of the new Red neighbors. Hong Kong authorities let it be known that they were eager to resume trade with and air service to Canton just as soon as its new Communist masters said the word.
Sources: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,805133,00.html
