From the South China Morning Post this week in: 1948 The remaking of the world from the debris of the second world war was richly evident. Almost daily reports covered troubled negotiations in Jogjakarta between Mohammed Hatta, premier of the nascent Indonesian republic, and representatives of The Hague and the colonial government, under the Renville truce, which had temporarily ended the Netherlands' 'police action' to hold on to its colony. However, in Paris, France was satisfied with an agreement reached on board the 'French cruiser Duguay-Trouin (7,249 tons)', which was then moored off Indo-China. France's high commissioner in Vietnam, Emile Bollaert, the ex-emperor Bao Dai and General Nguyen van Xuan, premier of the provisional Vietnamese government, agreed that Vietnam's independence would be upheld within the French Union. In Malaya, 'a crime wave' (directed by communists, according to Malcolm Macdonald, Britain's high commissioner in Southeast Asia) was targeting British and Chinese nationals. By then, China's own communists had broken a lull in fighting in North Manchuria to launch an attack on the Nationalist government's last stronghold in the region. Nationalist headquarters said that '100,000 Red troops' were massed around Changchun, which was expected to fall shortly. In Peiping, General Claire Chennault said that all of 'Manchuria could be lost in two months if the Reds were anxious to take it' and if the allies did not step up their support for the Nationalist government. Elsewhere on the mainland, Chinese hostility towards Japan was directed against the United States for attempting to revive the country it had demolished only three years previously. This anger led to 'anti-American agitation among Chinese students' across the mainland. In Shanghai, mobs of students gathered on the campuses of Chiaotung and Fushan universities to protest against US support for reviving Japan. 'A few hundred students were gathered on each campus but they did not dare try to crash to [sic] the United States consulate as planned', thanks to 'a cordon of helmeted security policemen armed with rifles', the newspaper reported. Isolated gatherings of students on the Bund were also dispersed, and the lack of bloodshed was a sign that the 'students are convinced that the [Nationalist] government meant business when it announced its determination to prevent a demonstration once and for all'. Shanghai's mayor, KC Wu, said the demonstrations were the work of 'professional students', which this newspaper decoded to mean communist agents. South Africa's new prime minister, Daniel Francois Malan, was 'something of a man of mystery' to the Post's correspondent. However, it had been established that, during Mr Malan's boyhood in Cape Town, he had been a Sunday-school pupil of Field Marshall Jan Smuts, whose United Party had just been defeated by Mr Malan's Nationalists. 'It did not seem to do me much harm,' said Mr Malan of his religious education. Mr Malan also assured the world that apartheid was 'not the caricature that has so often been made of it' and that his new government 'will protect the particular interest of non-Europeans to the best of its ability'. From Tokyo, United Press reported that one of 30 defendants at a war crimes trial had claimed 'Sake flowed freely in the American human liver banquet'. Quoting testimony at the 'cannibalism and vivisection war trial', it said 'a gruesome feast took place at the Japanese army officers' club in the Kyushu Imperial University hospital early in June 1945. The defendant, Shichiro Matake, was guest of honour at the 'feast'. Matake told the trial that 'the remains of the American prisoner of war, which furnished the fare, was roasted in soya bean sauce on a charcoal burner'. He recalled that a Miss Shiokawa, the hospital's head nurse, had 'passed around the sake and I believe she also passed around the human liver'.
