Then, on Christmas Eve 1946, the Communists got the atrocity they had been waiting for. A nineteen-year-old Peking University student named Shen Chong was grabbed in downtown Beijing by two US Marines, who took her to an open field, where one of them, Corporal William G. Pierson, allegedly raped her. On December 30, eight thousand students marched in Beijing to protest the purported crime. A day later, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party ordered underground operatives to take control of this issue to demand not only justice but a US withdrawal.
