Office of the Historian

893.74/612: Telegram

The Minister in China (MacMurray) to the Secretary of State

Peking, September 18, 1925—noon.
[Received 2:50 p.m.]

404. Your telegram number 255, September 15, 7 p.m.

1.
I have arranged for a further interview Monday morning with the Chief Executive with a view to urging not so much a decision favorable to the Federal project as a prompt answer in either sense that will enable you to judge whether in the forthcoming Special Conference we have to deal with a China that is with us or against us on the fundamental question of the open-door policy. This is become necessary because, although the pressure upon the Chief Executive and his advisers had apparently induced them to decide that the Federal contract must be carried out, the Minister for Foreign Affairs has been able to persuade his colleagues of his belief that insistence of our Government is a mere bluff, and that the issue may be indefinitely evaded.
2.
The Chinese are prone to discount, out of the abundance of their experience with various foreign diplomatic representatives, the reality of representations made to them in the name of the several governments. I feel the present matter is too vital to be left to chance of such misapprehension …
3.
[Paraphrase.] I should like to suggest, if I may, that a message from President Coolidge to Chief Executive Tuan be drafted and cabled to me for delivery September 21 asking whether it is not the intention of the Government of China to fulfill the obligations of its contracts with American interests and to give loyal cooperation to the American Government in realizing in practice the open-door policy for which purpose the Chinese Government sought our cooperation in 1921, and that the Chinese Minister at Washington be handed a copy of the message for communication to his Government. [End paraphrase.]
4.
There is a tendency on the part of the Chinese to make it appear that we are trying to profit by the Special Conference to extort from them particular advantages. I have taken occasion to explain to such officials as have hinted this to me that we are not seeking any concession but merely applying a test of the good faith of the Chinese Government in carrying out obligations to American commercial interests and to our Government assumed more than four years ago; and that the question presents itself to us not as a matter of bargaining but as a means of determining whether and to what extent the facts of the situation would warrant us in adopting policy more favorable to Chinese aspirations than the actual terms of the treaty obligations that we have undertaken and which we will, of course, fulfill.
5.
Copy by mail to Tokio.
MacMurray