893.512/501: Telegram
The Minister in China (MacMurray) to the Secretary of State
10. Your number 311 of December 29, 1926.
1. Viewing the draft reply to the British memorandum from the standpoints of our concern over the necessity to cooperate in matters of mutual interest in China with other powers and the more important factor of the effect which may be anticipated with regard to the Chinese people and the political elements of China, my feeling is frankly that the draft seems inadvisable for the reason that a misconstruction of your purposes would certainly be conveyed by it to both the foreigners in China and the Chinese.
2. As my telegram 632 of December 22 indicated, I do not wholly like the substance of the British memorandum nor the time and manner of its presentation. But I feel nevertheless that we perforce must go as far as they; on the other hand, it would be dangerous for us to appear to try to outbid them, and if we ourselves were to present a program which was less adapted to the circumstances of the situation as they actually exist, it would react upon us unfavorably. Frankly, the impression is made upon my mind by a reading of the [Page 938] draft reply that it does not constitute a reply at all. Instead it is a declaration of which the interpretation would be made that it was a competitive protestation of American sympathy for China and that it offers actually less than the proposal of the British offers; everything in it, beyond granting the Washington surtaxes, is linked to the conditioning fact that we are awaiting the establishment in China of an effective government. Therefore, it would appear to the Chinese that the proposals embodied in the draft reply were completely illusory, if, indeed, they did not appear to the Chinese to be, particularly in the last paragraph, unscrupulous. Apparently the intention of the draft reply is, by offering a program of negotiations that would be acceptable, to conciliate Chinese nationalistic feeling. My conviction is that any question whether one or another program is acceptable to the Chinese must be discounted. No considerable element of the Chinese will accept any one of them. … It is my hope that wide publicity will be given by the Department to the protest from Eugene Chen, in accord with the lines of a later telegram which will give a suggested reply, which reduces to absurdity the claims his faction and other Chinese factions have advanced and which also have been put forward by certain Americans who have been propagating the idea that by a wholesale renunciation of our rights we would win over the Chinese.
4. It seems to me, assuming as granted that we are sincere in our declarations of sympathy in regard to what is genuine in the aspirations of the Chinese people internationally, that it is not our immediately essential problem to declare in the face of Chinese importunities how much we will or must concede of our rights; it is to decide how we can arrange as a practical matter to grant what is necessary to the fulfillment of our own obligations and to avoid appearing to fail in carrying out the promises we made at the Washington and the Tariff Conferences. …
5. I assume your intention is to make the proposed draft reply public. If this were done, it would be considered by those few officials who read it as an academic recital of details not in themselves of any interest. It would seem to the very primitive native press, and to Chinese opinion in the large, merely to indicate that our Government felt lukewarm toward the proposals made by the British; that our Government was unable or unwilling to suggest of its own accord any alternative except generalities which are rendered meaningless by the “joker” they contain; and that our Government, in disavowing imperialist motives and avowing readiness to accept for its nationals the same treatment which is acceptable to the other nations, is abandoning the leadership accruing to it out of the Conference at Washington and is reverting to the policy by which other nationalities are allowed [Page 939] to do the fighting for the United States. I admit regretfully that among the Chinese there is rather generally a disposition to believe that we may be expected always to make concessions up to the utmost limit and then to calculate upon profiting from what may be obtained by other powers through individual action.
6. Most respectfully I say that I cannot but counsel you that without any question the publication of the draft reply would leave on Chinese minds the fundamental impression that in the new situation created by the fact that a central government in China has disappeared virtually completely and irretrievably, we have failed to confront the situation and adapt ourselves to it. Political thought in China is quite incapable of understanding the difficulties we find in meeting the problems which their own lack of national organization have created. If we Americans are to avoid giving the Chinese reason to be disappointed and disillusioned with our sincerity and ability we must find some way by which we can deal with the realities of China’s condition of not having a real government and not likely to have one during an uncertain number of years in the future, except in the event, which is rather improbable, that the Kuomintang succeeds in extending its effective control over the whole country. In regard to this practical problem, which the political disorganization of China presents, my own thinking has considerably advanced over that which I discussed earlier, in my number 325, August 14, 1926.13 I anticipate now the opportunity of conferring on this subject with you within about five weeks.
7. Meanwhile, in my opinion, it seems that the very best service which could be rendered to our own people by our Government as the trustee of the interests of America in China would be to acquiesce as a matter of course in the British proposal, without demur or more than a minimum of publicity. As to the general tenor of our reply, I venture the suggestion which follows:14
The American Government is happy to find on perusal of the British memorandum that the British Government continues to be actuated by the purposes which governed the Washington Conference, and that it desires to cooperate with the other interested powers in evolving a policy based upon those purposes as adapted to the wholly altered situation which has since come to prevail in China. As the British Government is already aware, the American Government is no less anxious than it to acquit itself of the obligations assumed at Washington with respect to the two and one-half and five percent surtaxes, and with that in view to join forthwith in a declaration by which the interested powers would consent that these surtaxes should at the earliest practicable moment be made applicable by the Maritime Customs Administration to the trade of their respective nationals. The American [Page 940] Government is also elaborating such legislative and administrative proposals as are necessary to enable it to put into effect as early as possible with respect to its nationals those recommendations of the report of the Extraterritoriality Commission which deal with matters that are within the individual competency of the several participating Governments; and it shares the hope that the other interested nations may similarly find it feasible to take such steps as they find suitable with a view to bringing about a general adoption of those recommendations upon which it is now possible to take action.
The American Government is hopeful that taking of these steps will assist in bringing about a situation in which a renewed sense of confidence may make it possible for China and the treaty powers to undertake a reconsideration of their relationships, with a view [to] such modification of the treaty status as may meet the aspirations of Chinese national feeling to the fullest extent that, under actual conditions, is compatible with the just rights and interests of the several nations concerned. The American Government would be happy to cooperate to that end with the other interested Governments and welcomes the British proposals as containing suggestions which under the actual conditions of the present may well prove helpful towards the object in view.
8. Referring to third sentence of the reply suggested above, I venture to point out that it is very necessary that there be drawn up an explanatory memorandum and drafts of the required legislation for enabling us to carry out the recommendations of the Extraterritoriality Commission. In the event that the Department has itself not yet met this need, I recommend most urgently that telegraphic instructions be given to Jacobs15 to communicate to you through the Legation by telegraph a summary of his suggestions and opinions, and to prepare the drafts for what documents he considers to be necessary so that our Government can comply with the Commission’s recommendations.