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The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Chinese Legation65
Marshal Chang Hsiao-Liang, in a telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reported as follows:
According to a telegraphic report from General Yu Hsueh-Chung66 on January 9, General Yu met the English acting Counsul [Consul] in a dinner party on the previous day during which the English Counsul expressed the hope that the Shanhaikwan affair could be peacefully settled and that the settlement could be fashioned after that of Shanghai, that is, under the good offices of England, the United States, France and Italy. General Yu thanked him for his kind efforts and expressed the opinion that no attempt at a settlement of the Shanhaikwan affair could be made unless the Japanese consented to a return of the status quo ante.
General Ho Chu-Kuo reported on January 8 that an English and [Page 50] a Japanese naval commander offered their good offices for the settlement of the Shanhaikwan affair and wished to get our view of the situation.
Commander Tien at Tientsin reported that Colonel Nakamura, the Japanese officer now stationed at Tientsin, had been appointed by the Japanese government to take full charge of the negotiation with China.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Nanking replied to Marshal Chang Hsiao-Liang saying that the Shanhaikwan affair, being only one aspect of a threefold problem, is totally different from the Shanghai affair and cannot be locally settled. The Ministry immediately sent Vice-Minister Liu Chung-Chieh to Peiping to confer with Marshal Chang. Marshal Chiang Kai-Shek and Finance Minister T. V. Soong concurred with the principle stated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Minister Soong, moreover, had announced, under the name of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that the Shanhaikwan affair cannot be settled locally.