893.00/13105: Telegram
The Minister in China (Johnson) to the Secretary of State
[Received 1:55 p.m.]
129. Minister of Finance Kung has informed me that he views the situation in North China seriously. Kung who in the past has shown a tendency to take an alarmist view said that the Japanese military claim that the Chinese Government is responsible both for the assassination of the two pro-Japanese Chinese editors in the Japanese Concession and for the activities of Sun Yung-chin; that the Japanese military intend to employ these charges as the basis for demands which will mean the removal of Chinese control of the Peiping-Tientsin area; that the Japanese military have taken advantage of the assassinations [Page 190] and the activities of Sun because they believe that through using these two incidents they will be able to discredit the Tokyo cabinet, cause its resignation, and effect the formation of a military cabinet.
Kung stated that the Japanese charges are spurious. With regard to the assassinations Kung said that there were three possibilities:
- (1)
- That a secret patriotic association may be responsible, adding that the postal censorship had discovered a document allegedly published by such a society claiming responsibility for the assassinations and adding that its next two pro-Japanese Chinese victims would be Ho Ying-chin and Huang Fu;
- (2)
- That the assassinations may have been engineered by Japanese for the purpose of making possible new demands with regard to North China; and,
- (3)
- That Communists may have committed the murders for the purpose of creating trouble which would draw Chiang Kai-shek’s attention from his campaign against Communists in West China. With regard to the Sun activities, Kung said that the Japanese claimed that they had found in his possession a document signed by Ho Yingchin creating him an officer and that he had been given assistance by a Chinese magistrate. Kung said that the document must be a forgery; that the magistrate, being a civilian, could do nothing else but render assistance to an armed force; and that Sun was acting as he did to avenge the murder of members of his family by Japanese.
Kung did not inform me specifically what the Japanese military want in North China, but there were reports last autumn that they desired to effect the removal from the Peiping-Tientsin area of all Chinese troops. There have also been recent reports:
- (1)
- That some of the Japanese military were opposed to the raising of the Japanese Legation to an Embassy;
- (2)
- That they have been skeptical of the efficiency of the Japanese Foreign Office policy of gaining Japanese encouragement in China through improving Sino-Japanese feeling; and
- (3)
- That the military would be content to watch only for a limited time the direction of Japanese policy in China by Japanese civilians.
Information reported as emanating from Yu Hsueh-chung has been received to the effect that the Japanese military have admitted to him that recent penetration of Japanese troops into the truce zone, although ostensibly against Sun Yung-chin, was chiefly for the purpose of establishing a new precedent for future incursions; that they informed him that their intention was to proceed shortly with the Manchurianization of a buffer state in North China; and that they formally offered him the governorship of a new “special military area” to be created there.