Office of the Historian

893.01 Provisional/181: Telegram

The Counselor of Embassy in China (Lockhart) to the Secretary of State

Peiping, December 30, 1938—4 p.m.
[Received December 31—7 a.m.]

746. Embassy’s 704, December 3, noon,82 and last sentence 722, December 15, 3 p.m.; Tokyo’s 783, December 14, 5 p.m. which has just been received by mail.

[Page 440]
1.
The recent lack of concrete developments in connection with the projected “federal” government for the occupied areas is here generally attributed to (a) failure of interested Japanese political agents to come to agreement concerning both the personnel and the form of such government; (b) strong opposition to Wu Pei Fu by Chinese leaders of the present Peiping regime sponsored by General Kita; (c) lack, other than Wu, of more or less suitable Chinese personnel to constitute a federal regime and General Doihara’s resultant persistence in attempting to arrange for the assumption of the executive office by Wu Pei Fu on the ground that he is the only present possibility and; (d) failure to reach complete agreement on the part of Wu, of his Chinese adherents and of his Japanese sponsors as to his emergence from political retirement and the Japanese quid pro quo therefor.
2.
All available sources including adherents of Wu and members of the Peiping regime prof ess that these various difficulties have resulted in a decision by the authorities in Tokyo to postpone concrete political action in respect to a new central government for China for 1 or 2 months.
3.
Some of Wu’s adherents, however, are still working for his emergence and state that Wu Pei Fu is still considering the matter. This may be wishful thinking on their part and most observers feel that if the plan to make Wu Pei Fu head of a new federal regime has not been abandoned it has been indefinitely postponed because of: (1) lack of accord between the various Japanese and Chinese chiefly concerned as mentioned above or, (2) Wu’s insistence upon terms to which the Japanese will not agree or, (3) both these conditions. Meanwhile a group of Wu’s adherents is preparing for Wu’s signature a manifesto appealing for peace, denouncing Chiang Kai Shek and possibly criticizing Wang Keh Min, head of the Peiping regime. It is too early to say whether Wu Pei Fu will actually issue such a manifesto.
4.
The sum total of these factors is that the situation continues to be one of confusion concerning which no predictions can safely be made. A widespread impression exists here that the federal government plan is losing favor with the Japanese Government and that it will probably be a long time before events shape themselves towards anything much beyond the development of regional regimes connected if at all only very loosely by some such organ as the present United Council.
5.
Repeated to Chungking, Nanking, Shanghai, Tokyo.
Lockhart
  1. Not printed.↩