693.001/435: Telegram
The Chargé in China (Peck) to the Secretary of State
[Received 4:44 p.m.]
609. Following are pertinent extracts from Central News release Chungking dated December 20:
“The contention made by Mr. Arita, Japanese Foreign Minister, [that] the provisions of the Nine Power Treaty are no longer applicable due to changed circumstances is entirely unfounded both factually and juridically, declared the Waichiaopu47 spokesman when interviewed this afternoon.
The changed circumstances referred to by Mr. Arita, continued the spokesman, were brought about by Japan’s forcible encroachments upon China’s integrity in recent years and by her closing of the Open Door in certain areas of China.
These were exactly circumstances which the Nine Power Treaty was designed to prevent but which had been brought about by Japan in violation of the treaty, said the spokesman, adding that a treaty could not be considered inapplicable simply because of violations by one of its signatories.
Commenting on Japan’s objection to the British and American loans to China, the spokesman said Japan had no ground for raising any objection in this matter.
[Page 108]Even if the American and British loans were intended as political gestures against Japan, as Mr. Arita thought they were, such gestures were justified and represented the minimum of action open to the powers, said the spokesman after referring to Japan’s ‘treaty-breaking activities and destruction of foreign rights and interests in China’.
Commenting on Mr. Arita’s avowed solicitude for the welfare of third-party nationals in China, the spokesman said the ‘embarrassments and inconveniences’ caused to them by the hostilities were directly attributable to Japan’s aggression in China. Consequently, if Mr. Arita were really sincere in his professed anxiety to third-party nationals regarding ‘embarrassments and inconveniences’, he should move to stop his country’s aggression.
Concerning the third point made by Mr. Arita that the establishment by so-called economic bloc between Japan, China and ‘Manchukuo’ would not hamper foreign interests in China, the spokesman contended that this was disproved by the whole train of events since 1931.
Inasmuch as the Japanese proposal of such a tripartite bloc of ‘new order’ in eastern Asia was aimed at the establishment of Japan’s hegemony in eastern Asia, said the spokesman, it was in direct conflict with foreign rights and interests in eastern Asia.”
- Chinese Foreign Office.↩