740.0011 Pacific War/2497
The Ambassador in China (Gauss) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 28.]
Sir: I have the honor to transmit a Central News report of April 27,69 bearing the headline “Close Friendly Bonds Between China and Britain”, and referring to the recent presentation of British decorations to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and other Chinese officers.
This report is a virtual translation of an editorial appearing on the same day in the Chungking Central Daily News. Both the Central News Agency and the Central Daily News are official organs of the Kuomintang: and it may be assumed that the article and the publicity given to it are officially inspired. Any doubt that this is so would seem to be removed by the fact that when the American News broadcaster of the Kuomintang Publicity Board omitted mention of the article in his evening round-up on the day of its publication, he received within ten minutes an urgent telephone call from the Board insisting that he include adequate comment on the article in his broadcast for abroad.
This Embassy has from time to time in recent months reported the critical tone of the Chinese press and public opinion toward Great Britain since the fall of Hong Kong. This criticism has become more outspoken with the successive British defeats in Singapore and Burma and has received fresh material with the arrival of large numbers of Chinese refugees from Hong Kong and other occupied British territories.
Even high officials of the Chinese Government, such as the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs,70 Party officials, such as the Chief of the Overseas Board, and persons of the position of Madame Chiang Kai-shek have made in private conversations with me and members of the Embassy staff, embarrassingly frank derogatory statements concerning the British.
[Page 36]Comment in the press has been somewhat more controlled. Semiofficial papers, such as the Army paper Sao Tang Pao, have for the most part confined their discussion of what they consider British failings to strategical considerations. But the Ta Kung Pao created a sensation by publishing on January 29 an article by its General Manager, who had escaped from Hong Kong, saying bluntly that the British had made no real resistance there. The Ta Kung Pao’s editorial on the same day, entitled “Thoughts on the Kowloon-Hong Kong Fighting” and presumably commenting on this article, was completely deleted by the censor—an occurrence unprecedented for this important and influential paper.
This situation has become one of concern, not only to British officials in China, but also to Chinese propaganda officials who see it as a hindrance to the joint war effort of the United Nations. In a conversation on April 18, Dr. Hollington Tong, Vice Minister of the Kuomintang’s Ministry of Publicity, took the occasion to say to me that he was “much worried over the alarming amount of anti-British feeling”—both in China and, judging from reports he had received, in the United States. He felt that something should be done to check it and to emphasize through propaganda that we are allies fighting together and giving each other mutual assistance. The British decision to decorate Chinese officers appears to have given the Ministry of Publicity an opportunity for such propaganda. With the recent defeats of British and Chinese forces in Burma, further efforts are being made to check overt criticism of the British.
Respectfully yours,