Office of the Historian

893.00/15079

Memorandum by Mr. Robert B. Stewart of the Division of European Affairs

[Washington,] September 22, 1943.

Report on China

Minister Nelson T. Johnson55 in his despatch no. 505, July 19,56 submits an interesting secret letter on China written by an Australian newspaper correspondent, together with his own excellent comments. The correspondent’s stated purpose in this letter was to send his paper, the Sydney World Herald, not for publication but for background purposes, material on “the black side of China” which he was unable to send through the Chinese censorship. The picture which he paints is a very “black” one indeed, although there is little of substance that is new. His main points are:

1.
“There is little war in China as we understand war,” and the war communiqués about heavy fighting are “mostly lies.”
2.
The Chinese Government is already preparing for civil war with the Communists and is storing away for this purpose war supplies provided by the Allies.
3.
“The Chinese currency system is collapsing.” Inflation “has reached a really dangerous stage” and “is now paralyzing industry.”
4.
“The general incompetence and corruption are almost unbelievable.” The famine at Honan for example, “was the result of stupidity and graft” and caused the death of between four and five million people. “One of the worst rackets in China has been the cornering of medical supplies.” Among the Chinese forces on the Yellow River front losses through disease and malnutrition are reported to be 25 percent a year.
5.
The Generalissimo “is now an Emperor in all but name” and “some of the finest brains in China are working to keep him misinformed.”
6.
Some of the officials of the H. H. Kung group who practice “all sorts of financial abuses” in his name are reported to want “an arrangement with Japan.”
7.
Planes sent to China have been held in reserve or hidden in the hills.

Mr. Johnson submits this report to the Department because it is “interesting not only as a commentary by an independent newspaperman, but also as throwing some light upon the kind of background material that is influencing to a very large extent the outlook of Australians and the British generally on the situation in the Far East.”

Although regarding the newspaperman’s report as “an unbalanced story,” Mr. Johnson does not attempt to deny the truth of the facts presented. Instead he states: “I think that all of the information contained in this letter is well known at home. Certainly there is very little of it that is new to me.” However, Mr. Johnson’s interpretation places these facts in a very different perspective.

Shortages among civilian populations because of requisitions for the armed forces, he points out, occur not only in Honan but also in Germany, and even in Australia and the United States. As regards the situation in Honan, Mr. Johnson holds that Chinese military requisitions are not solely responsible but that the Japanese “have also taken grain from the Province.”

On the correspondent’s statement that Russian and French planes have been held in reserve or hidden in the hills, Mr. Johnson adds that these planes are ineffective against the Zero plane, and, furthermore, that since gasoline is so scarce no plane will be in the air that does not have to be there.

On the general question of the position of China in the war Mr. Johnson replies most effectively and convincingly:

“Certainly every American citizen, no matter what the Chinese do in the war now, must be grateful for the eleven years of opposition that the Chinese have put up to the highly-organized Japanese aggression,—opposition which has placed China definitely on our side of the fence, and not on the side of the Japanese.”57

  1. Minister in Australia, former Ambassador in China.↩
  2. Not printed.↩
  3. On October 1, the Adviser on Political Relations (Hornbeck) penciled his observations to the Secretary of State as follows: “You need not read any of what lies hereunder. I wish to call attention, however, to what to me are the most interesting features of the exhibit: namely, that an Australian newspaper correspondent wrote, after having spent a few weeks in China, an exceedingly pessimistic picture of China and the situations therein; and, our Minister to Australia, Johnson, having been shown the ‘secret letter’ in which this estimate was given, wrote for the benefit of an officer of the United States Army forces in Australia who had sent him a copy, a very sensible letter of comment, making some very thoughtful comparisons and putting the China situation in a commonsense perspective. S. K. H.”↩