Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1943, China

893.24/1689

Memorandum by the Deputy Lend-Lease Administrator (Van Buskirk) to the Assistant Secretary of State (Acheson)

Washington, September 20, 1943.

1. Lend-lease aid has been repeatedly promised by the President, “despite all odds to the Chinese armies and the Chinese people.” The Lend-Lease Administration has considered these promises as constituting a political as well as a military commitment.

2. When Lend-lease operations began, a broad program of military and non-military aid was scheduled for delivery via the Burma Road. The loss of the Burma Road made it necessary to reduce (1) procurement programs, (2) existing inventories and (3) shipping schedules to China. Such reductions properly impinged more heavily on the non-military than on the military portion of the program.

3. Military Lend-lease aid to China, since the establishment of the Stilwell Command, has consisted of supplies consigned to the Commanding General, USAF, CB&I, “for transfer to the Republic of China,” at his discretion and subject to his continuing supervision over use. This arrangement respecting military aid to China has been accepted by the Chinese, despite their understandable preference for treatment similar to that accorded the United Kingdom and Russia.

4. The non-military Lend-lease program consists of supplies requisitioned by China Defense Supplies, Inc. through the Lend-Lease Administration, consigned directly to Chinese authorities and transferred to them for their unsupervised use upon receipt. Included in this category are transport equipment, for other than military operational use, and raw materials, equipment, and supplies for direct or indirect munitions production in China. To the extent that actual or anticipated receipts of such materials provide tangible evidence of American support of the peculiarly Chinese war effort, they manifestly contribute to the confidence of the Chinese people in their own political and military leadership.

5. The reduction of the non-military Lend-lease program following the fall of Burma involved:

(a) placing of all transit stocks of China Lend-lease goods in India in U. S. Army custody, subject to diversions for U. S. Army or Indian use.

(b) commandeering for U. S. Army and Navy use of virtually all existing stocks of China Lend-lease materials awaiting shipment from the U. S.

(c) the suspension and subsequent cancellation of virtually all procurement operations then in progress.

6. This contraction in the OLLA³² program has been accompanied by the development of an increasingly critical attitude on the part of the War Department towards the continuance of any non-military Lend-lease aid program for China. This attitude of the War Department is based on considerations (a) of short supply in the United States, and (b) of limited transport facilities into China. But even when supply is adequate, as in the case of Canadian ordnance, and transport is available, the attitude of the War Department is that equipment should be furnished directly to General Stilwell for use in China, and not directly to the Generalissimo. The War Department’s attitude on these matters is governed entirely by military considerations. The Lend-Lease Administration feels that some non-military supplies should be furnished directly to the Chinese in fulfilment of a national political commitment, even though some military disadvantage may result.

7. The basic reason for the War Department position in respect to the delivery of Lend-lease supplies directly to China appears to be mistrust of Chinese efficiency in handling supplies made available to them without close supervision. Such mistrust, however well grounded, is manifestly derogatory to China’s sovereignty. To the extent that such mistrust works to prevent the transfer to China of otherwise needed, available, and deliverable supplies, it serves to nullify the commitments contemplated in our over-all relations with China and more specifically contained in our Master Lend-Lease Agreement with China.

8. Since the fall of Burma, the Lend-Lease Administration has undertaken:

(a) to maintain in India a reserve stock of non-military supplies urgently needed and wanted for use in China by the Chinese themselves, ready for delivery to China as transport facilities improve.

(b) to support the Chinese development of the Northwestern Highway supply route.

(c) to support such expansion of air transport facilities into and within China as will permit continued deliveries of at least some non-military supplies for use in China by the Chinese.

(d) to sponsor and expedite the delivery of automotive spare parts and equipment required to service Chinese internal transport facilities.

(e) to continue procurement of severely restricted quantities of other non-military supplies (1) not already represented in India stockpile and (2) so urgently needed as to command high priority for early delivery to China.

(f) to plan increased procurement and forwarding of needed non-military equipment upon the development of transport facilities available for the movement of such supplies. Such plans encompass the provision of additional transport equipment, munitions chemical plants, power plants, oil refinery equipment, container manufacturing facilities, machine tools, and other items which have had to be deferred.

9. In these undertakings the Lend-Lease Administration has differed with the War Department in its analysis of the problem and a number of issues have been resolved only through appeal to the President either by the Chinese themselves or by OLLA. The frequent need for direct appeal to the President discredits the efficiency of the established routine relations between U. S. and Chinese supply agencies.

10. As intimated previously, the endeavors of the Lend-Lease Administration are based on political considerations and political pledges. These considerations are, however, ill-defined and urgently in need of authoritative review.

The State Department negotiates the basic agreements with China setting the terms of Lend-lease aid. The Lend-Lease Administration has regularly consulted the Department on all specific problems in which emphasis on political factors appears pertinent to the consideration of proposed China programs by the various agencies of the U. S. Government. Such consultations, however, have not been of such a character as to enable the State Department to review in a comprehensive manner the overall political implications of the non-military Lend-lease aid program for China. But even a comprehensive study of the State Department of the political considerations involved in Lend-Lease aid to China would not by itself provide the Lend-Lease Administration with a workable charter, for the State Department will not review any War Department decisions or actions based on purported military considerations. The War Department correspondingly regards political considerations as not germane to its military program in the China Theatre, and modifies its supply decisions respecting China to conform with political commitments only under specific directives from the White House.

11. There is thus a need for the creation of an agency, perhaps in committee form, to be established with a directive from the President to review, in the light of both political and military considerations, the present status of our Lend-Lease program for China. Such a committee might be directed to prepare recommendations concerning the extent and nature of the non-military aid, if any, which should and can be undertaken during 1944 to the National Government of the Republic of China, apart from the Army Supply Program schedule of matériel for consignment to General Stilwell. Should such recommendations commend themselves to the President, this same committee might well be charged with the implementation of these recommendations in some such manner as the President’s Soviet Protocol Committee operates. Whether the program adopted by the Committee should be communicated in full to the Chinese as a detailed and specific commitment implementing our unfulfilled general commitments, or whether its individual actions should be reported to them from time to time, is a matter which can be left for later decision.

12. The quantity of non-military supplies than [that?] can be delivered to China during 1944 appears likely to be small, possibly not exceeding 50,000 tons. Approximately this quantity of goods will be in stock in India for China Lend-lease account before the end of 1943. Present tentative plans of the Lend-Lease Administration call for maintaining approximately this level of supplies, by holding the ratio of new forwardings from the U. S. to the rate of deliveries to China by air and overland.

Past experience leads the Lend-Lease Administration to anticipate opposition from the War Department to the carrying out of even so modest a program. And there are certain classes of equipment, known to be urgently needed in China, the delivery of which to China in 1945 requires advance scheduling decisions before the end of 1943. Certain of these equipment projects represent attempted cash purchases by the Chinese Government in the United States; others are long deferred Lend-lease projects at one time favorably considered by the Lend-Lease Administration. An over-all review of such projects now, in the light of all pertinent political and military considerations, could lead to timely decisions which would at once remove Chinese uncertainties and permit orderly American planning.

Arthur B. Van Buskirk

32. Office of Lend-Lease Administration.