711.93/536: Airgram
The Chargé in China (Atcheson) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 20—5 p.m.]
A–23. Embassy’s airgram No. A–22, August 2, 9 a.m. Hollington Tong, Vice Minister of Information, who accompanied Madame Chiang to the United States, is reliably reported by a number of sources to have stated since his return to Chungking that he found “no war spirit” in Washington, a very curious remark to come from a resident of Chungking. The correspondent of the New York Times is one of those who has informed us that he has of late sensed a definite anti-American atmosphere in some Chinese official circles in Chungking. He states that the Chinese resented the Institute of Pacific Relations article mentioned in our 1291, July 24, midnight, 1943, and also a recent article in the New York Times by Hanson Baldwin on the military situation in the Far East in which Mr. Baldwin stated among other things that Sino-Japanese skirmishes were magnified by the Chinese as large battles. (The military spokesman at a press conference [Page 81] recently attempted to refute statements in the Baldwin article and his remarks were later widely distributed in printed form.) During the past week at a press conference the correspondents were given a lecture by the Information Minister in regard to their reporting and the United Press correspondent states that he was recently told by an important Chinese official that the American correspondents in China “had done China more harm than good” by their reporting activities since the outbreak of Sino-Japanese hostilities in 1937. Inquiries by foreign correspondents in regard to the Kuomintang-Communist situation have been obviously resented by Chinese press and other Party line officials.
The assumption of one competent observer is that Party line officials, in their attempt to build a new Great Wall of censorship about the deteriorating situation in China, are becoming more and more resentful against Americans and the United States because of their own—and typical present day Chinese—intolerance of the slightest criticism and because of their fear—and perhaps realization—that heavy criticism of the Chinese Government is probably inevitable when the truth becomes known. A tragic aspect of these circumstances is, in the Embassy’s opinion, the possibility that American public disillusionment in regard to China, if and when it occurs, may be so great that it may becloud China’s virtues in the minds of China’s friends who have been most effective in furthering Chinese hopes for continuing and increased aid, thus losing to China the help China needs and to us the war potentialities which this country holds—or should hold—for our cause. (Please see Embassy’s 1357, August 2, noon,96 containing a message for OWI from its local office.)
- Infra.↩