893.50/303
The Chargé in China (Atcheson) to the
Secretary of State
No. 1196
Chungking, May 18,
1943.
[Received June 16.]
Sir: With reference to the Department’s telegram
no. 602, May 10, 10 p.m., in regard to the Industrial Reconstruction
Planning Conference held in Chungking from April 26 to May 6, as well as the
Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Chinese Economic Society, there is enclosed
herewith a memorandum of conversation between Dr. Wong Wen-hao, Minister of
Economic Affairs and the Embassy’s Commercial Attaché.
The Embassy hopes to be able to forward additional information on this
subject in the near future and will also report as completely as possible on
other scheduled conferences, including a Production Conference to be held
early in June, under the auspices of the National Mobilization Board, and a
conference of the Supreme National Defense Council, to be held at the end of
May, in which the Central Planning Board is expected to play a prominent
part.
It is not believed that anything of particular importance came out of the
Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Chinese Economic Society. According to a
member, it was not attended by any prominent officials and did not agree on
any recommendations as to economic reconstruction.
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The Embassy is endeavoring to obtain additional
information on the subject.
It is believed that the enclosed memorandum and future reports on the subject
may be of interest to the Board of Economic Warfare and to the Bureau of
Foreign and Domestic Commerce.
Respectfully yours,
[Enclosure]
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Commercial Attaché
in China (Richards)
[Chungking,] May 14, 1943.
Dr. Wong Wen-hao, Minister of Economic Affairs, was very reluctant to
discuss the recent Industrial Reconstruction Planning Conference and
suggested that it would be much better for Dr. T. V. Soong to give out
the information in Washington. He mentioned that even the delegates who
attended the conference have not been permitted to keep their minutes,
but was not entirely clear as to why such secrecy should be observed,
his only explanation being that the proposals discussed at the
conference have no official standing unless they are approved by the
Generalissimo and the Executive Yuan. He admitted that there were
proposals discussed and that there were approximately 140, but he made
light of them, saying that they were of no importance.
With regard to the five-year plan for post-war industrial reconstruction,
Dr. Wong said that the conference did not go into much detail but merely
discussed estimates of the cost of such a plan. It was agreed that an
industrialization project such as China could afford would not be very
imposing from the western point of view and would not even bring China
up to a par with India industrially, but that it is better to be
realistic and not to undertake anything too ambitious. In the case of
steel, it was agreed that China might try for a production of about
2,000,000 tons a year, of which Japanese equipment already in China, if
not destroyed, would account for nearly half. Part of the steel industry
would be located in the Yangtze Valley, where there is a big market but
only limited ore reserves, but most of it would have to be in Manchuria,
where there are fairly good ore reserves but which is remote from the
principal markets. Other industrial projects would be devoted to the
manufacture of machinery, farm implements, heavy chemicals, etc. Dr.
Wong does not favor a large armaments industry, unless Japan should be
permitted to retain important heavy industries with the potentiality of
resuming arms production.
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Dr. Wong said that he has not publicly made any suggestion that part of
the industrial equipment in Japan be turned over to China, but that he
did discuss it once at a dinner party and feels that it is a good
suggestion, not only because China is entitled to reparation from Japan
but also because Japan will continue a source of uneasiness in the Far
East so long as she is permitted to retain on a large scale heavy
industries that could be turned to arms production.
Dr. Wong said that the Ministry of Education participated with the
Ministry of Economics in the Industrial Reconstruction Planning
Conference and that the Minister of Communications had a representative
present, though he could not attend himself.
Comment: As Dr. Wong was able to spare only
twenty minutes, I was not able to question him as closely as I should
have liked. I got the impression that he would prefer to avoid the
responsibility of deciding what might be given out, but he agreed to
think it over and talk to me about it again in a few days. Though he
insisted that the 140 proposals were of no particular importance, I got
the impression that he was reluctant to discuss them, at least until the
Generalissimo and the Executive Yuan have had a chance to consider them.
Dr. C. C. Chien, Vice Chairman of the National Resources Commission,
with whom I discussed the Industrial Reconstruction Planning Conference
last week, obviously did not feel that he could give out any information
about it without permission.
