761.93/1746: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to the Secretary of State
[Received February 15—12:30 p.m.]
502. It may be of interest that the Chinese Ambassador3 in a conversation on February 12 remarked to me he thought that the Soviet authorities had asked the Premier of Outer Mongolia to leave Moscow a few days before the recent meeting of the Supreme Soviet in order that the Premier’s presence in Moscow might not be considered as having some relationship to the constitutional changes and thus be embarrassing to the Soviet Government. The Chinese Ambassador also attached significance to the fact that among the speakers in the Supreme Soviet there had been no representatives of Far Eastern Soviet Republics and all those who spoke had been representatives of constituent republics bordering on the west and southwest. From this circumstance the Ambassador derived personal satisfaction that the Soviet constitutional changes had no special significance for China. He said that any suggestion that China exchange diplomatic representatives with the constituent republics of the Soviet Union would raise the question of the individual Chinese provinces desiring to exchange diplomatic representatives with foreign countries; that such a suggestion would, therefore, be embarrassing to the Chinese Government which had gradually been consolidating its position in reference to the provinces of China; that the Chinese Government would not permit individual Chinese provinces to send or receive diplomatic representatives and would, therefore, not look with favor on any suggestion by the Soviet Government that diplomatic representatives be exchanged with the constituent republics.
Repeated to Chungking.
- Foo Ping-sheung.↩