Chungking Embassy Files—800 KMT Communist
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Second Secretary of Embassy in China (Melby)
By appointment I met General Chou for luncheon yesterday. We had previously had an appointment for Sunday which he said he had been forced to cancel because he had been called in by General Wedemeyer, who apparently wanted to get his opinion on conditions in the north. Chou said he told General Wedemeyer that the announced policy of the United States in China was non-intervention but at the same time it also appeared the American policy [was?] to transport Kuomintang troops to the north, to police the railroads and to go slowly on the disarming of the Japanese—in a word, to intervene in internal Chinese affairs. He said he asked General Wedemeyer how he explained this apparent contradiction. General Wedemeyer told him he was fully aware of the contradiction, but that he had his orders and as a soldier he had to carry them out. He also said that the slow progress in disarming the Japanese was at the expressed desire of the Central Government.26 Chou concluded that this was all the information he could get out of him.
Chou also told me that any public information on the present meeting of the Kuomintang generals in Chungking would be meaningless, but that we should try to find out what was being said “under the table” and then watch the subsequent behavior of the generals after [Page 625] they left Chungking. He seemed to feel that the principal generals would favor continuance of the civil war but that there was a fairly good chance that pressure from innumerable civilian groups on the Generalissimo might force him to order a cessation of hostilities. He said he was in no position, however, to estimate the chance of this development but he was not unduly optimistic. Though preferring a discontinuance of civil war, he did not seem particularly alarmed at the prospect that it might be continued, for he said that regardless of any developments the Communists would win.
I asked him if active negotiations with the Kuomintang had been resumed. He said no and that they would not be until the Political Consultative Council is convened.
He made a point of telling me on his own that at the time the joint communiqué was issued on October 10, the Kuomintang had already issued orders to its troops to attack the Communists. According to him, the principal focus of this attack was to be Honan with four divisions of American trained and equipped troops. These troops have now been isolated into four separate groups and are beyond hope of any relief.
For some reason, he was particularly interested in the political situation in Italy and more specifically the present economic problems. I told him that I knew only what I had seen in the press which he had also undoubtedly seen.
- Marginal notations: “I will wager CN $10000 that General Wedemeyer made no such statement—W[alter] S. R[obertson] Me too—J[ohn] E. M[elby]”.↩