893.00/5–3047
The Ambassador in China ( Stuart ) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 9.]
Sir: I have the honor to attempt an interpretation of recent political trends in this country. The two phases of the outcry for peace described in my previous despatch no. 742 of May 21, 1947 are both gaining rapidly in force. This demand is in essence the raw stuff out of which democracy can be given form. The manifestation in Shanghai especially is on the verge of destructive violence with no [Page 155] sufficient military reserves for coping with it. The People’s Political Council is now in session and there is an insistent urge among its members to appeal for peace but this is being resisted by Kuomintang politicians. The students are planning a nation-wide demonstration on June 2 which marks the conclusion of the People’s Political Council. This student movement, while attended by the usual evidences of immaturity, is, as always, a fairly reliable register of public opinion. The students are the most highly sensitized element of the population and with fewer inhibitions. They react therefore more quickly and spontaneously than others.
The military situation is, for the present at least, unfavorable to the Government and is complicated, if not controlled, by economic and psychological factors. The Government leaders hesitate to respond to any appeal for peace as appearing to the Communists as an admission of weakness.
Will the Government leaders regard the will of the people, now at last articulate, as a mandate to be carried out in the spirit of the new republican principles? Or will they continue in the old tradition to attempt to suppress even orderly agitations and to control the working of economic laws by coercive measures? All the signs thus far point to the latter though there are searchings of heart among many of them, including some who are branded as chief among reactionaries.
In a sense the problem is acute not so much because of the venal, selfish and incompetent types of officials, and their counterpart among the people, as because of the more public-spirited leaders of thought and action whose narrow prejudices and conventional procedure have been sharply accentuated by perplexity and fear. Thus the fanatical bigotry and suspicion on the part of the Communists is now paralleled by a sort [of] desperate stubbornness among their opponents who rationalize their stand as patriotic duty.
President Chiang has a supreme opportunity to declare himself the exponent of the popular will and because of the distress of the masses and the danger to the nation to ask the Communist Party once more to join in a cease-firing order and in a renewed attempt to secure a negotiated peace. In doing so he would demonstrate his intelligent and genuine acceptance of new democratic standards and ought to rally the enlightened, forward-looking elements of the people, as well as the great mass who clamor merely for peace and an opportunity to work undisturbed by conflicting factions or ideologies. If he should make such a proposal heartily and with no provocative assertions, and if public opinion supports him in this, the responsibility for continuing the disastrous and indecisive warfare would seem to rest clearly on the Communist Party.
Respectfully yours,