Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, The Far East: China, Volume VII

893.00/7–847: Telegram

The Ambassador in China ( Stuart ) to the Secretary of State

Nanking , July 8, 1947.
[Received July 7—11:19 p.m.]

1474. Following was published in Central News Agency Bulletin dated July 6:

“In a 6,000 word address to the nation²¹ on the eve of the Double-Seventh, commemorating the Lukouchiao incident,²² President Chiang Kai-shek summoned the nation to crush the Communist open rebellion in order to achieve national construction and march on the road to unity and democracy.

“Painstakingly, the President in his address, which was broadcast to the people on a national hook-up, explained how patient the Government had been in dealing with the Communist rebels, hoping against hope that they might see the folly of their evil doings.

“The President said the Government does not object to Communism as an ideology. The Government simply hopes, he said, that the Communist Party in China, as the Comunist Party in the United States and Britain, takes its legitimate place as a political party and achieves its political aims through legal or constitutional means.

“But at this juncture, when all hope is abandoned that the Communists might cease their rebellious activities, only two alternatives are left to the people, the President said. The people may either adopt an indifferent attitude toward the rebellion, allowing the entire nation and its 450,000,000 people to sink into the Communist quagmire, or fully realize the dangers confronting the nation and rise like one man to crush the Communist rebellion as a means for self-preservation and for the salvation of the nation.

“To follow the first alternative, the President said, is to permit the Communist rebellion to spread, allowing our own homes and villages to be pillaged and robbed, our own folks humiliated, our children and brothers forced to become tools of traitors and the very life line of our nation extinguished.

“The President said he fully appreciated the profound sufferings the people of the nation are undergoing in this postwar period when we have not yet been able to complete our work of rehabilitation. This is particularly so in the rural areas and among our peasants.

“Yet, however bitter the experience of the people in Government-controlled areas may be, compared to the sufferings of the people in the Communist ravaged regions, their sufferings are certainly not of the same intensity.

“In the Communist ravaged regions the people’s very movement, whether mentally or physically, suffer the bitterness of complete deprivation. Hence, the President said, to crush the Communist rebellion is tantamount to adopting measures for self-preservation and self-protection.

“Recalling the total mobilization measures adopted and proclaimed by the Government on July 4, the President pointed out to the people on this august occasion of the war anniversary the necessity of carrying out the following two lines of action:

• “(1) The people must with all their might and main complete their work of national reconstruction. They must make all-out efforts to crush the Communist rebellion and realize national unity.
• “(2) Simultaneously, we must exert all-out efforts in effecting national reforms and improvements. While we are suppressing the Communist brigands with military means, the nation must also at the same time effect internal reforms. The President admitted that the Government in itself is not perfect while in the body of the Chinese society also are found many weak points, made all the weaker by the 8 years of the war followed by the Communist rebellion. But however difficult it may be for the nation to accomplish its goal, reforms and improvements must be effected.”

Stuart

21. For full text of broadcast, see United States Relations With China, p. 749. For appeal by General Chang Chun, President of the Chinese Executive Yuan, in statement to Central News Agency, July 5, see ibid., p. 748. For outline for the implementation of mobilization, as reported by the Ambassador in China in telegram No. 1555, July 21, see ibid., p. 756.
22. Outbreak of hostilities at Marco Polo Bridge, July 7, 1937, between Japanese and Chinese troops.