893.00/1–1948: Telegram
The Consul General at Shanghai (Cabot) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 19—11:44 a. m.]
127. Reference ConGen’s 87, January 17 to Nanking; repeated Dept as 114.85 Number students demonstrating in front British ConGen Saturday afternoon variously reported by press as between 10 and 30,000. However, it is believed students actively participating did not exceed 5,000 (50 percent of whom were reported to be under 15 years of age) and balance represented mostly curious onlookers. Demonstration lasted 3 hours and was conducted generally in orderly manner. British ConGen heavily guarded by police who handled situation with tact, avoiding any action which might inflame students. Student spokesmen mounted trucks drawn in front of locked gates and harangued gathering which shouted slogans and waved banners of anti-American and anti-Government as well as anti-British char[ac]ter. Several student delegates carrying Chinese flag were permitted to climb over gate into compound to talk with British Consul representative. They demanded that British flag be lowered and replaced by Chinese flag. When request denied, one member of group broke [Page 49] away to summon additional student support but was intercepted by police and group eventually left ground. British women and children had meanwhile taken refuge in nearby FonOff premises. Customary lowering of British [flag] at 5 o’clock cheered crowd which dispersed about 5:30. Meanwhile at 4:30 o’clock 400 student marchers and additional 100 in trucks proceeding from British ConGen paraded by municipal government offices, posting anti-British slogans on government building and on Metropole Hotel and Hamilton House. It appeared they consciously avoided Development Building, which houses American ConGen, where uniformed policemen had been posted since noon.
Survey undertaken by member ConGen staff of hundred of slogans posted and painted by students on Bund building and on British ConGen walls indicates that roughly 40 percent were anti-Government, 20 percent anti-British, 20 percent anti-American and 20 percent anti-British and anti-American. Most popular anti-American slogans called for opposition to American imperialism, withdrawal of GI’s from China; and referred to Peiping rape case.86 Anti-Government slogans were directed against “Slave diplomacy”, “Weak kneed diplomacy”, “Traitor diplomacy”, “compradore diplomacy”, “Inefficient government”, “Bureaucratic capital”, “selling out south China by Govt” and “domestic tyranny and diplomatic appeasement”. Those which denounced the British demanded the return of Hong Kong and Kowloon, opposition to British imperialism, and that the “Dirty British” get out.
Sent Nanking 93; repeated Dept. 127.
- Not printed.↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1947, vol. vii, pp. 1–22, passim.↩