893.00/12–3148: Airgram
The Ambassador in China (Stuart) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 14, 1949.]
A–321. There can exist little reasonable doubt that Chinese Communist policy toward foreign correspondents, as set forth in Shanghai’s airgram 1096 of December 17, is going to ape the Soviet model.
The two key points are contained in items 2 and 4 in the last paragraph of the reference airgram. The Chinese Communists propose to give correspondents “full freedom to report true facts”. The rub here is that naturally the Chinese Communists will retain for themselves the right to determine what are the “true facts”, rejecting as “untrue facts” all reports and stories not manifestly pro-Communist or which lack the epistemological approval which derives from publication in the Communist press. This is the whole rationalization for press censorship in the Soviet Union.
The other rub lies in the statement that “in so far as a state of war exists, the activities of foreign correspondents are to be subjected to the guidance of local military and political authorities”. The “guidance” of military and political authorities everywhere, not only in Communist areas, is notoriously firm. Also, a “state of war” in Communist China is a continuing condition. If and when the Nationalist Government is defeated, class war will certainly remain, not to speak of the cold war in which the Chinese Communist Party has already so obviously chosen its side.