893.00/2–949: Telegram
The Minister-Counselor of Embassy in China (Clark) to the Secretary of State
[Received February 9—7:13 a. m.]
TelCan [Cantel] 25. Chen Tai-chu has again approached me with respect to encouragement of potential resistant elements when peace talks have failed (mytel 10, February 4, repeated Nanking 10, Shanghai 7). He said it would be most helpful if I could meet informally with various groups in Canton who were laboring under impression we are disinterested in continued resistance and perfectly prepared to recognize Communist regime and talk to those groups along the line of my conversations with him. If US Government could not make public statement at this stage, my remarks, which would inevitably reach the press and be attributed to me, would be helpful. I told him I would have to think the matter over.
If the arguments I used in previous conversation with Chen and as used in my conversation with Chen Li-fu shortly before leaving Nanking and reported to Department conform with thinking in Washington, such informal meetings as those suggested might prove beneficial to our interests. There are undoubtedly many liberal Chinese who desperately do not want to come under Communist regime, but who see no alternative unless assistance is to be forthcoming from US. I have insisted that, although I could of course not commit the Congress, I found it difficult to believe further assistance would be forthcoming until there was some tangible resistant movement giving signs of effectiveness and to which help from US might bring success. Chen Tai-chu believes the discussions he has suggested might en-courage potential resistant elements sufficiently that active measures would be undertaken to find a leader or leaders capable of reviving the will to resistance in free China.
I should appreciate urgently the Department’s instructions.
Sent Department, repeated Nanking 25, Shanghai 14.