893.801/6–649: Telegram

The Minister-Counselor of Embassy in China (Clark) to the Secretary of State

Cantel 540. In strictest confidence source should be protected, Tung Ling, Vice Minister Foreign Office, told me today Chinese Government plans immediate future announce that Shanghai is theater military operations and that foreign vessels will enter port at peril. As belligerency of Communists unrecognized, Chinese would carefully avoid use of word blockade, but they had every intention, he said, of bombing shipping in port Shanghai and approaches thereto.

Sent Department Cantel 540; repeated Nanking 366, Shanghai 312.

Clark