893.50 Recovery/5–549
The British Embassy to the Department of State
Supplies for Shanghai
His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom have always had in mind the possibility that the Chinese communists might decide to sever Shanghai from its hinterland and leave it to starve. Whether or not this is their present policy the town is now effectively cut off from indigenous supplies and in consequence dependent on outside help for its existence.
Failure to support Shanghai with essential supplies of rice and coal could be very serious for our foreign communities and yet, as seen by His Majesty’s Government, these supplies can only come from Economic Cooperation Administration stocks.
The legal conditions under which the Economic Cooperation Administration operates in China are fully understood and there is no intention of questioning them. Would it not, however, be possible to contrive some arrangement whereby stocks at present earmarked to the Economic Cooperation Administration could be released to some other body and supplied by them to Shanghai? If so, the difficulty in which the Economic Cooperation Administration is placed in relation to those parts of China under communist threat or already under communist domination might be overcome.