Office of the Historian

751G.00/4–2354: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Secretary of State, at Paris1

secret
priority
Washington, April 23, 1954—12:02 p.m.

Tosec 6. Following is memo from R comparing Peiping editorial of April 21 with Chinese Communist warnings issued in 1950 with respect to Korea.2

  • “1. The warning given in the April 21 Peiping People’s Daily editorial that Communist China would react to a US ‘aggression’ is [Page 1370] clearly reminiscent of the warnings given prior to Chinese Communist intervention in Korea. Indeed, it appears designed to be so reminiscent, a fact that is pointed up in the New York Daily Worker’s handling of the story under a Tokyo dateline. The Daily Worker after quoting the People’s Daily editorial in bold type added that ‘Observers have recalled that the Peking Government issued similar soft-spoken warnings when General MacArthur began his march to the Yalu Eiver in 1950.’
  • “2. The phraseology was closely parallel: the April 21 statement asserted that ‘faced with armed aggression, they [the Chinese people]3 will certainly not refrain from doing something about it;’ on September 24, 1950, Chou En-lai in a message to the UN stated that ‘the peace-loving peoples of the world would not stand by watching with folded arms’ as the US sought ‘to expand its aggression against China;’ and on October 1 Chou asserted in an article published in Pravda that Peiping would not supinely tolerate seeing their neighbors savagely attacked by the imperialists.’
  • “3. The current Chinese Communist warning followed Moscow’s insistence in a Pravda editorial of April 11 that Communist China is the real target of U.S. activities in Indochina as well as in other parts of Asia. In 1950 Moscow charged as early as late August that US ‘aggression’ in Korea was preliminary to an attack on China.
  • “4. However, there are several significant differences between current Chinese Communist statements and those of 1950. As early as April 27, 1950 the Chinese Communists had made official protests regarding an alleged US air ‘invasion’ of China. Other such protests were made on August 30, September 10, September 24, October 18 and 28. In contrast, current charges are that the US is preparing future aggression. Similarly, in September and October 1950 Peiping issued a number of warnings via Indian Ambassador Panikkar against the US’s crossing the 38th parallel. There is currently nothing comparable to these warnings.
  • “5. These differences may, however, derive only from the fact that US participation in the Indochinese conflict is at a different stage than it was in the case of Korea. Thus the other charges might follow if there should be a step-up in US activities. The present editorial, like most of the recent Communist propaganda on the subject of US ‘aggressive’ intentions, is specifically directed to the Geneva conference, and appears to be designed in the first instance to document the line to be taken at Geneva by the Chinese Communist delegation and during the conference by Chinese Communist propaganda. At the same time, however, the editorial appears an expression of the seriousness with which Peiping views the Indochina crisis. It is to be expected that this point will be further amplified by Chou En-lai and the other Chinese Communist delegates at Geneva, whether in statements to the conference or in démarches to Western diplomats.”
Smith
  1. This telegram, containing the text of a memorandum prepared in the office of the Special Assistant for Intelligence (W. Park Armstrong), was drafted by Jeffrey C. Kitchen, Deputy Director of the Executive Secretariat.↩
  2. For documentation on the Chinese Communist warnings of 1950, see Foreign Relations, 1950, vol. vii, pp. 731 ff.↩
  3. Brackets in the source text.↩