Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, China, Volume II

230. Memorandum for the Record, by the Ambassador in the Republic of China (Rankin)¹

Taipei, April 29, 1955.

SUBJECT

• Visit to Taipei, April 24–27, of Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Mr. Walter S. Robertson, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs.

Note: This memorandum is being written, while the impressions of the Radford–Robertson visit are fresh in my mind, to supplement the telegrams sent to the Department at the time, as well as the memoranda of conversation prepared by Rear Admiral Anderson and Mr. Sampson Shen.²

After their arrival at Taipei Airport at 11 a.m. on April 24, Radford and Robertson asked to see me alone. We drove directly to the Embassy and conferred in my office for about an hour. (Vice Admiral Pride and Major General Chase waited outside in the reception room, which was noted by correspondents and others.)

Robertson outlined to me their instructions and showed me a memorandum which he said had been dictated by President Eisenhower.³ The essential proposal in the memorandum was that if the Nationalists should withdraw from Kinmen and Matsu, the United States would be prepared to join with them in establishing a defense zone along the China Coast, from Swatow to Wenchow, in which the movement of all seaborne traffic of a contraband or war-making character would be interdicted. Admiral Radford said that it was proposed to lay mine fields which would force coastwise junk traffic to come out where it also could be intercepted and controlled.

I remarked that this proposal meant war.⁴ Whatever the practical aspects of an effective interdiction of seaborne traffic, the Chinese Communists could not now accept a partial blockade of their coast by U.S. Forces, if only for reasons of face. Radford indicated agreement, adding that it would be only a matter of time until their aircraft attacked our ships. He had expressed this opinion quite clearly to President Eisenhower.

They asked me about President Chiang’s prospective reception of the new proposal. I replied that his first reaction would be one of surprise that the United States was withdrawing its assurance of support in the defense of Kinmen and Matsu. He had persuaded himself that no change in the situation had occurred which could possibly justify such a course. His general reaction would be against the new proposal. Whether they eventually could win him over with the shipping interdiction scheme, I did not know.

Robertson then raised the question of whether I should accompany them when they presented the proposal to President Chiang. He did not expect me to support a position with which I disagreed. I said that I ought to go with them, and that of course I would say nothing against the proposal during the conversations with President Chiang. Robertson asked me to accompany them.

The talks with President Chiang have been fully reported elsewhere. His reactions were as I had predicted, although the shipping interdiction scheme seemed at first to make no impression on him. While I took no part in the conversations during his presence, I did take advantage of the first break (on April 24) to suggest to Foreign Minister Yeh that the implications of this part of the proposal should be carefully studied. Later in the conversations it became evident that President Chiang had given further thought to this feature, but had dismissed it as unrealistic. He evidently had no confidence that the United States would actually participate in an effective shipping interdiction scheme in the face of strong and inevitable opposition by the British and others. In his view, the proposal meant giving up Kinmen and Matsu in return for another undertaking from which the United States would find reason for withdrawing.

This morning (April 29), Foreign Minister Yeh gave me his opinion that it would require a great deal of effort to repair the damage to Chinese confidence in the United States which had resulted from the above proposals. It is evident that President Chiang and his close advisers are puzzled and disturbed. They cannot understand why following a course of action authorized by an almost unanimous vote of the American Congress as recently as January 28, should three months later threaten to “split the United States wide open”. They are aware of no significant change in circumstances except for a certain amount of emotion generated in the American press and elsewhere, supposedly as a result of influence brought to bear by fellow-travelers, Europe-firsters and the inevitable British. President Chiang evidently interprets all of this as indicating either that the domestic position of the United States Government makes it incapable of pursuing a firm and consistent Far Eastern policy, or that the Administration’s ultimate aim is the liquidation of the “Formosa Problem”, via neutralization, trusteeship or what have you?

Before their departure, I ventured to summarize to Radford and Robertson what I believed to be President Chiang’s attitude toward the current situation. I thought that as matters are developing at present, President Chiang regarded war next year as a probability. With this in mind he would seek to hang on to everything he now had and get as much more as possible, in the form of United States aid, etc., in preparation for the event.

Throughout the conversations President Chiang made a great effort to restrain himself, in deference to his visitors from Washington. He put his case frankly but with fewer outward signs of emotion than I have sometimes observed in talks with him when I was the only American present. However, in actual fact, I have the distinct impression never before to have seen him more deeply affected.

1. Source: Department of State, Taipei Embassy Files: Lot 62 F 83. Top Secret. Rankin sent a copy to Robertson as an enclosure to a letter of May 5. (Ibid.)
2. Memoranda of Robertson’s and Radford’s conversations of April 24 and 26 with Chiang and their conversation of April 25 with Yeh, all apparently prepared by Anderson, are filed with Robertson’s April 27 memorandum to Dulles, cited in footnote 1, Document 210.
3. Apparently Annex “E” to Document 207.
4. My concurrence in General Chase’s recommendation of April 8, 1955, that the China Coast be “blockaded” from Swatow to the Chekiang border, envisaged direct action only by Chinese Nationalist forces, in continuation and intensification of their “port closure”, with full logistic (including ships, as necessary) and avowed moral support from the United States. Direct participation of the United States Navy in an effective blockade, under whatever name, would have been very definitely in order during the Korean hostilities, in my opinion. Since the 1953 armistice, however, it may be questioned whether any occasion has arisen under which such action could be justified before world opinion. At the very least, a convincing public explanation by the United States Government of the developing Communist threat to Kinmen–Matsu–Penghu–Taiwan would be required. [Footnote in the source text. For the Chase–Rankin recommendation of April 8, see Document 196.]