256. Draft Letter From the Secretary of State to the Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China (Chou)1
At the Bandung Conference you suggested that we should enter into negotiations to settle the question of relaxing and eliminating tension in the Taiwan Area. Subsequently you indicated that the Chinese people so far as possible seek by peaceful means their goals with relation to Taiwan.
The people of the United States also favor any honorable action which will promote peace. The United States has a deep and abiding interest in Taiwan and its people, since it was above all the armed effort of the U.S. which brought about (cite treaty) with Japan and Repb of China,2 and are therefore willing to discuss the relaxing and elimination of tensions in the Taiwan Area. An important step to that end is abstention from the use of force in that area and agreement that peaceful means shall be employed in the settlement of outstanding differences.
For its part the United States has not resorted to the use of force, and has brought about conditions under which there is no use of force against the Chinese Mainland. The United States is prepared to assure the continuance of these conditions and to arrange for mutually agreeable negotiations, on the assumption that you on your part are also prepared to abstain from resort to the use of armed [Page 572] force pending agreement on the larger question of relaxing and eliminating tension in the Taiwan Area.
If you are agreeable to these suggestions, conditions should exist under which it would be possible to go forward to seek more permanent arrangements to insure peace in the Area.3
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Wang–Johnson Talks. This letter was not sent. The inside address reads: “His Excellency Chou En-lai, Foreign Minister, Peking, China.” The source text bears no indication of the drafter but includes handwritten insertions in Secretary Dulles’ handwriting: the second sentence in the first paragraph, the word “also” in the first sentence in the second paragraph, and the second sentence in the second paragraph through the word “China”. The second paragraph originally began with the following sentence: “The people of the United States favor any honorable action which will promote peace and are therefore willing to discuss the relaxing and elimination of tensions in the Taiwan Area.” No documentation indicating the origin of the draft or recording any discussion of it has been found in Department of State files or Eisenhower Library.↩
- Apparent reference to the peace treaty between Japan and the Republic of China, signed April 28, 1952; for text, see UNTS 138:3.↩
- The source text bears no closing or signature.↩