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

15. Telegram From the Secretary of State to Ambassador U. Alexis Johnson, at Geneva¹

Washington, August 10, 1955—6:56 p.m.

440. Your 364 August 9.²

1. Concur you should stand on position that the first necessity is for ChiComs to match US position regarding return if desired. Only when the principle of free return has been conceded is it useful to consider the means, if any, needed to implement this principle. In most cases, certainly in this country and surely for Americans in China, no third party intervention is needed.

2. We question fairly prolonged recess in view of Chou En-lai’s July 30 statement that “the number of American civilians in China is small and the question can be easily settled”. We believe that we should seek to hold the ChiComs to this utterance of Chou En-lai.

3. We believe that the right of return should be conceded to all Americans but agree that we should not commit ourselves now to an “all or nothing” position.

4. We are not disposed to broaden Indian Embassy representation to cover follow up of inquiries by parents or relatives in China since this would open the way for mass appeals whereby the ChiComs would in fact gain opportunity to intimidate or influence Chinese aliens here.³

5. Agree with your next item.⁴

Dulles

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 611.93/8–955. Confidential. Drafted and signed by Dulles; cleared with Robertson.
2. In this telegram, Johnson transmitted suggestions for the corning meetings. He commented that “we should stand on position performance by ChiComs re Americans essential to agreement on representation proposal and that agenda proposed by ChiComs and accepted by US precludes discussion any other matter until civilian problem resolved” and stated that he planned, if necessary, to suggest a “fairly prolonged recess ‘to give them time to give further consideration to cases Americans’ “. He noted that decisions would have to be made at some point as to the degree of performance which would be considered sufficient for an agreement on representation, although he did not think this decision could or should be made immediately, and as to whether to accept a representation arrangement allowing the Indian Embassy to make inquiries initiated by relatives in China, which he expected Wang to propose and which he thought would be acceptable. He stated that he planned to present a list of missing American prisoners of war from the Korean war and the 11 missing Navy and Coast Guard personnel as the first item under “other practical matters”. (Ibid.)
3. McConaughy wrote in letter No. 2 to Johnson, August 10, that he and Robertson hoped to meet with Secretary Dulles that day concerning Johnson’s telegram 364. The letter reads in part as follows: “There is considerable skepticism as to whether we should be prepared to give on the representation proposal to the extent that you suggest. The symbolic significance of the representation issue has become magnified here and every angle of any agreement we make will be exposed to the closest scrutiny in many quarters. The GRC of course is watching us like a hawk on this. Wellington Koo was in yesterday chiefly to stress the dangers implicit in any concession on the representation issue going beyond students who take the initiative to return to the mainland.” (Ibid., Geneva Talks Files: Lot 72 D 415, Geneva—Correspondence Re US–PRC, 1955–1956)
4. See the last sentence of footnote 2 above.