Office of the Historian

19. Telegram From Ambassador U. Alexis Johnson to the Department of State1

Geneva, August 11, 1955—8 p.m.

418. Following are our general observations thus far. While Wang has been bargaining hard he has been avoiding uncompromising and extreme positions usually taken by Communist negotiators. At today’s meeting in particular his review of my previous statements was notably accurate and devoid of usual attempts at distortion and misrepresentation. In fact he seemed entirely to accept my previous statements as meeting the requests embodied in his points two and three and while mentioning point one in effect dropped it. He is acting much more in tradition of old time Chinese bargainer than Communist diplomat.

He has almost completely avoided usual Communist cliches and language as interpreted by his translator which is basis reports our messages tends be considerably more brittle than in original Chinese.

He is uniformly courteous at meetings and I now have definite impression from manner as well as substance that they desire reach agreements.2

[Johnson]
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 611.93/8–1155. Confidential. Received at 8:45 p.m.↩

  2. McConaughy commented in a letter of August 12 to Johnson that this telegram was “of special interest”, and continued as follows:

    “I believe there is a tendency here to read less significance into his conciliatory approach than you may be inclined to do from there. The semblance of reasonableness and willingness to go part way may be recognizable, but when his draft agreement is taken apart there is really nothing in the way of tangible concession at all. There is as yet no assurance that the Chinese Communist position on the Americans is any different from what it was last year. Undoubtedly they would be willing to release the Americans in return for the sort of broad representation arrangement which they are seeking. But a concession on this from us is not to be expected. In the absence of a complete yielding by us on the representation issue, can any substantial ‘give’ by the Communists on the detained Americans really be expected? Maybe so, but there is as yet nothing we can rely on.

    “There is something of a feeling here that you do not need to show a great measure of tolerance of Wang’s proposals when their terms reflect no assured advance.” (Ibid., Geneva Talks Files: Lot 72 D 415, Geneva—Correspondence Re US–PRC, 1955–1956)

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