206. Memorandum of Conversation0
Secretary’s Trip to Rome, England, Alaska and Taiwan
PARTICIPANTS
- Secretary
- Mr. Robertson
- Ambassador Drumright
- Premier Chen Cheng
- Foreign Minister Huang
- Ambassador Yeh
SUBJECT
- China’s Representation at United Nations
The first hour of this meeting (which started at 9:30 a.m.) was devoted to discussion with the Premier, the Foreign Minister and Ambassador Yeh of the draft communiqué.
During one interlude the Secretary asked Ambassador Yeh about the origin of the use of the name “The Republic of China” in Article 23 of the United Nations Charter.1 Mr. Yeh said that this had originated in the Chinese Delegation at San Francisco. He explained that there had been two Communist members of the Delegation who had tried to have reference to China worded so that the Communist Government, which even at that time had already been formed, could claim that it was entitled to “China’s” seat in the United Nations. The National Government’s Delegation had devised the phrase “Republic of China” as a means of forestalling this move and the Communist members of the Delegation had accepted it.
Discussing this matter further, the Secretary said he wondered whether we could continue now to treat the China representation question in the United Nations as one of credentials or whether it should not be treated as one of admission of a new member. Ambassador Yeh objected that this sort of reasoning came too close to implying a “two China” theory; the Secretary disagreed with this but the discussion was inconclusive on the point.