Washington, 15 October 1970
Secret
United States and China
Yesterday I received from Mr Marshall Green (Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs) the attached letter enclosing the text of his testimony on China, 1 which he had given on 6th October to the Sub-Committee on Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the House of Representatives. In his letter Mr Green invited my views.
2. I called on Mr Green today and thanked him for letting me see this material. Mr Green said it had been very well received by all the members of the Sub-Committee who had been present, ranging from liberal to conservative. The testimony would be made public later on but with quite a number of amendments and omissions.
3. Mr Green said that he had had to go up to the Capitol today to talk to Senator Aiken2 (Republican, Vermont), who was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations General Assembly this year, and who would be handling the item on Chinese representation. Senator Aiken believed that the United States should revise its presentation this year and see whether it could come up with some new substantive initiative on the question of Chinese representation. Mr Green was inclined to doubt whether this could be done, particularly in view of the short time available to formulate and secure the necessary agreements and approvals for any change in policy. But he said that opinion was quite widespread in Congress that the United States could not continue much longer simply repeating the old formulas.
4. I then turned to the paper which Mr Green had given me and said that I would raise three questions:
(a) If Communist China was going to be seated in the United Nations, how were we to get something in return?
(b) What would be the position of the United States and Australia and similar countries if Peking was seated in the United Nations?
(c) How were we to prepare the Government of the Republic of China so that it would react in the best way to a change?
5. On the first of those three points, I said that I thought the most unfortunate aspect of the Canadian decision to recognise Peking was that the Canadians had gained very little in return and had indeed made it much more difficult for the rest of us to secure anything in return. Up till now, we had been able to hope that, in order to be seated in the United Nations and obtain general international recognition, the Peking authorities might be brought to concede something in return, particularly in regard to the separate regime on Taiwan. But the Canadian example was likely to be followed by a number of other governments, which would be likely neither to seek nor receive better terms from Peking than Canada had accepted. Consequently our own bargaining power was immensely weakened.
6. Mr Green asked whether I thought the movement to recognise Peking would gather strength quickly. I said I was afraid that it would. Italy, and perhaps Belgium, would move; Chile and perhaps Bolivia and Peru would move; and once it became clear that a majority for Peking was developing in the United Nations, there would be a rush to get on the bandwagon. Mr Green said that the Secretary of State (Mr W.P. Rogers) would be seeing the Foreign Minister of Italy (Mr Moro)3 tomorrow and would probably urge him to take no action on recognising Peking until after this year’s session of the General Assembly had completed consideration of the question of Chinese representation.
7. In regard to the second of the three points mentioned in paragraph 4 above, I said that, once Peking was seated in the United Nations, there would presumably be nothing that the United States and Australia could do except sit alongside them, whether or not we ourselves had diplomatic relations with Peking. Mr Green said he felt quite certain, as things stood today, that if Peking was admitted to the United Nations, the United States would not walk out of that body nor would it try to exercise a veto in the Security Council. Both public opinion and Congressional opinion in the United States would be that, if a majority of the United Nations believed that Peking should have a seat, it should be accepted. The situation in this respect was quite different from fifteen years ago. Mr Green added that of course, as a result of Chinese Communist membership, the attitude of the United States towards the United Nations itself might change, and there would probably be an inclination to take the Organisation less seriously. I remarked that that might depend on the way the Chinese Communists behaved. If they were vituperative and destructive, they could come close to wrecking the United Nations and destroying support for it; but if they were relatively restrained, it could be a different story. These things would present at least as much of a problem for the Soviet Union as for the United States as far as the United Nations was concerned.
8. In regard to the third of my points in paragraph 4 above, I said that a major problem was how to prepare and persuade the Government of the Republic of China to adapt itself to a new situation. The danger was that we would hold on to an extreme position until we had lost all possibility of influencing the situation so as to secure an outcome which, while not ideal, would be better than the worst possibility. The best outcome we would be likely to be able to settle for would be one which seated in the United Nations both Peking and Taiwan, but we could do nothing effective in that direction unless the Government of the Republic of China was prepared to accept it. Mr Green replied that the present intention of the Government of the Republic of China was to walk out of the United Nations if Peking was seated. The U.S. Government would put great pressure on Taiwan not to do so, and would point to the consequences. A walk-out by Taiwan would leave the field in the United Nations to the Chinese Communists, and relieve them of the onus of deciding whether they could sit in the United Nations if the Nationalist Chinese were also sitting there. But the implications went much wider and were of strategic substance: if the United Nations decided that Peking was the government of China, and if there was no separate representative of Formosa, then it would be harder in international law to assert that an attack from the mainland on the island of Formosa was an act of aggression. It would complicate the problem of the United States in assuring the continued defence of Taiwan. These were all points that the United States could discuss with the Government of the Republic of China in the coming year, and Taiwan might be more receptive after absorbing the shock of the forthcoming General Assembly vote. But Mr Green saw difficulties in doing much before the vote was taken this year in the United Nations General Assembly.
9. Mr Green saw very little alternative in the time available to continuing to base ourselves on the Important Question Resolution. He assured me that the United States still felt confident that that resolution would be carried this year. The Albanian Resolution might secure a simple majority this year—the chances were fifty-fifty, with the margin of uncertainty being five votes either way. But, even so, it would still not have effect because the Assembly would have previously reaffirmed the Important Question Resolution. I said that this might be true for the current year but, once a substantive resolution for Peking had received a simple majority, I had no confidence whatever in the Important Question Resolution providing any protection beyond one year. The Important Question Resolution would pass rapidly from the scene. In fact, it would not be realistic to have anyone seated very long as the representative of a country when more than half of the Assembly had recorded the view that some other government was the rightful representative.
10. I said that one point had to be kept firmly in mind: that it was not a simple question of the admission of a new member. China was already a member of the United Nations. The question was: which government represented China? There was a problem of considerable delicacy in finding some way, that was legally valid and that would not be vetoed in the Security Council, to ensure that both Peking and Taiwan would be seated. The ambiguities in the Albanian Resolution were a source of danger.
11. Speaking personally, I recalled that a number of years ago I had been playing with the idea that, when the time came, a resolution such as the following might be floated:
The General Assembly,
Noting that the territory over which the Republic of China exercised effective authority when it became an original member of the United Nations and a permanent member of the Security Council is now under the effective administration of two governments, namely the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China,
Declares that the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are both members of the United Nations in respect of the territory over which each at present exercises effective authority,
And further declares that, from such time as it takes its seat in the United Nations, the People’s Republic of China is the permanent member of the Security Council in respect of the seat designated in the Charter for the Republic of China.
I pointed out that, if the Nationalist Chinese did not walk out, such a resolution would throw the onus on Peking of staying out if it did not accept seating both governments. I said I was not advocating such a resolution, as we would all have to give a lot of careful and detailed thought before settling on any course, but I was setting it out in order. to indicate some of the complexities. We also had to have in mind the right of veto in the Security Council, which might be exercised by the USSR; and perhaps the Republic of China might claim to exercise a veto on its own removal. This brought us into the question of what constituted a procedural question.
12. I said that Peking might think that when Chiang Kai-shek died the people of Formosa would choose to join the mainland and that consequently it was only a matter of holding on a little longer. Mr Green thought that, on the contrary, the Taiwanese element of the population would assert itself more strongly. He continued that there would be great feeling in the United States against handing Taiwan over to Peking, and mentioned the names of a number of Senators (including Senator Fong4 of Hawaii) who would take a very strong line on that. Mr Green continued that in the United Nations we could make a very strong case, on such grounds as self-determination of peoples and avoidance of resort to force, for insisting on the separate identity of Formosa being preserved and for leaving any reunification in the future to be decided freely by the people concerned. He speculated that the United Nations might hold a referendum on what the people of Formosa wanted. I responded that this would be taking us into deep water because in Formosa the Government of the Republic of China was a sovereign government, and the United Nations could not impose a referendum on them. Mr Green accepted that.
13. I said that it seemed clear to me that Peking was now wishing to play a more active part in international affairs and that, whatever might have been its position in the past, it was now desirous of taking its seat as a member of the United Nations. I told him that several communist ambassadors here had spoken to me in terms which suggested that they thought that Peking might even go along, at least tacitly, with something that allowed Formosa to continue separate or autonomous. But I thought that the possibilities of achieving this acquiescence from Peking had been lessened by the Canadian recognition and by the likelihood of a majority developing fairly soon for seating Peking in the United Nations.
14. I said, too, that there were difficulties in any initiative being taken by the United States or Australia though, with proper preparation and assuming that Taiwan could also be persuaded, it might be possible for us both to support what at present we had to resist. The possibility of seating two governments did not seem to be excluded from the decisions of the recent Lusaka conference of non-aligned countries5 nor from some statements from Zambia. In many ways it would be helpful if Zambia or a country like that could come up with something that allowed both Chinese governments to continue to be members of the United Nations.
15. From our conversation, I formed the clear impression that Mr Green accepted that this is the last year when we can hope to handle in the United Nations the question of Chinese representation on the same basis as in recent years. Indeed I had the impression that, if the Albanian Resolution receives a majority of the votes, Mr Green thinks it is very probable that Peking will be seated next year.
16. A copy of this memorandum and its attachment is being sent to the Australian Mission to the United Nations.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/38/18, i]
1 Not published. In regard to Chinese representation in the United Nations, which Green and Plimsoll discuss in detail in this document, Green had said in Congress that the PRC was for the first time in years showing an interest in joining the world organization. Still, it insisted on doing so at the expense of the ROC, which many members, including the United States, found unacceptable. On the other hand, Green continued, the ‘more normal diplomatic conduct’ of China of recent times had received a positive reception internationally and this would have an effect on voting in the Assembly.
2 George D. Aiken.
3 Aldo Moro.
4 Hiram L. Fong (Republican).
5 The third summit conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, 8–10 September 1970. The conference passed a resolution calling for the admission of the PRC to the United Nations.