Taipei, 7 June 1971
Secret Personal
A note in reply to yours of 14th May. 1 I have quite understood how busy you must have been. It has certainly been very useful to get the P.I.R.’s, for which much thanks to Dick2 and yourself.
I must confess to having been on tenterhooks at one stage last week, hoping that our political activities wouldn’t spoil the big wheat deal signed on 2nd June.3 I spoke to Chow4 fairly promptly on receipt of your telegram 4905 and related telegrams rather than wait until after the wheat deal was concluded for several reasons. 490 came ‘immediate’ and so I assumed you would be telling Shen6 early. Since we were going to tell the ROC, it seemed better to do so soon after the event; otherwise they would clearly have asked why we delayed a week or so before doing so. They would inevitably have concluded it was somewhat dishonest of us to wait until soon after the wheat deal was concluded. Honesty in this case at least did no harm. It was also useful to get in before you told Shen. Chow was, I think quite taken aback, and so the ROC ministerial reaction was possibly less, and certainly a less reasoned reaction than if he had time to prepare what to say. He said the ROC ‘kept calm’ and clearly tried to be so, but was flurried.
The most worrying thing in that talk was being on a limb with Chow over the Minister’s New York Times interview,7 which really had me concerned about possible repercussions for the wheat deal. Why did we have to be in the lead with a public statement on the Security Council aspect? My basic feeling is still that we should at present avoid like the plague specific public suggestions for solutions to the knotty Chinese problem in all its manifestations (e.g. independence, self-determination etc.). I don’t myself see why we needed to say we would like the PRC in the SC, unless you thought it would help us in dealing with Peking, or unless it is domestic political insurance against the time it happens.
It may of course be that you want to help to condition the ROC to our views against the time when they formally surface (if they do) in, for example, a vote on the SC question at the UN. That might be fair enough, but you will appreciate my problems in being instructed to say nothing about the SC seat while Ministers are referring to it in public statements. My own view is as stated in para 13 of my telegram 403,8 but with McConaughy I have of course made points in favour of the line we took with Winthrop Brown.9 I myself doubt whether we’d get more votes for a DR cum SC resolution than for a simple DR. (How credible are American estimates that either will get a majority?)
I shall be interested to see how you play it from here on. Will we go along by cosponsoring? If necessary will we abstain on or even vote for some suitable amendment about the SC seat? From here, of course, I wouldn’t like to see a vote in favour, and, fairly objectively, I’m not sure it would gain us much credit with Peking.
I fully understand why you have had to sit on the papers about the Residence alterations. It would, however, be good to know the decision, one way or another, fairly soon. The experience of scrambling against time with Phase 1 has been a bit trying and we need time to work out in advance the time-consuming problems that arise. (There is nothing worse than having to switch from deep policy thoughts to decisions about electric wiring and drains!) Could you give me some indication of how things might go by, say, the end of June? We need to get permission for the alterations if they are to be made; this would, I am sure, be given pretty promptly in present circumstances, but after that we would need to go over the plans and working drawings very carefully.
Reverting to high policy, I must confess to having somewhat lost my sense of where we are going for the rest of the year. The first steps towards a dialogue understandably enough took the emphasis from the UN question recently. Will the emphasis now revert to the UN seat until the vote is taken? I am drafting a memo for this bag setting out some fairly random thoughts on the question of bilateral relations with Peking and Taipei. Can we reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable problems of protecting our interests here while making some progress with Peking? Can we slide back gently from the mistaken step of establishing an Embassy here in 1966 without yielding too much to Peking? And without getting too far out of line with the US and Japan, with whom we should continue to work? And without contributing to excessive loss of confidence here? The British decision whether to close their consulate is of great importance also.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/38118, xii]
- 1 Not found.
- 2 R.A. Woolcott, Assistant Secretary, Policy Research, Department of Foreign Affairs.
- 3 On 2 June, the Australian Wheat Board signed an agreement with the Taiwan Flour Mills Association for the sale of 100,000 metric tons to be delivered in 1971, and 150,000 tons for 1972.
- 4 Chow (also spelled Chou) Shu-kai, ROC Minister of Foreign Affairs.
- 5 1 June. Dunn was informed, in relation to Renouf’s meeting with Huang Chen of 27 May (see Document 187), that he would receive a summary of the instructions sent to Renouf, along with an outline of the discussion itself. Dunn was asked to give the ROC Government an account of the meeting based on these documents, and was told that the ROC Ambassador to Australia would be given a similar message.
- 6 Sampson Shen, ROC Ambassador to Australia.
- 7 On 27 May, Bury was quoted in the New York Times as saying that a ‘desirable finish’ would be the seating of the PRC in the Security Council and retention of Taiwan as a normal member of the United Nations.
- 8 28 May. Dunn advised that he could not see Chiang being moved on the Security Council question in the time available and he questioned the advantage of pushing for action that could provoke an ROC walk-out of the United Nations while still being offensive to the PRC. He contended that if Australia were among a slight majority of supporters for a simple Dual Representation resolution, ‘we might be as well placed as we are likely to be, and … we could have another year to edge the ROC further’.
- 9 See Document 161.