Paris, 2 July 1971
3132. Secret Priority
Dialogue No. 11
I saw the P.R.C. Ambassador as arranged on 2nd July. I reminded him that at our first meeting he had promised to report to his Government and asked him whether he now wished to say anything.
2. The Ambassador replied that he had been instructed to answer that he had nothing further to say. He had also been instructed to ask whether I had anything further to say.
3. I replied that I had certain proposals to put forward as regards trade. The Australian Government had chosen this field out of those which I had mentioned on the occasion of the first talk because it believed trade should and could be developed between China and Australia and because there were practical steps which could be discussed now. As I had said before, Australia was interested in developing relations in other fields also: trade was not its exclusive concern, but it seemed at this time the easiest field with which to begin. I was instructed to raise the development of trade relations not only in the interests of expanding trade between China and Australia but also because of the contribution such development could make to the normalization of relations more generally.
4. The Ambassador replied he had no knowledge of nor competence in trade affairs. I said that my own competence in this field was similarly limited. However, the proposal I had to make did not require any expert knowledge or competence and the Ambassador would readily understand them.
5. The Ambassador said that trade was not his business. What he would and could discuss was the establishment of diplomatic relations; any discussion of other subjects must follow this discussion. To the establishment of diplomatic relations there was one obstacle of Australia’s making—her support of the ‘two-China’ or ‘one China–one Formosa’ formula.
6. I remarked that if I understood correctly, the Ambassador was not willing to hear what I had to say about trade relations. The Ambassador said he could not discuss the subject. I responded that in the circumstances I could only conclude that at the present meeting the Ambassador was authorised to discuss only one subject, the establishment of diplomatic relations. On this I had nothing to say. The Ambassador replied that I could conclude what I liked: his position was clear enough.
7. I said that this being the case, I was instructed to say I would report immediately to the Australian Government. The Ambassador replied that this was a matter between the Australian Government and myself.
8. The meeting lasted fifteen minutes. The Ambassador was curter than at the first meeting and at the end less polite. He had assumed, I judge, that as I had sought another meeting, I had something to say upon the diplomatic relations question; he was therefore a bit disappointed.
9. Although the dialogue had not been broken off, clearly it will be difficult to continue it unless you are prepared to discuss the question of establishing diplomatic relations.
10. There emerges from the two meetings one point which you will want to bear in mind in your preparations for the U.N. General Assembly. That is that the ‘two–China’ solution or any variant of it is a very sore point with the P.R.C. and that the way we act as regards this both before and at the General Assembly cannot but influence the tenor of the dialogue should it prove possible to continue it.
Renouf.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/38/18/2]
THE ALP VISIT TO CHINA, 2–14 JULY 1971
Amid growing international recognition of the PRC—and in light of the ALP commitment to recognise China and break with Taiwan—Whitlam cabled Chou En–lai in April 1971 to propose the visit of a Labor delegation which would discuss with the Chinese ‘matters of mutual concern’. According to Whitlam, his proposal was reiterated on a personal basis by Etienne Manac’h, the French Ambassador in Peking, and a positive response was received on 11 May.
The centrepiece of the delegation’s visit was a meeting with Chou on 5 July which, to the surprise of the Australians, occurred in full view of the press. (Graham Freudenberg, Whitlam’s press secretary, later remarked to the Department of Foreign Affairs that their ‘firm understanding had been that the talk … would be in private and they were very surprised and a little put out’ by the change of plans). Much of the conversation revolved around US and Japanese foreign policy, but Whitlam was careful to make an explicit promise on recognition. In response to Chou’s comment that McMahon had declared diplomatic relations to be ‘far off’, Whitlam said that ‘if there were no proper relations by the time of [next November’s Federal] elections there will be as soon as we can achieve it’. Toward the end of the conversation, he added that if Labor won, Chou would ‘be able to see the first visit by [an] Australian Prime Minister to the Chinese People’s Republic and its sole capital Peking’. The Premier gave an assurance that China would welcome such a visit.
The delegation also used their stay in Peking to discuss economic matters and, with an eye to the domestic political scene, to raise specifically the vexed question of wheat sales to China. Consistent with their linking of trade with a ‘correct’ line on recognition, the Chinese appear to have given Labor the assurances it wanted; after discussions on 6 July with the PRC Minister for Foreign Trade, an ALP spokesman was reported in the Canberra Times as saying that the delegation was convinced ‘any trade discrimination against Australia would cease as soon as Australia ceased diplomatic discrimination against China’.
The reaction of the McMahon Government to the visit was vigorous. On 12 July, the Prime Minister condemned Labor’s policy on recognition as ‘dangerous’ and said it should be ‘disowned’. He predicted that it would result in Australia becoming a pawn of the ‘giant communist power of our region’ and that it ‘would isolate [us] from our friends and allies not only in South East Asia and the Pacific but in other parts of the Western world’. In an irony that was to cause the Australian Government great embarrassment, the US had, only a day before, secretly concluded in Peking the first phase of a major initiative that would revolutionise its relationship with China.