Canberra, 28 February 1951
Top Secret
Submission 267—China2
My reactions are these—(from a bit of a distance, I admit):—
(a) What advantage is there in derecognising Chiang and not recognising Mao? There may be an argument for not doing anything (on the grounds that this is not the time for any appearance of concession to Mao) or for going the full distance, but couldn’t it be an embarrassment to derecognise Chiang and stop there? It would mean saying publicly, in the words of the submission, that we do not regard Chiang as a future ruler of China as a whole, thus implying that Australia does not intend to be associated in military operations with Chiang’s forces.
What if the Americans do use Chiang’s forces against Mao? Do we bring ours out, or swallow our implication? What if Chiang (through the war in which he has a vested interest) gets back in authority? We are on record as having renounced him.
Perhaps these are small possibilities, and therefore, small risks—but what is the point in taking them? We can get our views on Chiang to the Americans without public statements of them.
(a) Is it necessarily a lesser offence to U.S. opinion for us to go half way than all the way?
(b) Does cooperation, common front, etc. with U.S.A. preclude our moving to the other camp on recognition of Mao? The U.K. is on the other side, and so far as I know, without any consequential rift in its American relations.
(c) What do the Americans say on (b) and (c)?—the submission doesn’t deal with this.
(d) Isn’t this the position—we are disposed to recognise Mao, but have doubts about doing it now. The two things which suggest delay are
(i) appearance of reward to aggression
(ii) not to do anything which could further complicate the problem of getting China to a conference.
If the United Nations’ military position in Korea is now good, the first point oughtn’t to worry us. On the second point, I can’t guess whether recognition by us would. give Mao another excuse for insisting on recognition by everyone before he agrees to a conference, or whether by some curious means, it would bring him along quicker, or again, whether it would have no effect either way.
But I would think that we should decide this recognition question on the basis of our view of what influence our decision would have on the Korean conflict. If adverse—we don’t recognise or derecognise. If favourable, we recognise. If it would have no effect, then we acknowledge fact and recognise Mao, unless the American reaction would be bad. I think the Minister would handle it so as to avoid bad reactions. And there would be some good reactions in India, which may be worth something.3
[NAA: A4940, C230]
1 E.J. Bunting, Assistant Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department.
2 Document 31.
3 An undated note on Prime Minister’s Department letterhead records that the submission was not considered by the Fourth Menzies Ministry but withdrawn by direction of the Prime Minister.