793.94/8647: Telegram
The Counselor of Embassy in China (Peck) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 7—8:20 a.m.]
230. On June 4, the Embassy obtained from William R. Mathews, editor and publisher of the Arizona Daily Star, the text of an Associated Press telegram sent to the United States reporting his interview with the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs that day. The text was as follows:
“As a first step in settling the only question of concern between the United States and China, that of extraterritoriality,21 Dr. Wang Chung Hui, Chinese Foreign Minister, asks that existing treaties be interpreted to permit the taxing of all foreign residents on the same basis that the Chinese Government taxes its own nationals. As Dr. Wang explained, China at present has this right but cannot enforce it because its courts lack jurisdiction.
Dr. Wang declared that China is anxious and willing to settle all vital issues between China and Japan by peaceful means. But China can give in no more. An attitude of conciliation on the part of China based upon the principle of environments would be reciprocated by the British.
The Chinese Government, stated Dr. Wang, is doing everything it can and doing it successfully to suppress unlawful anti-Japanese [Page 109] propaganda but ‘we cannot control or suppress the feelings in the heart of every Chinese, feelings which have been aroused by acts of Japan’; nevertheless, the Chinese Government is doing everything possible to localize any undue incident that might occur.
Replying to recently circulated rumors that China and Soviet Russia were working hand in hand, Wang declared that ‘We have not yet been able to conclude a commercial treaty with the Soviet Union because the views of Nanking and Moscow are not in agreement on several points’”.
Sent to the Department; by mail to Peiping.
- For correspondence on this subject, see vol. iv, pp. 634 ff.↩