493.11/2117: Telegram
The Ambassador in China (Johnson) to the Secretary of State
[Received 3:11 p.m.]
196. I have following telegram from Shanghai:
“April 6, 5 p.m. Charles R. Bennett17 informs me that the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees of the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture is to be held at Kowloon on April 27 and 28, that there are indications that the Chinese Government through one or more trustees who are in the Government will make proposals vitally affecting the status of the Board and the investment of the endowment funds of the Foundation and of Tsinghua, that one suggestion has been made that certain members of the Board are persona non grata to the Government and should be removed from the Board, that this, of course, is contrary to the constitution of the Board which by presidential mandate issued previous to the remission is a self-administered Board, that another and even more urgently pressed suggestion is that the Board should invest its funds in ‘Government enterprises in the southwest’ and that such a suggestion if acquiesced in would completely vitiate the efforts of the Finance Committee to invest on sound investment lines; that in fact it would not be investment but unsecured loaning to the Government and for purposes that might lay the Board open to a charge of using their funds for promoting Chinese war industries.
I bring this information to your attention in the belief that you will wish to insure that you are as usual at the annual meeting of the Board and that your representative will be appropriately informed and instructed.”
I have asked Southard18 to represent me at the meeting of the Board of Trustees, instructing him or his representative to take no part in the discussions or decisions made and report any questions to me. Unless Department desires otherwise, I propose to repeat Shanghai’s telegram to Hong Kong and to say to Hong Kong that if consulted he is to say on my behalf that the American Government would deprecate any action on the part of the Chinese Government to change the status of the Board or to influence the Board as to investment of its funds.19
Repeated to Peiping.