751G.00/4–754
Memorandum by the Special Assistant for Intelligence (Armstrong) to the Secretary of State
Subject:
- Chinese Communist Commentary on Indochina
There are five main threads to the growing body of Peiping radio commentaries on US “plans” for further “aggression” in the Far East, and especially in Indochina.
- 1.
- The US is seeking to sabotage the Geneva Conference and extend the war in Indochina.
- 2.
- Indochina is the focal point and key in a newly-evolved US “military crescent” strategy which seeks to encircle and directly threaten China from a semi-circle of bases extending from Pakistan to south Korea.
- 3.
- In desperate interim efforts to prolong the Indochina war beyond the Geneva Conference and to bring it under US military management, the US is toying with various formulas for direct intervention, including tactical air support for French troops utilizing US carrier-based planes.
- 4.
- Despite US “slanders” of Communist China and the USSR and open US hostility to Peiping, Communist China continues to work for [Page 1289] peaceful settlement of Far Eastern questions and welcomes negotiation at the forthcoming Geneva Conference. However, on March 25 Peiping noted in connection with the US “threat” to China that the US has failed to learn its “lesson” from the “disastrous defeats” in the Chinese civil war and in Korea. And on April 3, in commenting on Secretary Dulles’ speech of March 29, Peiping warned that the answer to questions concerning the consequences of “united action” lay in the Korean war.
- 5.
- Communist China is one of the five great powers and cannot be omitted from a settlement in Asia.
The present propaganda campaign began in early February following the US announcement that air technicians and B–26 planes would be sent to Indochina. The volume of comment increased greatly about March 15, during or following the military aid negotiations with Japan and Pakistan and during the early phases of French military crisis at Dien Bien Phu.
As noted, Peiping has become more explicit as to the “threat” to Communist China, on March 25 setting the line that the US purpose is to “keep China under permanent threat of attack.” The various US moves to build a “bridgehead” against Communist China are analyzed in detail:
- 1.
- The Mutual Defense Pact with the ROK
- 2.
- The MSA agreement with Japan
- 3.
- Negotiations over US bases in the Philippines
- 4.
- Continuing aid to Taiwan
- 5.
- Intervention in Indochina
- 6.
- Military aid to Thailand
- 7.
- The US–Pakistan and Turkish-Pakistan agreements.
So far, explicit threats of counteraction have been held to the reminders concerning Korea. In general Peiping continues to assert that the US will be foiled by irresistible forces seeking world peace and easement of tension, such as war weariness in France; popular US fears of another Korea; reactions in India and Pakistan to the Pak military agreements, and world horror at the H-bomb. Peiping still views these forces as surely achieving “success” for the Communists at Geneva. However, Peiping radio, like that of Ho Chi-Minh and Pyongyang, has suggested no concrete formulas for settlement of the outstanding questions at Geneva, and Peiping statements concerning the need for “peace” are phrased only in the most general terms, with no implication of a willingness to sacrifice long-standing Communist demands to the interests of peace. For example, the highly-touted speech by Ch’en Yun1 on March 5 in commemoration of Stalin’s death referred in very vague terms to Stalin’s “twenty years of peace” with no mention of Indochina. (This eulogy has nevertheless been cited [Page 1290] twice by the Alsops, apparently reflecting a French government interpretation, as evidence of a Chinese Communist intention to terminate the Indochina war or at least to cease supplying Ho Chi-Minh with arms.)
A similar memorandum has been sent to the Under Secretary.
- Vice-Premier of the People’s Republic of China.↩