Chongqing

Wang’s residence

Sunday, 17 December

This morning I talked with Sun Fo. It happened that we touched on the matter of Liu Kai. Sun Fo heard that he himself cabled Wang Chonghui to recommend Yu Ming as the Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Britain. Sun Fo was very surprised, saying that he absolutely did not have such a cablegram. He asked me to investigate who made the deceit. Later I talked to Wang Chonghui, asking him to pick up the original cablegram for me to examine.

Guo Taiji invited us to have dinner at the diplomatic hostel. I returned home early. Chen Lifu, Zhu Jiahua, Wu Tiencheng and Chen Xing(陳行)[1] came to my home. They wanted to have a meal with Sun Fo and I made the appointment on behalf of Sun Fo. Sun Fo returned at 10.30. I talked to him briefly about the Sino-Soviet Commercial Treaty. I only asked him to explain to Chiang. Probably he had already heard about it beforehand. He immediately said his mission had finished, whether it was approved or not was none of his business. It was simply sulky words and I urged him he should not act like this. For General Chiang if he could explain soundly Chiang would agree. At this moment our country should absolutely not offend the Soviet Union to make it angry. Otherwise the Soviet Union might move one step forward to contact Japan. The difficulty on our side would then be escalated. He quite understood what I meant.

[1] Chen Xing (1890-1963) was a financial expert who studied in United States and a close associate of Song Ziwen.