Friday, 18 July

At 8.00 a.m. I went to the meeting of the Ministry of Communication to discuss the Kangding-India Highway matter. The difficulty is with the Tibetan side as it is unwilling to sanction our penetrative influence. The British side agree in principle but are reluctant to force the Tibetan side to agree, so they advocated we did the surveying jobs by planes and changed the route via Burma. But as a matter of fact, our surveying team has long departed. By the thirteenth or fourteenth of this month, the team had divided into two routes, South and North, from mid-Burma and westward. Then we immediately came to the decision that the Mongolia-Tibet Committee would cable the representatives stationed in Tibet, telling them that this road must be built because of the War of Resistance, and the British side also showed empathy, so we must persuade Tibet that it should not oppose it. At the same time the ministries of Communication and Foreign Affairs will submit their replies to the Generalissimo in tandem. At 9.00 I returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Minister Guo Taiji discussed with me the various interactions of the Japanese advances in the North and South. (Central Agency News in the afternoon.)