Friday, 21 November

In the evening Qian Tai and I invited Zhang Yilin, (張一麔)[1] Tan Pingshan and others. Then I returned to the hostel. It happened that Wang Chonghui, Zhang Qun and Wu Tiecheng were at the hostel. After having eaten they came with Guo Taiji to my room to discuss the bill proposed by the so-called political councillors of the various parties, that the implementation of constitutional rule should be started earlier and the abolition of party rule and so on, which could be summed up in ten articles. The Generalissimo was very angry with them and ordered that they should be cancelled. Zhang Qun asked for my opinion. I thought that if the bill was not passed, we would fall into their tricks because these ten articles had been our policy for a long time and had appeared in our previous declarations but were not yet enacted. If we rejected them they could use this as propaganda material to state that our party was not moving towards democratic rule, but was moving towards an authoritarian path. I advocated that we do have a resolution for it by slightly amending those parts which were too unacceptable. In the resolution Bill we could mention in passing that all these articles listed have long been advocated by our party but not now. This would be enough. Zhang Qun and Guo Taiji strongly agreed with what I said. Zhang Qun also said that this article should be written by me and it would be wonderful. I said absolutely not.

After Zhang Qun and the others left only Wang Chonghui stayed behind in my room. He said the “The Study and Collection Committee of the Post-war Diplomatic Information” organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would like to be as powerful as the “Research Society for International Issue” of which he was head. He had relayed this to the Generalissimo via Chen Bulei. He advocated as follows:

1) The said the research society would be reorganised. He would undertake the research on his own and he did not need other people.

2) Exclusivity for those people in the Secretary Office of the Defense Conference and he did not need external people. He said he did not need me to be there either. I said I would be happy that I did not need to take the job concurrently. But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ gathered sources were necessarily the responsibility of the Ministry. In the future, at the time when peace conferences are organised, the delegation will only ask the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for materials. At that time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could not say the government had arranged other people to manage the task. Also, this method of collecting materials is completely different in nature from the study of his research society. There was absolutely no conflict. Also, it could offer a lot of help towards his research. For many of the materials only the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could gather them. I had clearly reported this in the previous meeting of the research society, and I did not know why such a misunderstanding suddenly came out. He was still not satisfied and was angry. On this, in some respects, I thought that Wang Chonghui had treated me badly. Firstly, the members he chose were all his own councillors and Section Chiefs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Therefore, he also deemed me as a talent for councillor or Section Chief. Secondly, he had not asked for my consent in advance. He just asked for consent from the Generalissimo first. After the list was passed then he informed me about it. He intentionally used the Generalissimo to lean on me so that I was unable to decline. Thirdly, as I was concurrently the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs I had my necessary responsibilities to the Ministry. Now he even accused me for concurrently handling matters for two sides. Therefore, I was also not courteous to him, I immediately said that, as always, I did not ask for positions. I was more than happy that I was dismissed from concurrent work. He talked with me until 12.30 and then left.

[1] Zhang Yilin(1867-1943) was a Chinese politician and scholar.