Saturday, 6 May

Fine

I studied Russian in the morning.

Pravda, the Soviet newspaper reprinted, in a prominent section, the full text of the “Current Condition of China” by the London News Chronicle correspondent in Chongqing. The main content of the article was that the Chinese Government is fascist and has used its best trained troops to fight the Communists but not to resist Japanese. The article criticised He Yingqin severely in particular. It also mentioned what Dong Biwu (董必武)[1] referred to as the anti-Communist policies of the Central Government. It also had malicious explanations for Minister Song’s resignation from his concurrent post at the China Bank and Madame Sun’s avoidance of talking about politics. The aim of the article was to speak on behalf of Chinese Communists. Perhaps the British newspapers published this article because the Chinese criticised the loss of the British army in Burma too much. (So in the article it said if the Chinese Government carries on such a Nazi authoritarian policy, after Britain and the United States help it to get the victory, the Chinese Government will adopt the same policy as the Japanese militarists now.) That the Soviet Union reprinted this article, is clearly an illustration that it is dissatisfied with our country’s policy towards Chinese Communists. Our country is now in great danger. I deeply hope that our government understands the world situation and it shouldn’t assume that China is really one of the Four Powers, adopting a stern attitude towards strong neighbours. It should take the Polish Incident as an example. I was preoccupied with sad feelings, but I did not dare report everything I saw. I thought many times and tried to make up my mind to ask Wang Chonghui or Chen Bulei to relay to the Generalissimo, but in the end, I thought that it would be useless and incur humiliation so I stopped. I deeply regret coming here.

I asked Assistant Consul Zhang Zigu, Counsellor Chen, and Attachés Li, Hu and Tang to have dinner at the Cossack Restaurant. The restaurant has suddenly increased its price more than ten times. We were charged 2,400 rubles for six people. The dishonesty of this restaurant is rarely seen.

[1] Dong Biwu was a Communist leader of China.