Thursday, 8 February

Today is the birthday of Xie Boaqiao, whilst mine is tomorrow. My habit is normally to invite friends and relatives to have dinner at my home on my birthday but Baoqiao suggested yesterday that he would like to invite me to dine in Paris tomorrow to celebrate my birthday. Therefore, I sent out invitations one day in advance to invite my guests for dinner at home, and at the same time to celebrate Baoqiao’s birthday. I invited couples, including Chen Jingchen, Duan Guanhai, Wu Guanghan and Chengyong, Geng Chengzhi, Huang Qigong (黃其恭), Liang Lipun, and partners of Chen Xiongfei and Secretary Ding, Miss Qian, Miss Huang, Mr. and Mrs. Rochette. It happened that Minister Kang Liwu was in Paris, so he came here too. We had a happy time and the party did not end until twelve.

Kang Liwu said the conditions in Taiwan are fine, but the health of Wang Chonghui is not really very good compared to the past, which is a great pity. He also said that Xu Chongzhi organized anti-Communist organizations in Hong Kong and also had contacts with the Taiwan side. Kang Liwu himself intends to go to Britain very soon.

The American Secretary of State, Acheson, delivered a talk yesterday. He mentioned that the Soviet Union currently has approximately 2,500,000 army, navy[1], air force 550,000, special police-army 400,000, which adds up to 4,050,000 military staff in total. The Soviet Union has 25,000 airplanes, as estimated by Churchill. (The US Chief of Staff Headquarters estimates that the Soviet Union only have 14,000 airplanes.) The Soviets have 175 army divisions, but in sixty days the number could be increased to 300 divisions. Around 75 out of these 175 divisions are in the western part of the Soviet Union, and 30 are in Europe.  As for Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, there are 1,800,000 people in total. In Czechoslovakia, there are 130,000 military staff. The approximate total is 1,000,000 people.

[1] Fu Bingchang forgot to record the number.