Tuesday, 25 January

First day, Jiashen year

Fine, sun

From today onwards I am 49. I remember that when I was 23 I worked in the (Guangzhou) Military Government, I had hoped that I would become a senior official at 30 years old, a Minister at 45 and retire at 55 to be with mother to see to her final years. In the end, I become a senior official at the age of 25, had been appointed committee member of the Southwest Political Council at 36, was selected to be a committee member of the Central Executive Committee when I was not yet 40, and was appointed Ambassador to the Soviet Union last year. I could say my wishes have been fulfilled, except for taking care of mother. Now my wish to retire is not as earnest as before, and thoughts of returning to China not as urgent as before.

For the last few days the editorials of various American newspapers have talked about the Soviet-Polish border issue. Most of them praised the idea that the Soviet Union advocated the use of the Curzon Line as a foundation for negotiation. Although the Soviet Union was not every enthusiastic about negotiating with the exiled Polish Government but they only criticised it mildly. So their attitude is not too bad and I felt a little bit relieved.

In the past few days I read K. M. Panikkar’s The Future of South-East Asia, though many of his observations are partial to Britain, he made it clear that the liberation movements of different peoples can no longer be stopped. What he said was as follows: 1) India. He advocated that its independence should be approved and the Muslim Pakistan should be allowed to be independent too. Together with Burma, these are three independent states, and would be led by Britain. 2) Siam should be allowed to be independent, and its economic development supported. 3) Annam should be divided into two parts. Three regions as Annam, Tonkin and Cochin China should form an independent Annam State. Its political form should be constitutional monarchy. Cambodia and Laos should form another region, and the two regions should be independent from each other. He also said that when the French governed Annam, they only knew how to squeeze its people, and did nothing for the benefit of the indigenous people. 4) Dutch management of Indochina was also very bad. The total indigenous population was 70,000,000. Their political organisation and culture was originally quite high, but after 250 years of repressive Dutch rule, the peoples’ living and knowledge has deteriorated. There has been imbalance between the treatment of Europeans and Asians, their education and justice have not been the same. As for national defence, it is pointlesds to mention. After this war broke out, the Queen of the Netherlands granted her permission for Indochina independence with its federation status to be on the same level as the Netherlands Proper, so the author has tried to defend Dutch management. 5) As for Singapore and the Malay Archipelago, he advocated the formation of a federation government. Only Singapore and Penang should be continued to be ruled by Britain for military considerations. The author also advocated setting up another supreme committee and electing two representatives from Britain, the United States, China, India, The Netherlands, Australia and other regions. Its function to be to oversee the administrative organisations, implement liberation and democratic policy. The author of the book is a historian, and has been Secretary of the Indian Royal Committee, so his research output on the various regions has been substantial. The shortcomings that he pointed out, except those on Britain and the Netherlands, are with insight. (His only fault) is that he is too biased towards the Netherlands when he talked about Dutch Indochina.

In the evening secretaries Yang, Li, Qian and Tang and others invited secretary Gou for dinner.