Wednesday, 11 October

Fine

Last night the Central broadcast said that in his speech Chairman Chiang said we should strive on our own and we cannot depend on other people. We should remember the achievements of our Party over the last several decades. We have fought so hard in the War of Resistance, it is already not very easy to attain such achievement. We should try to check and rectify our shortcomings from time to time, and for those enemy and collaborator propaganda attacks we shouldn’t pay too much attention so as to make them self-extinguish. With regard to criticisms by foreigners we should also see if they are correct or not. If they are right we should follow, but if they are not correct there is no need for us to spread them and gossip. What he said is absolutely right.

From 5.00 to 7.30 Foreign Minister Molotov received Diplomatic Corps’ personnel at the diplomatic reception house and introduced them to Churchill. I went with Shaozhou, Jingchen, Dequan and Shaozhou’s wife. Eden greeted me warmly and called me “old friend”. Churchill said he has recently met Gu Weijun. I told American Ambassador Harriman that if there was anything concerning Far Eastern affairs or our country during the meeting, I asked him to inform me. He said he would. He also said that in the past few days the discussion did not touch on affairs of the Far East or our country. He personally thought that this time Churchill might not talk about the affairs of the Far East or China. Canadian Minister Wilgress told me that after Churchill arrived, on the first day he talked with Stalin for three and a half hours. He raised some issues but the discussion hasn’t yet started. Probably the detailed discussion will be in later meetings because recently British and Soviet personnel have worked extremely hard in preparation, until 3.00 or 4.00 in the morning. When I was talking to Minister Wilgress, it just happened that Eden came and joined the chat. Afterwards he told Minister Wilgress to meet up with him he should wait for another three or four days because he would be very busy in the coming few days. I also talked to Litvinov of the Soviet Foreign Office. He mentioned the transfer of Shaozhou to Xinjiang and he said it was a pity because it was not easy to find someone as capable to replace him, but the Xinjiang province matter is also very important. I told him that I did not want Shaozhou to leave here, but that the Government wanted to transfer Shaozhou to Xinjiang proved that it was striving very hard to improve Sino-Soviet friendships. As for the Xinjiang Incident from what happened recently one can see why the Central Government is unable to transfer personnel earlier, and I hoped that the Soviet side could try its best to help, so as to further friendship between the two countries. He also understood it. He introduced his Civil Aviation Commander whose name is unknown to me. According to the Civil Aviation Commander, the war will be at its most tense in December, so it will be difficult to say whether he will have time to discuss the Sino-Soviet Aviation company matter. He also said Molotov told just him that Hungary has already asked for peace.