Wednesday, 7 October

Received also from fourth sister (Mrs. To) about Wanling. She said among things that Wanling’s health is bad, her temper uncontrollable and so she congratulated us for her not coming. So, after long arguments with Kitty, I wrote replies to Wanling agreeing for her to remain in Hong Kong to get married and to fourth sister asking her to take charge of brother Yongde’s children.

Wrote to eldest sister to tell her of the change of plan.

A second article in the New York Herald Tribune by Joseph Alsop from Hong Kong about conditions in Communist China:

1) The pro-Soviet group led by Zhou Enlai is getting more powerful as shown by recent changes in the Beijing Government. But that does not mean Malenkov is trying to unseat Mao whose primacy has never been challenged. There will be no Yugoslav episode and the widespread hopes of a Beijing-Moscow split are plainly silly.

2) North Korea will not be a Chinese satellite. Only the Soviet Union can help her in her reconstruction and rebuilding of her army.

3) International communism is a great bandwagon of power, and Communist China privileged with a front seat will not agree with its Moscow driver.

4) Practically all the trade of Communist China is with the Soviet Union and whatever remains traded with Great Britain and other countries is negligible. So, it is foolish to think that the United States can cripple China by stopping Britain and other Allied trade with her.

5) The Anti-Communist guerillas are far less than the American underworld and a good deal better controlled.

6) Communist China is not anxious for recognition.

7) All these different wishful myths are intensively dangerous because they obscure the hard central, reality of Communist China’s emergence as a new great power in Asia.

I am very much afraid that all he said is not very far from the truth.