Source 5b

Transcript

British Seek US Help for Plan to Contain Chinese Communism.

Envisage Program for Halting Expansion of Reds from Perimeter Countries – View on Dutch in Indonesia Is Changing

A plan to prevent Communism in China from spreading throughout the Far East is rapidly taking shape in the minds of policy-making officials of the British Government.

This plan, which is understood to have been passed to Washington for examination, envisages joint Anglo-American leadership in co-operation with other Asiatic and European powers in preventing the spread of communism beyond the borders of China.

In the past three weeks the British Government has done some hard thinking about China and the Far East. On the basis of reports from all its Far Eastern missions and evaluation of these reports at high diplomatic levels, the Government has come to two distinct conclusions.

The first is that the Chiang Kai-shek regime in China will inevitably be succeeded by a Communist-run government. The second and more important is that communism can no longer be stemmed from within China but must be “contained” from perimeter countries that still have non-Communist governments.

In short, the British are now inclined to bar recognition to any Chinese “coalition” government, believing this would prove a waste of time and, in effect, useless. Some British Far Eastern experts are frank in saying that they hope that the United States will adopt the same policy, “cut its losses” in China and adopt what they consider a realistic approach to Communist growth in the whole Far East.

In this connection preliminary reports of the results of the Dutch action in Indonesia are having a profound effect on British Government opinion. British officials who three weeks ago were outspokenly critical of the Dutch are now ready to concede privately that the Dutch may have been right after all.

…