Should We Recognize Red China?

...A larger number, including the United States, still recognize the National Government...

...organized and motivated by a revolutionary ethie thoroughly incompatible with the existing structure of international law...

...Several of those which have made the transfer, conspicuously the Soviet Union, India and the United Kingdom, have urged both that other countries—especially the United States—do likewise and that China's seats in the United Nations be taken from the National Government and given to the "People's Government...

...International law does not even receive its lip-service...

...Circumstances and implications being considered, we cannot afford now to take either of those steps...

...During recent decades, a tendency has developed to apply three tests: Is the new government's authority comprehensive and effective...

...When in 1943 the Moscow Declaration was negotiated, the Republic of China became one of the four signers...

...There is seldom need for hurrying to recognize...

...When in 1945 the Charter of the United Nations was drawn up, the Republic of China received a permanent seat in the Security Council...

...In the United Nations, it is a permanent member of the Security Council and, represented by appointees of its National Government, has been and is active...

...Our Government has declared our national views on these matters...

...but, by way of reviewing some of the facts pertinent to an intelligent comprehension of the American position, and incidentally toward disposing of some falsehoods and fictions that are constantly uttered to the confusion of the uninformed and the unwary, it may be not amiss to submit a few clarifying affirmations...

...Many of the United Nations' members seem to think that all or most of those pressures would be relaxed if only the "People's Government" were admitted to China's seats in that organization...

...When in 1942 the "Declaration by the United Nations" was formulated in Washington, the Republic of China was one of the first of the original signatories...

...Whatever else withdrawal of recognition from one government and its transfer to another involves, it does constitute a political choice...

...It would add to the apprehensions of multitudes of men who are being driven by each day's bad news to greater skepticism regarding the efficacy of treaties and international law as instruments of security and justice...

...Recognition of the "People's Government" by the United States would probably lead directly and promptly to that admission...

...The fact that we have in the past recognized Communist governments and have not withdrawn our recognition of them imposes no obligation whatever on us now to recognize another...

...and they are demanding that the "Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China" be accorded recognition...

...Recognition now of the "People's Government" would not put an end to our losses...

...The conflict which has developed over Chinese representation in the United Nations presents a thorny issue...

...Recognition can be accorded at any time and easily...

...In the light of our traditions, our commitments and our current overall policies of resistance to aggression, we should be the last to declare China's National Government defunct...

...A decision on our part to recognize China's "People's Government" would presumably be accompanied by a decision to withdraw recognition from the National Government...

...The state, China, has long been a member of the "family of nations," and the Republic of China and its National Government have been recognized for many years...

...but recognition has not resulted in honoring by the Soviet Government of either its general legal obligations or its particular pledges...

...There is no justification for any step by the United States the net consequences of which would be to diminish the strength and extent of the free world and increase that of the Communist empire...

...We should not expect to win new friends or hold old friends by abandoning any friends...

...nor, if given, does it insure either of these...

...The Communist regime in China is...

...That action or procedure, "diplomatic recognition" or "according of recognition," is a matter of affirmative official decision by political authorities in pursuance of political objectives, and it has substantial legal and political consequence...

...Ambassador to the Netherlands...

...it would insure further losses...

...We should expect of any government which asks for our recognition and our assent to its admission to the United Nations that it demonstrate its willingness to fulfill the international obligations of its country and support the purposes and provisions of the United Nations Charter...

...but, once given, it can only with difficulty be withdrawn...

...Is it disposed to fulfill those obligations...

...Non-Communist governments and spokesmen who urge that the United States take those steps do so not in the service of principles and interests that are ours but in the service of what they conceive to be the national interests of their respective countries...

...It is certain that the "People's Government" which now seeks recognition as the Government of China does not intend to discharge those obligations—this by its own testimony, in its words and deeds...

...Recognition facilitates but is not essential to maintenance of contact and carrying on of business...

...Generally speaking, the more hurried is recognition, the more speculative is its advisability and the more suspect its motivation...

...The United Nations itself has seemed more concerned about the embarrassment to it of Soviet Communist pressures than about the menace those pressures pose to the world by way of China...

...It is questionable whether any Communist government is capable of discharging the international obligations, actual or prospective, of the country for which it professes to speak—this because Communism's fundamental concepts and its fixed objective, world domination, stand in the way of its doing so...

...So long as we withhold that recognition, we have at our disposal a diplomatic asset...

...Within China, however, the Communists have in recent years produced a new regime, a new constitution and new names...

...In the light of experience and in a situation wherein our Government has rightly declared that governments are to be judged by their deeds rather than their words, it is the part of wisdom for this country to be suspicious of every proposal that we transfer our official favor from a government and people that have long shown themselves favorably disposed toward us to a new government which has shown itself—in ideology, in words and in deeds—utterly hostile to us and to freedom...

...From 1944 to 1947, he was the U.S...

...Witness the history of relations with Communist China, which some countries recognize and others do not...

...While probably true in most cases, it is false in many...

...Many of the contentions advanced by advocates—especially the early advocates—of recognition of the "People's Government" have been refuted by the acts and utterances of that government and its functionaries...

...The United States, after some early wavering, has stood pat on its recognition of the National Government, has Stanley Hornbeck was for many years Chief of the State Department's Far Eastern Division, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, and Political Adviser to the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs...

...withheld recognition from the People's Government, and is opposed to admitting the latter to the United Nations...

...When, later in 1945, a treaty of friendship and alliance between the Republic of China and the Soviet Union was signed at Moscow, the Soviet Union pledged that it would give China moral support and material assistance, "it being understood that this support and assistance will go exclusively to the National Government as the Central Government of China...

...Consideration of that problem calls for consideration in full perspective of our major and constant objectives of security and peace with justice...

...The Communist governments and agents who demand that the United States recognize China's "People's Government" and cease to oppose admission of that government to the United Nations do so in pursuit of ends that are obviously theirs...

...Historically, various inconsistencies are discernible in United States practice, but there has been throughout a tendency to inquire as to the extent and quality of the authority of new governments and whether they govern by and with the "consent of the governed...

...In the situation which now prevails in and regarding China, the question of according recognition has peculiar angles...

...More probably, however, it would open the way to new pressures...

...If and when China's "People's Government" alters for the better its purposes and methods, and when our people conclude that it is qualified on its own merits for American official favor, then, and not until then, will there be grounds for considering requests—as distinguished from demands and pressures—that the United States accord that government its recognition...

...it is in fact misleading...

...Recognition is the action or procedure in international relations by which an established state or government manifests its willingness to deal with a new state or government as a legal entity and on an official basis...

...When in the next year the Soviet Government, turning its back on that pledge, gave its moral support and assistance not to the National Government but to the lat-ter's moral enemy, the armed Communist opposition, and simultaneously the United States assumed a position of "neutrality" in regard to the "civil strife" in China, the Communists began a massive military operation which within three years gave them physical possession of mainland China and caused the National Government to withdraw to the island of Formosa...

...as Professor H. Arthur Steiner has put it...

...It would increase the capabilities of the Communist world and diminish those of the free world...

...Ultimately, a new administration in the United States, having asked for and been given pledges, accorded the Soviet Government recognition...

...We should enter into no deals with any government at the expense of unconsulted and unassenting third states or governments or peoples that are committed as are we to the thesis that human beings should be free and law-abiding nations should be secure...

...In practice, decisions for or against recognition are made by political authorities and are based for the most part on political considerations...

...The frequent assertion that recognition does not signify "approval," either moral or political, is not to be relied upon...

...There exists no rule of international law or convention requiring that any state or government accord recognition to another...

...Where there exist within a stale—as there do in China now?two contending governments, one old and recognized, the other new, exercising a still disputed authority and asking for recognition, third parties have more moral and legal obligation toward the former than toward the latter...

...Recognition of the "People's Government" by the United States would greatly benefit the Communist world...

...All Communists and all Communist regimes are committed to the objective of world domination: and the Chinese Communists and their regime, whether or not controlled by the Kremlin, imitate the Russian Soviet system, use its methods, follow the made-in-Moscow "party line," and are engaged in operations of forcible conquest...

...It is a phenomenon very different from and much more significant than that of merely manifesting awareness or taking cognizance...

...That, in turn, might conceivably result in temporary relaxation of some pressures...

...We should not trade it for mere promises...

...however, a function of political authorities, and each stale makes its own decisions in the light of its own interests and purposes...

...It would surely create new difficulties for the United States...

...We should not give away or cheaply bargain away that asset...

...When in October 1949 the Communist party in China announced the creation in Peking of the "Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China," that new turn in Chinese affairs confronted every other country in the world with a new problem: whether or not to recognize this new governing entity and what to do in regard to China's National Government, still functioning on Formosa...

...For the United States, the question of what to do about that regime is only one of many questions currently implicit in the problem of relations with China, with the Chinese people, with their neighbors and with other countries—in a world setting...

...By Stanley K. Hornbeck When in .1912 the Manchu rulers of China capitulated to a handful of revolutionary leaders who declared their country a republic, the United States was among the first of the powers to accord recognition to the new "republican" regime...

...It would seem that most Americans who give thought to such matters have fairly well made up their minds...

...and, in the light of Communism's basic policy of conquest, we should be the last to declare the "People's Government" the Government of China...

...Is it able to fulfill the international obligations of the country in which it exercises control...

...The United States has in recent years lost heavily in the courses we have pursued in regard to China...

...There is little that the United States could reasonably expect to gain by according recognition to a regime which is committed to the destruction of the free world and has declared the United States its Number 1 enemy...

...The Republic of China was a member of the League of Nations and is a charter member of the United Nations...

...Witness the history of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and among nationals of the two countries for fifteen years before the United States recognized the Soviet Government...

...When in 1928 China's "Nationalists" brought into existence at Nanking the "National Government of the Republic of China," the United States was the first country to recognize it...

...Since October 1949, some 25 countries—the Soviet Union and all other Communist states, as well as the United Kingdom and a dozen others—have transferred their recognition from the National Government to the "People's Government...

...Recognition is...

...it does great damage to the one and confers great benefit upon the other...

...it takes from one and gives to the other a thing of great value, the stamp of political acceptability and legal acceptance...

...In these circumstances, whatever may be the technicalities—and there can be contention over them—the practical problem for the United States is whether to accord recognition not to a new state but to a new regime which is exercising in an old state an extensive but less than nationwide and still disputed authority...

...The reasons given by several successive American Secretaries of State for not recognizing the Soviet Government were to the effect that it did not meet the standard tests of qualification for recognition...