Office of the Historian

PPS files, lot 65 D 101, “China”

No. 259
Memorandum by Harry H. Schwartz of the Policy Planning Staff to the Director of the Staff (Bowie)

top secret
[Washington,] August 20, 1954.

Subject:

  • U.S. Policy toward Formosa and the “Offshore Islands”

I have gathered together and am quoting below for you what I could find of U.S. official written policy on the subject.

[Here follow quotations from or paraphrases of President Truman’s statement of June 27, 1950, concerning Formosa; President Eisenhower’s State of the Union message to Congress of February 2, 1953; telegram 546 of February 6, 1953, to Taipei and the Defense Department directive to CINCPAC quoted therein; NSC 146/2 of November 6, 1953; and NSC Actions No. 1136 of May 27, 1954, and 1146 of June 3, 1954.]

9.
From Walter McConaughy I obtained the following information with respect to defense of the offshore islands:
a.
There are no U.S. commitments of any kind, public or private, to defend the islands.
b.
This Government has taken no clear position publicly with respect to the offshore islands.
c.
As a result of NSC Actions 1136 and 1146 there have been two Navy visits to the Tachen Islands, one in May, and one day before [Page 544] yesterday (Department had prior information that Admiral Stump was personally going on this last visit).
d.
The commanding officer of the first fleet in May was given orders not to return any Chinese Communist fire; for this last visit and for succeeding visits the orders now are to return fire.
e.

MAAG on Formosa has given assistance to the Chinese Nationalist forces on the offshore islands in the form of training and equipment but without placing personnel on the islands.

. . . . . . .

g.
There are somewhere around 48 offshore islands. The main ones are the Tachens, well north of Formosa, which have about 20,000 Chinese Nationalist troops and one of their better generals; Matsu, opposite Formosa with 5,000 to 7,000 troops; and Quemoy, located in the Harbor of Amoy, with troops amounting to something less than a division.
h.
The view of the Joint Chiefs with respect to the military importance of these islands centers on their use as early warning stations.
10.
On June 23 the Chinese Nationalist Navy seized the Soviet tanker Tuapse. On July 23 Chinese Communist Air Force planes shot down British Air Cathay commercial liner off the coast of Hainan. On July 26 American Navy fighters shot down two Chinese Communist Air Force fighters off the coast of Hainan. The connection between these events as related to the NSC on July 29 by Mr. Allen Dulles1 (and to the Planning Board by Mr. Robert Amory2) is as follows: After the seizure of the Soviet tanker the Chinese and the Soviets ordered all of their ships into the closest ports while they took time out to analyze what was going on. They spent about ten days doing so apparently. As they consider that the Chinese Nationalists are complete American stooges they must have assumed that the Soviet tanker was seized upon American orders. They must further have assumed that this was the first implementation of a U.S. policy to seize all Communist shipping in the area. They decided they could not put up with this without a fight and determined to give naval or air protection to their shipping from then on.
Harry H. Schwartz
  1. See Document 244.↩
  2. Deputy Director for Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency.↩