The Next Step in China
The Chief of the Imperial General Staff has completed a tour of British garrisons which took him as far East as Hongkong ; and Mr. Malcolm MacDonald is presiding over a three-day conference in Malaya to which British diplomatic, consular and colonial service representatives from all over South-East Asia have been summoned. One of the main topics for discussion at what should be a very useful meeting is the situation in China. This has not materially altered in recent weeks, though conditions in Shanghai are getting slightly easier and there are some indications of a relaxation of the Nationalist blockade. With Hongkong as secure as the three fighting services can make it, the main problem confronting British policy is the question when and on what terms we should recognise the Communist regime in Peking. There is no particular urgency about this ultimately inevitable step, but nothing is being gained by its postponement. It certainly seems pointless to go on ,recognising the Nationalist Government, whose impotence is incomplete only in so far that they can, and do, enforce a blockade which is damag- ing our interests ; and the impending return to London of Sir Ralph Stevenson, our Ambassador at Nanking, might well provide an opportunity for formally severing our relations with a regime at whose precarious seat of government we have no appropriate representation. The United States (whose Consul-General in Mukden is reported to have been arrested by the Communists) may have reasons for wish- ing to postpone recognition of the Peking administration ; but they are not necessarily—to judge from the recent vagaries of American policy in China—very good reasons ; nor, even if they are, are they necessarily valid for us, whose stake and whose status in China are very different from America's.
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