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Documents

September 1, 1979

Cable from the Foreign Ministry, 'Notice on Vice President Mondale's Visit to China'

A summary of Walter Mondale's meetings with Chinese officials, including Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng. Topics of conversation included bilateral relations and the situation in Indochina.

July 2, 1957

Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate, Washington, D.C., July 2, 1957

On July 2, 1957, US senator John F. Kennedy made his perhaps best-known senatorial speech—on Algeria.

Home to about 8 million Muslims, 1.2 million European settlers, and 130,000 Jews, it was from October 1954 embroiled in what France dubbed “events”—domestic events, to be precise. Virtually all settlers and most metropolitan French saw Algeria as an indivisible part of France. Algeria had been integrated into metropolitan administrative structures in 1847, towards the end of a structurally if not intentionally genocidal pacification campaign; Algeria’s population dropped by half between 1830, when France invaded, and the early 1870s. Eighty years and many political turns later (see e.g. Messali Hadj’s 1927 speech in this collection), in 1954, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) launched a war for independence. Kennedy did not quite see eye to eye with the FLN.

As Kennedy's speech shows, he did not want France entirely out of North Africa. However, he had criticized French action already in early 1950s Indochina. And in 1957 he met with Abdelkader Chanderli (1915-1993), an unaccredited representative of the FLN at the United Nations in New York and in Washington, DC, and a linchpin of the FLN’s successful international offensive described in Matthew Connelly’s A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (2002). Thus, Kennedy supported the FLN’s demand for independence, which explains its very positive reaction to his speech.

And thus, unlike the 1952-1960 Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) that officially backed the views of NATO ally France and kept delivering arms, the Democratic senator diagnosed a “war” by “Western imperialism” that, together with if different from “Soviet imperialism,” is “the great enemy of … the most powerful single force in the world today: ... man's eternal desire to be free and independent.” (In fact, Kennedy’s speech on the Algerian example of Western imperialism was the first of two, the second concerning the Polish example of Sovietimperialism. On another, domestic note, to support African Algeria’s independence was an attempt to woe civil-rights-movement-era African Americans without enraging white voters.) To be sure, Kennedy saw France as an ally, too. But France’s war was tainting Washington too much, which helped Moscow. In Kennedy’s eyes, to support the US Cold War against the Soviet Union meant granting Algeria independence. The official French line was the exact opposite: only continued French presence in Algeria could keep Moscow and its Egyptian puppet, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, from controlling the Mediterranean and encroaching on Africa.

March 3, 1982

Excerpts of Talks between Leading Comrades and Foreign Guests (No. 2)

A Chinese Communist Party digest summarizing a meeting held between Deng Xiaoping and Norodom Sihanouk.

October 1, 1977

Talk Given by the Minister [Trần Quốc Hoàn] at the 3rd Investigative Conference [Excerpts]

Trần Quốc Hoàn reviews cases against foreign and domestic spies in the Vietnam Wars.

September 4, 1969

Record of Meeting between Minister Aichi and Premier Kosygin

Japanese Foreign Minister Aichi and Soviet Premier Kosygin discuss bilateral relations, disputed territories, the legacies of World War II, China, and the NPT.

November 30, 1965

Transcript of Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Jean Chauvel

Premier Zhou and a representative from the French foreign ministry, Jean Chauvel, talk about the Vietnam War. Zhou voices China's support for Vietnamese people's requests for U.S. troops to withdraw from Vietnam and not interfere in Vietnamese internal issues. Zhou says that the U.S. has not comply to Vietnam's request and has on the contrary expanded the war. Chauvel agrees with Zhou that the final decision about the Vietnamese War should be made by Vietnamese people. Chauvel says that the priority should be to stop the current war and calls for a ceasefire to solve the issue. Zhou cites the U.S. expansion of troops and continued involvement in Vietnam as the cause of heightened tension in Vietnam War.

March 11, 1955

Gazette of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, 1955, No. 1 (Overall Issue No. 4)

This issue includes statements from Zhou Enlai about American intervention in Taiwan, the establishment of Sino-Yugoslav relations, Sino-Afghan relations, and Sino-Indonesian trade. It also condemns American, French, and KMT Nationalist activities in North Vietnam. Finally, it discusses domestic topics such as divorce and manufacturing.

March 10, 1970

Memorandum of Conversation, Ambassador Dobrynin and Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

Kissinger and Dobrynin discuss the upcoming SALT talks, the situation in the Middle East, and Vietnam.

April 16, 1993

Record of Japan-United States Summit Meeting

This record contains summaries of: (1) the tête-à-tête meeting between President Clinton and Prime Minister Mizazawa; (2) a small group meeting involving the President and Prime Minister, as well as several senior members of the US and Japanese cabinets; and (3) an expanded working lunch. Topics of discussion included U.S.-Japan strategic and economic relations, climate change, the Uruguay Round, policies towards Russia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti, and China, and Japan's status at the United Nations. Various portions of the document were withheld, including an entire section on North Korea.

November 9, 1986

Cable No. 3757, Ambassador Nakae to the Foreign Minister, 'The Prime Minister’s Visit to China (Meeting with General Secretary Hu - Japan-China Relations)'

Hu and Nakasone discuss some of their countries respective foreign policy priorities, including the USSR, the United States, the Cambodian-Vietnamese conflict, Eastern Europe, and Afghanistan, as well as arms control.

Pagination