Dr. George K.C. Yeh, former foreign minister of the Republic of China, was named China's new ambassador to the United States on August 21, succeeding Dr. Hollington K. Tong who resigned.
Lauding the new appointment, the Oakland Tribune stated on August 22:
"The affairs of the United States in the whole of the Far East are so closely tied to our relations with the government of the Free Chinese on Formosa, it is only natural that major changes in the diplomatic assignments of the Taipei government are worthy of more than ordinary attention.
"The retirement of Dr. Hollington K. Tong as ambassador to the United States and the appointment of Dr. George Yeh as his successor is the latest development in the relationship between the two countries. There is no special significance in the change. It stems simply from the fact that Dr. Tong, at 71, has earned the right to retire from the service of his government, and Dr. Yeh who served many difficult years as foreign minister, is the most logical replacement in the Washington post.
"Despite the fact that the United States and the government of Chiang Kai-shek are as closely aligned as any two nations in the world in many fields, particularly that of fighting communism, many delicate problems arises. They stem chiefly because of the close relationship.
"Dr. Tong, like his predecessor, Wellington Koo, has placed much emphasis on representing his people to the American people as being as important as representing his government in official matters at Washington. He has been an able representative in the field.
"Dr. Yeh has won international fame as a statesman. His courage and logic in debate, his knowledge of America, Europe and Latin America and his experience qualify him for his new assignment."
The N.Y. Times commented on August 24:
"Free China has announced the appointment of a new Ambassador to the United States. He is George Yeh, no stranger to this country, who received his first degree at Amherst and has been back on many occasions on diplomatic missions. At home he has served as Foreign Minister for almost a decade. He will return, now, when a new threat is facing Taiwan.
"The United States has reason to welcome the caliber of the men whom the free Chinese have sent here to represent them. The outgoing Ambassador, Dr. Hollington Tong, is esteemed by thousands of Americans. He was the best friend of the American correspondents in China during the war. His incumbency as an Ambassador has been impressive and he well deserves the rest that is planned for him, although it is doubtful that his Government can afford to let his great talents remain idle. We have had persons such as the pre-eminent Dr. Hu Shih, Dr. Wellington Koo, Dr. Alfred Sze, and Wei Tao-ming in this country as representatives of the Chinese people. They have all served our common cause well.
"Mr. Yeh is forthright, vigorous, outspoken and courageous. The Chinese call him 'very American'. The Americans who know him appreciate his robust sense of humor. He should certainly be 'at home' in this country, and Americans will be glad to make him feel that he is."
Hailing the new appointment as "a happy choice", the Sripps-Howard Newspapers said on August 25:
"Former Foreign Minister Georg K.C. Yeh has been named as China's new ambassador to the United States.
"It is a happy choice. Mr. Yeh is an able diplomat with a strong streak of realism in his public utterances and private judgments. For the past nine years as foreign minister, he has fought successfully to keep Nationalist China's high seat in the United Nations against mounting pressures and campaigns to put the Communist state in his country's place.
"American and British-educated (Amherst and Cambridge), and a frequent visitor to this country, he has many friends here and stands to gain more. He is fitting successor to the amiable and efficient veteran Ambassador Hollington Tong and a long line of distinguished envoys to the United States. We welcome George Yeh to his new post."
Red Bombardment of Kimen
Following the current Chinese Communist indiscriminate bombardment of Kinmen and Matsu, U.S. Secretary of States John Foster Dulles warned the Peiping regime on August 23 that any attempt to conquer the offshore islands " constitute a threat to the peace of the area", President Eisenhower stated at a news conference on August 27 that the offshore islands of Kinmen and Matsu had become more important to the defense of Taiwan.
Assuming that it is too soon to tell what the ultimate objective of the Chinese Communists in their greatly stepped-up assault on Quemoy is, the N.Y. Times lauds Secretary Dulles' warning as logical. The Times said on August 25:
"Secretary Dulles has been prompt and forthright in issuing what, in effect, a stern warning to Peiping... In the light of our commitments to Taiwan, this statement of American concern is logical.
"In any event, one thing is certain. This assault is a typical Communist maneuver designed to keep the world in turmoil. No sooner has there been the slightest easement in the Middle East than the explosion comes on the China coast.
"This reveals, once more, the massive hypocrisy of the Red Chinese - and other Communist - prattle about wishing to 'ease tensions.' This assault is obviously meant to increase tension not only in the area but elsewhere in the free world. It is meant to frighten and confuse. It must be met with promptness and resolution, and Secretary Dulles has done just that."
The Philadelphia Inquirer said on the same day:
"Only the high commands of the Communist regimes in Russia and China know at this time whether the sudden and violent attacks by Chinese Reds on the offshore Qumoy Islands were inspired in Peiping or Moscow.
"But the evident fact to the world is that these attacks are in line with Communist performances of the past, and serve to stir up fears of war in one part of the world just as tensions have begun to simmer down in another.
"It is evident, too, that the danger does not end with the offshore islands which bar the path from Red China to the Chinese Nationalist stronghold of Formosa. There is the threat, underlined by Secretary of State Dulles' warning, that assaults on Quemoy would endanger peace in the entire area.
"The unprecedented heavy artillery and air attacks on Quemoy furnish scant support to observers in the free world who have been guessing that there is a serious split between Red China and Soviet Russia ever since Nikita Khrushchev had a conference with Chinese Communist boss Mao Tse-tung at Peiping."
The N. Y. Daily Mirror called the Communists as "masters of the pugilistic tactic" of keeping the free world off balance. "Thus," the Mirror observed, "while the tension is eased in the Middle East, with apparent Communist consent, the building up of another crisis begins in the Far East, by Communist design.
"It is not an accident that Red Chinese batteries on the mainland have opened up on the offshore Quemoy islands, held by the Chinese Nationalists, and subjected them to a bombardment so intense that it could herald an invasion attempt.
"Certainly this move was planned and timed when Khrushchev visited Mao Tse-tung at the height of the Middle East flareup; and just as certainly they agreed on a go-slow policy in that part of the world, coupled with a get-tough campaign in the Far East.
"We can be warned again that peace does not serve the ambitions of the Communist conspiracy because these ambitions are aimed at the total subjugation of the globe; and that they will be pursued in a succession of 'little wars' and threats of wars, one crisis following another."
The Scripps-Howard Newspapers believed that the current Chinese Communist shellings on Kinmen and Matsu resulted from the ambiguous U.S. stand towards these offshore islands. "The vagueness of the American commitment to keep Quemoy-Matsu out of Red hands", said the Newspapers, "has been until now almost an invitation to aggression. Hence the importance of the correspondence between Chairman Thomas E. Morgan of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.
"But he (Mao Tse-tung) may continue the bombardment of the islands, and refrain from the invasion which would precipitate war with the United States. Invasion would make more Asian and United Nations enemies for him than friends. But continuation of the present threat could frighten the United Nations into an appeasement policy. With an eye to Nasser's success, this maybe Mao's strategy.
"A U.N. Security Council seat and participation in big power summit meeting are far more important to Mao than control of Quemoy-Matsu."
On the unsteady U.S. policy toward the offshore islands, the Detroit News complained on August 26:
"When the United States four years ago prodded the Nationalists into surrendering the Tachen Islands, Dr. George Yeh thought he had a firm promise from Mr. Dulles than in return the United States would help defend the Quemoys and Matsu Island.
"But in the following spring there was a fresh war scare around the Formosa Straits, and Adm. William K. Radford flew to Formosa specifically to tell Chiang Kai-shek that if Quemoy was invaded the U.S. could not be considered committed."
Analyzing the Chinese Communist designs behind the military maneuvers, the N.Y. Daily News remarked:
"It's a ticklish situation - and many an expert on the Far East thinks the Communists kicked up the Mideast excitement as a diversion to take Western minds off the Reds' ambition to absorb Southeast Asia and Indonesia.
"Some of these experts say further that our State Department's Asiatic desk is still infested with a lot of holdovers from Dean Acheson's time, who will do everything they can to ease Southeast Asia and Indonesia permanently into Communist hands.
"So we think the best thing Secretary of State John Foster Dulles could do, as soon as he finishes that well-earned vacation, would be to have a long, hard look at his Asiatic desk and some of the characters who run it."
The Tampa Times observed on the same day:
"The best guess available at the moment is that the new aggressive nature of Chinese Reds toward the Nationalist-held islands in the Formosa Strait is designed to achieve diplomatic rather than military goals.
"From a practical standpoint, however, common sense dictates that the Administration present a stern countenance to the Chinese Communists. Any hint of weakness or lack of determination to halt Red expansionist ambitions would have a deleterious effect on the morale of our other Far Eastern allies.
"The lessons of Korea suggest that we will not make another mistake of ignoring military realities and provide the enemy with a 'home-free' base from which to operate."
"The militancy being displayed by the Chinese communists with respect to the offshore islands held by the Nationalists," said the Oakland Tribune, "has caused considerable concern in this country, and rightly so. The intentions of the reds toward direct aggression against Pacific outposts held by our allies is of greatest importance to our own national security.
"Briefly, the farther we can hold the Chinese reds away from any area that is essential to our own strategic defenses, the better it is. It should be understood by all Americans first of all, that any United States program that eventually must be carried out in defense of Formosa, the Pescadores or any of the other islands in the hands of the Free Chinese is for the principal purpose of United States defense.
"Efforts of friends of the Chinese reds in this country or any other part of the world to make it appear we are ready to risk American lives for the sole purpose of perpetuating the regime of President Chiang Kai-shek, should be discounted. Certainly we are interested in maintaining the Free Chinese in power as long as possible and wherever possible, for they are among the strongest allies we have in the Far East. But it is defense of our strategic positions in the Pacific that comes first.
"The current thrusts of the Chinese reds, both by air and by sea can be considered, at this point, as having a dual purpose. They are probes to feel out the military capabilities of the Free Chinese on that front, and the intentions of the Unite States with respect to the entire area represented by the Formosan situation.
"So now they have the answers to both the questions they raised for themselves. They have discovered that the Free Chinese are ready, willing and capable of putting up a defense even of tiny little Tan Island, nearly a score of miles away from Quemoy. They have discovered that the United States fully intends to live up to the terms of our mutual assistance agreement with the Free Chinese."
Constantine Brown observed in the Washington Evening Star:
"Top policy makers in the State Department and Pentagon cannot venture a guess as to whether the Chinese Communists' attacks on the Nationalist offshore islands are an attempt to shoot their way into the United Nations or are a prelude to an invasion of Matsu and Quemoy, the bastions of Formosan defenses where more than 65,000 of the best Nationalist forces are stationed.
"It is recognized even by those opposed to Secretary Dulles' Far Eastern policies that the possibility of the Nationalists' losing the offshore islands would place the United States in a serious predicament. Hence the administration's dilemma, whether to regard the offshore outposts as essential to our own security in the Pacific or 'let nature take its course.'
"Our assistance programs coupled with an unbelievably good and honest administration by the Nationalists, have made once poverty-ridden Formosa one of the most prosperous areas in the Far East. The entire progress and determination to resist all threats or tempting offers of the Communists were based on the conviction that if the chips were down America would be on the side of Nationalist China with all her might.
"The effects of appeasement would be felt not only in our defense system in the Pacific but the whole of Southeast Asia where the determination to resist communism is dependent on our willingness to call a halt to all further Communist penetrations. It would mean, according to experts in Far Eastern affairs, that Viet Nam, Thailand, Burma and Malaya would fall to the Reds in rapid succession."
The Chicago Daily News also believed that the purpose of the current Chinese Communist bombardment is diplomatic. The paper said on August 27:
"There is no doubt that the United States, with full public approval, would fight to keep the Reds out of Formosa. It is an essential element in our protective perimeter in the Pacific.
"Whatever Mao's intention regarding the offshore islets may be, it was undoubtedly agreed upon with Khrushchev when the latter recently visited Peiping.
"We should guess that the purpose of the current bombardment is diplomatic. Mao may be aiming to create another crisis in which demands for a summit conference will be renewed, this time with strong pressure or the inclusion of Red China's chief at the conference table."
Lauding the movement of major American naval units toward the Far East as a significant warning, the N.Y. Herald Tribune remarked on August 30:
"This massing of sea power gives point to the State Department's reiteration of Mr. Dulles's warning. And it may also provide the means for a positive answer to the question which Mme. Chiang Kai-shek put to the American Bar Association on Thursday: 'Has justice even been replete or vindicated when law compromised with the guilty?'"
Conceding that nobody could definitely know whether the Soviet consent to the Chinese Communist threat on the offshore islands was wrung from the Soviet dictator or was given willingly, the Tribune went on the next day:
"The Soviet Union can check Mao. It supplies planes, guns and ammunition to the Chinese Reds, and the latter would be completely unable to conduct any prolonged campaign without the good will of Moscow. Now is the time for Khrushchev to exert his authority - if he has it. The danger to the peace is great and growing; the initiative toward war has been seized by the Chinese Communists."
"Unless they are brought to heel," the Tribune concluded, "the responsibility for what may ensue will rest with crushing weight upon Nikita Khrushchev."