From the South China Morning Post this week in: 1952
'It was a disaster for the west that China's revolution had taken a Communist form, but that was not Britain's fault,' John Strachey, war minister in Britain's former Labour government, was quoted as saying. Strachey was urging his Labour Party to 'denounce in the extreme' the bombing of the Yalu River power plants [on the border between China and North Korea] by American war planes, which 'would be felt in the world to have the character of widening' the Korean war.
Strachey also noted that US secretary of state Dean Acheson 'had no real intention of making peace with China'. Nor, it seemed from a report the following day, had Acheson bothered to tell British prime minister Winston Churchill of an attack that significantly escalated the war, by provoking China.
Compared with China, 'India's evolution', Strachey said, 'had taken a far more peaceful form which had enabled the friendship of the Indian people with Britain and with the west, in general to be not only maintained but enormously improved'. China's revolution 'was a fact that had to be faced ... even those who were most sore at the failure to prevent the Communists from gaining control ... now realised that it could lead to worldwide disaster to attempt to undo what had happened by force'.
He believed 'there should be a clear-cut declaration on the part of all the governments of the United Nations, including the United States, that as soon as an armistice is concluded in Korea, China will be admitted to the Security Council, the government of Chiang Kai-shek will no longer be recognised and negotiations for the settlement of Formosa, probably by its neutralisation, will be begun'.
A branch of the Bank of Communications, in Ice House Street, suspended business following a break-in. The night watchman had allowed the three intruders on to the premises of the Chinese bank after midnight the previous night because two of them were employees at the branch. The identity or background of 'the third man' was not disclosed.