[
    {
        "id": 208582,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1979",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "12\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\nCairo Conference at the end of 1943, Roosevelt offered Chiang Kai-shek, behind Churchill's back, American support in preventing Britain from getting back Hong Kong if Chiang would cooperate with the communists in fighting against Japan and establish a representative government in China. Roosevelt's idea was that on regaining sovereignty over Hong Kong, Chiang should \"make a grand gesture and make it a free port.\"49 At Teheran in November 1943, during a break in the Cairo Conference, Roosevelt raised with Churchill the question of the possible return of Hong Kong to China, and the latter refused even to discuss the question.50\n\nAt his secret meeting with Stalin during the Yalta Conference, on 8 February 1945, Roosevelt again mentioned his hope \"that the British would give back the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China and that it would then become an internationalized free port.\" He added, however, that he knew Churchill \"would have strong objections to this suggestion.” At the conference proper, however, Roosevelt did not raise the question of Britain's return of Hong Kong, although references were made to the colony on several occasions.52 Later, in the spring of 1945, Roosevelt used Bernard Baruch, a financier and a friend of both Roosevelt and Churchill, as a messenger to press the British prime minister on the matter of Hong Kong. Roosevelt was now additionally concerned that the Soviet Union might make use of Britain's presence in Hong Kong as an argument for opening a port of her own in China.53 In April 1945 when General Patrick J. Hurley was sent by Roosevelt to talk with Churchill over the retrocession of Hong Kong to China, among other subjects, the latter replied that the colony would not be yielded \"over [his] dead body.\"54 The truth is that already by 1944 Roosevelt had become increasingly reluctant to offend the sensitivity of Churchill who by then was no longer \"subservient to the friendly strength of the United States\" as he clearly had been in 1941-42.55\n\nBritain was not slow to perceive the American weakness. Moreover, by 1944 American enthusiasm about China and Chiang Kai-shek had somewhat cooled down. Roosevelt, as it has been mentioned, had for some time been troubled by the disunity between the nationalists and the communists, and by growing criticism of the autocracy of the Chiang regime. Discussion and criticism of the Chungking government and its conduct of the war increased remarkably in the United States following the American recall of General Joseph Stilwell under pressure from Chiang Kai-shek,56",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208589,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1979",
        "page_number": 46,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n19\n\nK'ai-shek's Visit to India, February 1942\", The Australian Journal of History and Political Science, XXI, no. 2 (1975), pp. 52-61, in which the American attitude is discussed.\n\n40 Memorandum by Hopkins, 15 March 1943, in FRUS, the British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, the Far East, 1943, III, p. 17.\n\n41 Sherwood, op. cit., p. 719, and H. C. Allen, Great Britain and the United States (London, 1954), p. 828.\n\n42 For a summary of the allied military situation at the end of 1943, see J. M. Burns, Roosevelt: the Lion and the Fox (New York, 1956), p. 464. **Hornbeck to Ashley Clarke, 16 December 1943(?), in Hornbeck Papers, box 469.\n\n44 Hornbeck's autobiography, op. cit.\n\n46 Hornbeck's memorandum, 15 November, on his conversation with Churchill, Hornbeck Papers, box 468.\n\n10\n\n16 Hornbeck to Hull, 3 January 1944; also see Hornbeck's memorandum, 3 December 1943, Hornbeck Papers, box 181.\n\n47 C. Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York, 1948), II, p. 1599, 4 Hornbeck's autobiography, op. cit., and J. Bishop, FDR's Last Year (New York, 1974), p. 40.\n\n**E. Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York, 1946), pp. 163-4, 203-4, 249-50; J. T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth (New York, 1948), p. 349; Hull, op. cit., II, p. 1596; and T. H. White (ed.), The Stilwell Papers (New York, 1976), p. 252. Stilwell was summoned to the conference to discuss China.\n\n50 See SWNCC III, secret, 17 April 1945, in ABC 014 Japan (13 April 44) see 32, National Archives.\n\n01 See minutes of the meeting in FRUS, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945 (Washington, 1955), p. 769. Also F. L. Loewenheim (ed.), Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York, 1975), p. 656.\n\n52 FRUS, ibid., pp. 664-5, 676.\n\n53\n\n58 Thorne, op. cit., p. 549.\n\n54 Tung, op. cit., p. 61.\n\n55 Bishop, op. cit., p. 95.\n\n56 Division of Public Liaison and Office of Public Information, Department of State, \"Fortnightly Survey of American Opinion on International Affairs\", Survey no. 13, confidential, 18 October, Survey no. 14, confidential, 6 November, and Survey no. 15, confidential, 20 November 1944.\n\n57 Examples of these booklets are: \"The British Commonwealth and Empire\" (May 1944), and \"Britain and Japan\" (June 1944).\n\n**See paragraph six of the Chapter of the Combined Civil Affairs Committee at Washington, FO371/46251.\n\n**SWNCC 111, 17 April 1945, op. cit.\n\nSWNCC 111, 17 April 1945, ibid.\n\n61 SWNCC 111/2, top secret, 14 June 1945, in ABC 014 Japan (13 April 44) see 32.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938",
        "rank": 0
    }
]