CAB129-33 — Page 392

Page 392

Printed for the Cabinet. March 1949

201

SECRET

C.P. (49) 67

17th March, 1949

CABINET

Copy No.

31

SIR WILLIAM STRANG'S TOUR IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA AND THE FAR EAST

NOTE BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

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I attach, for the information of my colleagues, a report prepared for me by Sir William Strang on his recent visit to South-East Asia and the Far East.

E. B. ̈.

Foreign Office, S. W. 1, 17th March, 1949.

REPORT BY SIR WILLIAM STRANG

I. Introductory

I give below some notes on my recent journey in South-East Asia and the Far East. They are not exhaustive. It would be tedious to set down all that I heard or noted. What I have tried to do is to pick out the more important trends and note the more significant facts, not for the benefit of the specialist Departments, but as being of possible interest to the general reader, who will, I hope, draw from this paper some impression of current preoccupations and the play of forces in this important region. In the present introductory section I make some more general observations. If I have, in places, strayed beyond the strict limits of Foreign Office concern, I hope I may be excused.

2. I had no other mission than to educate myself, to meet His Majesty's Representatives in the foreign countries visited, to tell them about developments at home, to give them a picture of the foreign situation as seen from Europe and, generally, to demonstrate the interest of the Foreign Office in Far Eastern and South-East Asian affairs. I spent some days each in Karachi, Delhi, Rangoon, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Batavia, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo, and spent nights in transit at Alexandria and Calcutta. I had talks with the Heads of Missions and with their chief advisers, political, economic, financial, labour and information. I was received by the leading Ministers in each of the countries visited. I made a point of meeting and talking to the representatives of Commonwealth countries, the United States, France, Benelux and China. I saw leading members of the British Community in each place. The British Chambers of Commerce at Hong Kong and Shanghai entertained me, and I addressed them. I walked through the offices of each of His Majesty's Missions and spoke to as many members of the staff as possible, of all grades. At the request of the Heads of the Mission I gave a talk to the members of the staff at Delhi and Tokyo; and at the request of the Commissioner-General for South- East Asia, Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, I did the same at Bukit Serene to a party of British, Malayan and Chinese notables.

3. It Page 1393b9fr

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that my journey, undertaken moltagỷ Wing-48&t, covered the central and eastern parts of the sea-girt periphery, or what the

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oliticians call the Rimland, which skirts the Heartland of Fogope and Asia which is at present in large measure under Soviet control, and the fate of the western part of which is now at issue in the current battle for Berlin. I was interested to find that the significance of that battle is not diminished but rather enhanced when looked at from the Far East.

4. The importance of our maintaining control of the periphery, which runs round from Oslo to Tokyo, of denying it to communism, and, if possible, defending it against military attack, needs no emphasis. Nor is it less important, from the point of view of the framing of policy, that we should try to look on the periphery as a whole. I found the germ of this thought in the minds of many of our representatives, and also the thought that there should not only be a United Kingdom policy, but, if possible, a Commonwealth policy (in spite of divergencies of outlook); and that that policy should, if possible, be concerted with the United States, since American resources would be indispensable.

5. In all this, the Indian sub-continent has a special importance. It lies at a place about half-way round the periphery. If India tends to look eastwards, Pakistan looks both east and west. The sub-continent should not be regarded in isolation as a separate section. India, in particular, has an important rôle to play in peripheral politics as a Great Asian Power; as a possible member of the Commonwealth; as a country with whom the United Kingdom has now an opportunity to develop relations on a new basis; as a country with political, cultural and economic interests in South-East Asia, which we should try to carry with us in the framing of policies and the development of action in that region. The Delhi Conferences on Indonesia and Burma may be pointers to the future.

6. From this peripheral point of view, the establishment of the Middle East Office in Cairo and the Commissioner-General's Office in Singapore were moves in the right direction. The need for them has not diminished. I found the minds of some of His Majesty's Representatives turning in the direction of, say, yearly regional meetings of Heads of Missions, and of the association of Commanders-in-Chief, Colonial Governors, and United Kingdom High Commis- sioners or their representatives in some measure, if possible, with such conferences. The suggested groupings for this purpose might be first, from Greece or Turkey round to Pakistan, and secondly, from Pakistan to Japan. For the first group or part of it, the suggestion would be for a meeting in London next summer. For the second, a meeting similar to that recently held in Singapore, but with more extended membership than before, and some co-ordination with the similar conference of Colonial Governors. This would carry with it close contact between the Foreign Office, Colonial Office and Commonwealth Relations Office in London. It would also be useful if senior officials of the Foreign Office could visit South- East Asia and the Far East from time to time, possibly about the period of the Singapore meetings.

7. There is a good deal that is dark in the Far Eastern picture, but there are some brighter features. On the darker side are-

(a) the ever-present food shortage, which will be a long-term problem for India and Japan and may be an immediate one for Shanghai if United States assistance is cut short;

(b) the present disorders in Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and Indo-China; (c) the revolution in China and the menace that it brings for South-East Asia with its great Chinese communities and for foreign interests in the whole area;

(d) the need of all these countries, in greater or lesser degree, for outside

financial assistance;

(e) the population problem in Japan, which the war has done nothing to cure but, indeed, has tended to intensify, and any attempt to solve which must, at the best, mean strong and growing competition with United Kingdom exporters and may, at the worst, in the long run, bring some new Japanese explosion.

On the brighter side we may note→→

(f) the success of the International Emergency Food Council and the Page 3950mmissioner-General's Office in secuping fair allocation and due delivery of the rice crop, thus making the most of available resources;

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(9) the buoyancy of rice production in Siam and of tin and rubber productio

in Mislaya401