Red China and the United Nations

Report Outline
Conflict Over China's Seat in United Nations
Record of United Nations Action on Red China
Political and Legal Issues in the China Case
Special Focus

Conflict Over China's Seat in United Nations

Rise of New Factors Since Last General Assembly

Representation of Red China in the United Nations—an issue that hag been contested for nearly five years in every principal forum of the world organization—will be in the forefront of political discussion again when the General Assembly convenes on Sept. 21 for its ninth regular session. New factors have entered the picture since the Assembly dealt with the matter a year ago. The Indo-China truce, agreed to at Geneva on July 21, has revived pressure in some countries to reopen the question of Chinese representation, and several U.N. member states which formerly voted to put off consideration of the issue are said to favor taking it up now. At the same time, other developments have stiffened opposition in the United States to seating Red China.

The question of Chinese representation in the United Nations is complicated by differences, not only between the free world and the Communist world, but also between some of the nations of the free world. Burma, Ceylon, India, and Indonesia, for example, held aloof from the recent Manila conference on Southeast Asian security. India, in particular, frowned upon American efforts to organize collective defense measures against Communist aggression in Asia; instead, it urged a policy of conciliation to ease tensions. And at Geneva the United States did not see eye to eye with Britain and France on terms of the Indo-China truce; it declined to join in the final declaration of the conference or to participate in the arrangements for enforcing the armistice. Such differences of approach to the Communist problem in the Far East have their counterparts in the attitudes of the respective countries on Chinese representation in the world organization.

Opposition of United States to Seating Red Chinac

The long-standing opposition of the United States to seating the Chinese Communists in the United Nations was reaffirmed by President Eisenhower during the final stages of the Geneva parley. At a news conference, July 7, the President said he was “completely and unalterably opposed under the present situation to the admission of Red China into the United Nations,” and he thought that “95 percent of the population of the United States would take the same stand.” Secretary of State Dulles the following day again made plain the intention of the American government to use all its influence to prevent the admission of Red China, under existing conditions, to any of the major organs of the United Nations. Dulles declared that the United States would use the veto if necessary to keep the Peiping regime out of the Security Council, the only U.N. organ in which a veto is applicable.