Chester ronning the china mission analysis

Canadian diplomat Chester Ronning with Chinese ambassador H. Yao Kuan in Photo: Library and Archives Canada. Each of the sections of this exhibit constitutes a section of the study -- this page is composed of pages The conception of a special Commission role had originally made its appearance in the period preceding the long pause, and while these various trends of thought were being carried forward through rapidly changing circumstances, the "Special emissary" idea emerged from our internal discussions.

Initially, our discussions had been cast in terms of the possibility of a senior official taking on this assignment: he would be less conspicuous under a Commission "cover" than an outsider and if he were thoroughly steeped in the intricacies of the Vietnam problem from an Ottawa point of view, he might be more sharply attuned to the subtleties of the North Vietnamese position as this might be explained in discussion in Hanoi.

This line of thought did not commend itself totally to the Minister who envisaged operating with a rather different kind of transcript illegible and at a rather different level.

Chester ronning the china mission analysis: The story continues with China-related

Thus, where officials had originally conceived a special mission to Vietnam alone, the Minister was thinking more in terms of an approach which would place a heavy concentration on China. That being the case, the logical choice for the assignment, in his view, was Chester Ronning whose knowledge of the language and some senior personalities in Peking constituted credentials which probably no other Canadian possessed; this was reinforced by the fact that Ronning had never taken up an open-ended invitation issued to him in general terms at the Geneva Conference on Laos by the Chinese Foreign Minister, Chen Yi.

Towards the end of January, the Minister directed that Ronning be brought to Ottawa for discussions. In the beginning, he had not wished Ronning to visit Saigon at all and a visit to Hanoi would be subordinate to the Peking discussions which it was hoped Ronning would have; if, in the light of these discussions, it seemed that a visit to Hanoi might be useful, Ronning would go - otherwise possibly not.