Wang Bingnan Predicts US 'Soft Approaches' to Free Prisoners
By Vera Kessler ·
US prisoners held in China were the target of tactical 'soft approaches' at a 1955 dinner, while the contents of a mysterious 'Agenda II' remain blacked out.
At 10:45 p.m. on August 20, 1955, Wang Bingnan sent a cable to the Foreign Ministry. The message was brief, urgent, and entirely speculative. A United States representative had invited him to dinner, and Wang needed to know if his intuition regarding the menu of conversation was correct.
The document, an English translation from the Cold War International History Project, captures a moment of high-stakes guessing. Wang was not reporting on a meeting that had occurred; he was preparing for one. For a diplomat operating in the rigid hierarchies of the People's Republic of China, a private dinner invitation from the adversary is not a social grace—it is a tactical opening.
August 20, 1955
Wang Bingnan is known in the public record as a veteran diplomat and foreign affairs official of the Chinese Communist Party. By 1955, he was navigating the frozen landscape of Sino-American relations in an era where formal diplomatic ties did not exist. The cable shows him attempting to map the intentions of his American counterpart before stepping into the room.
Wang predicts four primary objectives for the US representative. The first is a desire to "explain the unfavorable US situation" and a wish to "improve Sino-American relations." In the eyes of the PRC, the "unfavorable situation" likely referred to the American strategic position in Asia following the Korean War and the tightening of the containment policy. To Wang, the American invitation was not a gesture of friendship, but an "attempt to break a deadlock."
"Soft approaches"
While the first point dealt with the broad geopolitical atmosphere, the second point was far more concrete: the fate of US nationals held in China. Wang suspected the Americans would use "soft approaches" to secure their release.
In the grammar of the Cold War, a "soft approach" usually meant bypassing formal demands in favor of personal appeals, dinner-table promises, or indirect incentives. Wang warned his superiors that the Americans would "continue to probe our bottom line on the release of US nationals."
This phrasing reveals the nature of the encounter. The dinner was to be a reconnaissance mission. The US representative was not there to negotiate a final treaty, but to feel for the edges of the PRC's resolve. The "bottom line" was the only currency that mattered; everything else—the wine, the food, the polite conversation—was merely the medium through which that line was sought.
Agenda II
The cable concludes with two further predictions. First, that the Americans would "feel out our attitude toward the improvement of Sino-American relations," and second, that they would "probe our opinions regarding Agenda II."
The record provided does not explain what "Agenda II" entailed. It remains a blank space in the cable, a piece of internal shorthand known to Wang and the Foreign Ministry but opaque to the reader. Whether it referred to a specific set of diplomatic proposals, a trade arrangement, or a security framework, its inclusion suggests a structured American effort to move the relationship beyond a mere stalemate.
Wang does not offer his own opinion on these topics, nor does he suggest how he intends to answer. He simply lists the predicted topics and asks a single, deferential question: "Are they fitting?"
Instructions from Beijing
Wang's closing request, "Please instruct," transforms the cable from a status report into a plea for a script. In the diplomatic culture of the PRC, the margin for improvisation was thin. A dinner conversation could be interpreted as an official overture or a betrayal of the party line. Wang was seeking a mandate for what to concede and what to guard.
Related records regarding the broader context of this period exist within the US National Archives' records of US-China ambassadorial talks and the FRUS volumes on the 1950s, though this specific cable focuses solely on the anticipatory anxiety of the Chinese official.
The cable ends there. It does not record the Ministry's reply, nor does it describe the dinner itself. It leaves open the question of whether the US representative's actual topics matched Wang's predictions, or if the "soft approaches" managed to shift the bottom line on the American prisoners.