Dag Hammarskjöld’s Mission to China

Dag Hammarskjöld’s mission to China joined a high-stakes diplomatic effort with the private religious practice that his colleagues seldom saw. As United Nations Secretary-General, he travelled to negotiate the release of American airmen held by China, where competing accounts of their capture and the question of China’s place in the United Nations made every assurance consequential.

Background and Stakes

During the Korean War, a Chinese court convicted eleven American airmen of spying, saying they had violated Chinese airspace. The United States maintained that they had been over North Korea. China was already holding four other American jet pilots who had been shot down, and the additional captives intensified existing hostilities.

The mission unfolded amid an approaching United Nations resolution condemning China for violating the Armistice Agreement by holding the airmen. China wanted admission to the United Nations, but faced substantial opposition. Hammarskjöld knew he could not promise that outcome, limiting what he could offer even as he sought to negotiate the airmen’s release.

The Journey and Negotiations

On the long flight to China, Hammarskjöld considered what to say and how he might be received. He copied verses from Psalm 139 into his journal, words expressing the assurance that divine guidance reaches even to the farthest limits of the sea. The private act accompanied a mission whose public outcome was uncertain.

After landing in Peking, Hammarskjöld met Premier Chou En-lai. Their negotiations were long and delicate. The mission did not bring an immediate resolution: many months passed before the airmen were finally released.

Public Mission and Private Faith

The episode presents Hammarskjöld at once as diplomat and religious mystic. His journal entry does not settle the political questions before him, but places the journey within a language of guidance and dependence on God. That inward record contrasts with the careful public negotiations, whose limits were shaped by the conflicting positions of the United States and China and by the United Nations debate over Chinese membership.

The account also looks forward to the later discovery of Hammarskjöld’s journal after his death in a plane crash in 1961. Published as Markings, it disclosed to associates a religious side of the Secretary-General that few had sensed. The China mission thus stands as a practical diplomatic undertaking and, in retrospect, an early glimpse of the hidden spiritual life revealed by his writings.