The Foreign Ministry opened 5,024 diplomatic records to the public for the first time on Monday. The files, mainly records of diplomatic affairs between 1949 and 1955, include telegraphs between China and Asian countries on recognition of each other, establishment of diplomatic relations and exchanges of ambassadors.

They also include some of the records of Sino-US consular and ambassadorial talks and files on the Geneva and Bandung conferences. These include materials about the Air-India Kashmir Princess event, in which a chartered flight mistakenly thought to be carrying Premier Zhou Enlai was blown up en route to the Bandung Conference in Indonesia.

China declassified for the first time a batch of diplomatic files in January this year. The Foreign Ministry says that more will be opened up "at the proper time." There are still 2,000 diplomatic files remaining from the 1949–1955 period, and files accumulated between 1956 and 1960 will be opened in late 2005 or early 2006.

According to the law on archives and related regulations, historical files should be opened to the public 30 years after their creation.

(Xinhua News Agency, China.org.cn July 20, 2004)