O’Neill passed on US position on the Sino-US talks in Geneva to Zhou. Zhou and O’Neil exchanged the positions of both countries regarding the talks and the dispute regarding the repatriation of the Chinese and American nationals to their country of origins.

Zhou asked O’Neill to convey China’s opinions on the date and time of the first Geneva talk and a draft of Sino-US joint communiqué to the US government.

O’Neill passed on a draft joint news release from the US regarding the date of the first Sino-US Ambassadorial Talk. Zhou first disputed with O’Neil that the US calling the PRC capital "Peiping" instead of "Beijing/Peking" in the draft was disrespectful to China. Then, Zhou said that the Chinese government needed some time to consider the time suggested by the US as well as the wording of the draft. He did not accept the explanation from O’Neill regarding the draft per se and the name the US used in the draft.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry sends instructions for the Sino-American ambassadorial talks.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry suspected that China’s release of 11 American spies had put pressure on the US side, making the US open to the idea of having a higher level meeting. The Foreign Ministry instructed the Chinese representatives to urge the US to promise to release Chinese students in the US in the next meeting, and also urge the US to accept the suggestion of bringing in third country (India) to help the release process, including financial support.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry instructed Wang Bingnan how to counter-argue when Americans objected China’s suggestions regarding release of Chinese students in the US.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry instructed Chinese Representative Wang Bingnan to have the following major agreements in writing on the fifth meeting:
(1) Any nationals who were willing to return to their countries should be granted permission;
(2) China designated India and the US designated the UK to facilitate the repatriation of each other’s nationals.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry instructed the Chinese delegation how to respond to different attitudes the US delegation might have in the next meeting.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry estimated the issues that the US would raise in the next meeting, including the wording in the agreement and whether to issue a joint statement or separated ones, and instructed Chinese Representative Wang Bingnan the proper responses.

The Foreign Ministry instructed that Wang to emphasize two points to be included in the agreement in the next meeting:
(1) The Americans who had litigations in China should not be repatriated unconditionally;
(2) Both governments were able to represent their own citizens to delegate the third party to arrange their repatriation and to investigate difficult cases, if any.