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from 1933-37, from 1946-49 and in January 1963, and that in September 1946 the Chinese encouraged squatters in the walled city to resist eviction by Hong Kong officials. Certain provisional conclusions can however be reached on the basis of the material referred to above, and these are probably sufficient for present purposes.
10.
Since the city appears to have been a garrison town in 1898, it seems unlikely that the Chinese intended to give, or we expected to acquire, the right to legislate for, or exercise administrative control over, the Chinese troops and their few civilian supporters who inhabited the walled city. On the contrary it appears likely that in the second paragraph of the 1898 convention (quoted in paragraph 4 above) the word "jurisdiction" was being used in the same wide sense in the first sentence as it was in the second, and meant "right to govern" as well as the right to maintain courts. There was one express limitation on the Chinese rights ie they were not to be exercised in a way which was inconsistent with the military requirements for the defence of Hong Kong. The UK on the other hand got "sole" jurisdiction over the other territories mentioned in the Convention, ie unfettered by any such limitation. It is uncertain to what extent, if any, the reference to the "remainder" of the leased territory (which implies that the walled city was part of the leased territory) was intended to imply any UK right to govern the site. It is also uncertain what was meant by "the Chinese officials now stationed there", but reliance cannot be placed on the argument that it excluded the successors of the individuals who happened to be there on the date on which the 1898 convention entered into force. In any event there is an unresolved dispute with the Chinese as to whether we were entitled in international law to eject them in 1899 and to assume government of the walled city.
11.
Attempts to exert our own jurisdiction in the walled city by compulsory acquisition of land from its inhabitants would therefore run some risk of reviving an unresolved international dispute at an inopportune time. I therefore readily concur in paragraph 1 of your teleletter of 3 August.
4. Banows
F Burrows
Legal Counsellor
5
1 October 1982
cc: Mr Walker, Research Dept
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