The Conference also resulted in agreement to establish a commission on extraterritoriality which was to inquire into the practise of extraterritoriality and China's legal system and to recommend improvements in the latter with a view to the eventual surrender of extraterritorial rights.
3. In the decade following the Washington Conference Britain adopted an accomodating attitude towards Chinese aspirations. British Post Offices in China suspended operations in November 1922 (one of the minor agreements of the Conference). More importantly negotiations for the rendition of the Weihaiwei lease were begun in September 1922. The negotiators reached a draft agreement in May 1923, but the Chinese side was unwilling to sign it. Negotiations were resumed, but were finally broken off following a coup in Peking in October 1924. On 18 December 1926 Britain addressed a memorandum to the other Washington Treaty Powers which proposed that the Powers announce "their readiness to negotiate on treaty revision and all other outstanding questions as soon as the Chinese themselves have constituted a Government with authority to negotiate". They should make it clear that in their constructive policy they desire to go as far as possible towards meeting the legitimate aspirations of the Chinese nation. They should abandon the idea that the economic and political development of China can only be secured under foreign tutelage, and declare their readiness to recognize her right to the enjoyment of tariff autonomy as soon as she herself has settled and
promulgated a new national tariff. They should expressly disclaim any intention of forcing foreign control upon an unwilling China. They should also "recognize both the essential justice of the Chinese claim for treaty revision and the difficulty under present conditions of negotiating new treaties in place of the old, and they should therefore modify their traditional attitude of rigid insistence on the strict letter of treaty rights".
4. In January 1927 the British concessions at Hankow (Hankou) and Kiuki ang (Jiujiang) were evacuated following outbursts of violence and looting. The administration was taken over by officials of the Chinese Nationalists, whose armies were then advancing northwards. Britain did not insist on restoration and negotiations were quickly begun for holding the administration of the Concessions back to China. Agreement on the rendition of the Hankow and Kivki ang Concessions was reached on 19 February and 2 March respectively. On 27 January Britain resulted a 7 point memorandum to the Chinese suggesting lines on which other differences might be settled. The memorandum contained an indication of Britain's willingness to discuss the status of other concessions, and in April an agreement on the British concession in Tientsin (Tianjin) was initialled.
5. The strains imposed on Sino-British relations by the Nanking incident of March 1927 were finally ameliorated in an exchange of notes in August 1928, and Britain agreed in due course to negotiations on treaty revision. The most immediate concrete result was the Tariff Treaty of December 1928 under which all
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