7
146
would pay, for good facilities for travelling in. duce people to travel. It would be quite possi- ble to build vessels of the ordinary type with draught shallow enough for the low water
season.
PASSENGER TRAFFIC,
From the opening of the port until the end December the number of Chinese passengers carried by the vessels which reported to the Foreign Customs was 22,814, or at an average, of over 100 a day. Of these. 13,284 were passengers inwards, and 9,530 were outwards. It is difficult to find ont what became of the surplus of passengers inwards, which amounted to nearly 4,000. The population of Wuchow has increased during the period, but not to this extent. I believe a good many returned down river in the sternwheel boats, which do not report to us, and also that many weut to, and have remained at, places inland where the trade has been increased by the transit facilities. In time to come we shall see a very considerable passenger traffic on the West River. Comfort able boats are what is wanted: theu travelling will be a pleasure that many will indulge in for the sake of itself.
TREASURE.
I regret that I am unable to say much under this head, as treasure is not shipped throngh our office; it is principally carried to and from the port by the Likin launches, which are coming and going all the time. Its import has been considerable, however. There is a great difference between the state of the money market in Wuchow now and when the port was opened. Then it was very difficult to get a cheque for $100 or over cashed except in 10 or 20 cent pieces, which were the standard silver coins of the place, and, besides, the banks would hardly cash Hongkong cheques at all; now dollar pieces are plentiful, and the Customs bank will cash foreign cheques bearing the signature of anyone they know another proof of how the city has benefited under the -new state of things.
OPIUM.
Foreign. Hardly any foreign opium is cou sumed in this province, the hoine-grown article! being used by nearly all smokers, ou account of its cheapness. It is scarcely worth while even to smuggle the foreign article, because even without duty it could not be sold as cheaply as the native, and nobody would hug it except a few who had acquired the taste for it.
hero from
Native Native opium comes Szechwan, Yunnan, and Kweichow, and I have been told that the quantity which annually arrives in the place amonnts to as much as 6,000 piculs. Of course very little of this is retained for local consumption; most of it goes on down the river to Canton and other places. In so far as I know there is no opium produced in Kwangsi. All native drug entering the pro- vince pays duty at the rate of about. Tls. 6- picul, the collection being farmed out to a syndicate which pays the Government Tls. 36,000 annually for the privilege. Yunnan opium is considered the best here, and sells at the rate of about Tls. 350 a pienl the other two varieties are about Tls. 50 a picul cheaper.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Since the opening of the port various signs of new life are apparent in the place; business has received an impetus and population has been increased by the influx of those attracted by new openings for enterprise. Prices of land, building materials, market produce, and labour have gone up all round, because there is more money in the place and more people willing to spend it. Direct communication with the out- side world, too, has made the geutry and officials desirous of affording facility for the acquire- ment of Western knowledge, and in the summer a school was opened by the Prefect and the head of the Likin for the purpose of teaching Foreign arithmetic and English. Two Chinese teachers from Hongkong were engaged. and the number of pupils is now about 40. The instruction is given free except that each pupil
has to contribute an entrance fee of $5 for the purchase of books and stationery.
The trade of Wuchow may in the future be alversely affected by French railway exten- sion from Tonkin. The line to Nan-ning will no doubt in time become an accomplished fact, and then competition will commence in earnest between the rival routes to that place It is
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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1
not certain, however, that the rail will be cheaper than the river. At present a bale of cotton yarn, for example, can be sent to Nan-ning from Hongkong vid Wuchow for about $7, all duties included; and it remains to be seen if the route vid Haiphong will be as cheap. I scarcely think so, considering that there will be between 200 and 300 miles of railway carriage to pay for. The transport will be more rapid, but the Chinese will not care much for this advantage except they can have that of cheapness also.
I send with this report a map, which will give an idea of port arrangements; it shows the various sections of the anchorage as well as the position of the city and the various places and objects of local importance. I also send a dia- gram, which exhibits the rise and fall of the river from June to December. Last year the water rose high, but not exceptionally so, the high-water mark having been about 7 feet below that of the year 1885; however, in this latter year the foods were, I believe, the highest on record for many years.
The number of Europeans at present living in Wuchow amounts to 24. No Foreign houses have been built as yet, but the hills which line the river banks afford splendid sites, and in a year or two we may expect to see the place adorned by a few edifices, which will make Wuchow one of the healthiest and pleasantest ports for residence in China.
The usual résumé of the value of the trade is appended-
Hk. Tls.
Net foreign imports, market value..... 1,392,415 Net native imports, market value
47,394
1,439,809 47.949
.1,391,860
Net imports Deduct duties and likin paid at Wuchow
Net in ports, minus duty Deduct 7 per cent. for importers'
profit, etc
97,430
Imports, value at moment of landing 1,294,436
Original exports, market value Add daty paid at Wuchow...
Exports, plus duty
Add 8 per cent. on market value for
exporters' profit, etc....
Hk. Tls. 472,902 12,123
485,025 37,832
Exports, value at moment of shipment 522,857
THE LU-HAN RAILWAY CONTRACT
•
Shanghai, 1st August. The China Association have lost no time in dealing with the highly important disclosures made in the China Gazette of Wednesday and Thursday last, showing the real nature of the tion and working of the Lu-Han Railway, A Belgian Syndicate's contract for the construc- special meeting of the Committee of the Asso- ciation was held this morning, Mr. E. F. Alford presiding, when the terms of the con- tract. as published in the China Gazette, were strong telegram was forwarded to the Lon. earnestly discussed, with the result that a
don branch of the Association, with object of impressing upon the British Go- the Russian Government in disguise, and that rerament that the Belgian Syndicate is only British, and indeed all other interests but Rus- sian, in Central China and the Yangtsze Valley, will be most seriously imperilled if the contract auspices. The extraordinary statement of the is ratified and the railway built under Russian
Hon. Cocksure Curzon in the House of Commons, that Sir Claude Macdonald had Chinese assur. ances that there was no Russian interest in the
I
the
Lu-Han Railway Į roject, can only be reconciled with the idea that Sir Claude had not the terms of the contract before him when he communicat- ed these assurances to the Foreign Office. He is probably of a different opinion now since the China Gazette of the 26th and 27th ult. reached the Legation, which it probably did to-day. In any case it is satisfactory to learn that the British Government regards China's promises not to alienate the Yangtsze Valley as "definite and binding." If the Government would only insist upon the defining of the boundaries of the Yangisze Valley it would be, more to the
August 13, 1898.
point. But at present both France and Russia are acting with complete contempt for all such assurances. What the British Premier will do when he finds that the Tsung-li Yamen was deliberately lying to the British Govern- ment over the Lu-Han contract remains to be seen. If anything will stir the swivelled-tailed British lion out of his torpor it ought to be this daring attempt of Russia, by the aid of French money, to crowd him out of the Yangtze Valley, as this Russian controlled railway will assured- ly have the effect of doing. From a commercial and political point of view this railway is cal- culated to damage British and other commercial interests in China to an infinitely greater ex- tent than they have been damaged, or are likely to bo damaged, by the Russian coup in Liao- tung and North China. In any country but China Sheng would have been impeached for treason long ago. This is the crowning act of treachery in his whole career, for he knows very well the true inwardness of the Belgian contract better than any man. It is highly significant that Sheng Taotai's beautiful tele- graph lines to Peking are again "interrupted' just at the time when communications with Peking might have an awkward effect for the project that he is so deeply interested to see succeed. It looks as if Sheng has deliberately cat Sir Claude Macdonald off from communica- tiou with his Government to carry his trea- cherous scheme through.-China Gazette.
THE LU-BAN RAILWAY.
It will be remembered, says the China Daily Progress, that on June 28th we published an Imperial edict dated June 26th ordering Sheng Taotai to push forward the construction of the Lu-Han Railway with all expedition, and also to report at once to the Emperor on the existing condition of the enterprise. Sheng has now obeyed the second of these two orders and pre- sented his Imperial master with a report dated the 16th inst., of which the following are the leading articles :-
The document opens with a formal expression of submission to the Imperial will and a re- production of the Edict in obedience to which the report is made. A very loose record of events in connection with the enterprise from the date of its inception in the 9th moon, 22nd year of Kwang-hsu (1896) when Sheng along with Wang Wen-shao, Viceroy of Chibli, and Chang Chih-tung, Viceroy of the Liang-hu, were ordered to take charge of the project, until the present time, is included.
Since that date." says Sheng, "there has not passed a single day in which I failed to devote my best energies to the work. I have had the country through which the line will pass sur- veyed by foreigu and Chinese engineers. I
have purchased land and material, and I have He theu goes
partially constructed the line." on to say that schools of railway engineering have been established at Tientsin and Hankow, and that arrangements have been made at various centres for the opening of factories for the production of railway material and gear. “The performance of all these duties," says Sheng,
onght to be sufficient to convince your Majesty that I have been neither dilatory nor negligent in obeying your august wishes.'
He then proceeds to state that he expects the
Paoting-fu will be completed this year, and the section of the line between Lu Chia-kao and Shanghai-Woosung line in a few months. The most lifficult section of the main line is that from Hankow to Niehkao; the intervening coun- try is to a great extent marsh land, extremely liable to floods in summer-time, and the work was often seriously retarded by the intrusion of the waters. At the beginning of the present warm season, however, steps were taken to con. struct embankments to prevent inundations, and it was hoped that these works would prove an efficient protection against the summer floods in future. Another matter which seriously ham. pered work on this section was the want of suf ficient capital, and on this subject of want of funds Sheng waxes very eloquent and philosophic. Many things in this world," he remarks, are easier to plan than to execute, which reflection applies in an especially appropriate manner to railway pro- jects. At first we arranged to procure the money for this Lu-Han line from the subjects
L