502
AFTER THE ALLIED OCCUPA- TION.
[June 22, 1901.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
rejected, and after leading it into the jaws sador in London, on the 4th October, 1900, of destruction has finally ended by plunging | in which the following bases of negotiations the state into even worse difficulties than it were suggested by the French Government had to face at the beginning. If matters for consideration:-Punishment of the chief had gone no further than this, a little in- culprits; maintenance of the prohibition of sistance would possibly have been efficient the import of arms; equitable indemnities in bringing affairs to a conclusion, but the for States, societies, and individuals; 03- measures being taken to induce the return tablishment of a permanent Legation guard of the Court are unfortunately being made at Peking; disinantlement of the Taku use of to bring about a reaction. Conscious Forts; military occupation of two or three of our failure when opposed to so accom- points between Tientsin and Taku. The plished an manipulator as I we have French Government thought it "impossible gone into the other extreme, and left to him that such legitimate conditions, presented and the Court clique almost a free hand. collectively by the representatives of the Little indications from time to time indicate Powers, and supported by the presence of the line of policy intended to be pursued by the international troops, should fail to be these worthies. The Futai of Shensi who at speedily accepted by the Chinese Govern- the beginning declined to follow the example ment.' With the discussion of these terms, of the notorious Yu HSIEN is only the first their modification, and the phrasing of the marked out for vengeance; and
we demand on the Chinese Government, the studiously decline to interfere, and stand Blue Book is chiefly engaged. To the French by while he is being made the subject of proposals all the Governments adhered in persecution. The Futai of Shensi as the principle, na Lord SALISBURY stated in a weakest is only the first selected for ven. geauce. The appetite for crime increases with its enjoyment, and the victims are not intended to end with one martyr. No man has incurred so deeply as the Vicer Nanking the insatiable batred of the Dowager Tsz'HI; she has been foiled so far, but she is not a woman to pause when the end is the destruction of an enemy who has stood in her way; and if we weakly permit this last reactionary effort to once gain headway, we shall have to answer before many months are past for a revival of the horrors of last June.
(Daily Press, 17th June.) That it would be better for all concerned that China should work out her own salva- tion is a sentiment in which all may agree, and the only question to the front is whether or not there is any evidence that there is enough vitality left in the body politic to recover from the shock of the past twelve months. If we examine into what has been the result of our occupation of Chibli, the same reply meets us from every side that, except in the spots actually garrisonned by the foreign troops, the state of disorganisation of the country is far worse than before the occupa- tion. This is not a reassuring statement, yet it is the plain fact, and one that affords much cause for reflection. That both sides are to blame is, we fear, indisputable; on the one side the foreigner has done many things that have not tended to raise him in the estimation of the inhabitants, and on the other the officials with whom we descended to treat were themselves too deeply involved in the continuance of abuses to desire to bring about any real understanding. While such was the character of the so-called peace envoys, the Court that they represented was equally suspicious of its self-appointed eunissaries and of its people at large. Even before the palace coup d'état the breach between Peking and the provinces has been growing daily wider; the supercession of the Emperor and the reign of folly that succeeded served only to widen the breach; while our forced acceptance as a go-between of the ex-Viceroy Ĩ HUNG-CHANG, who had lost the confidence of both sovereign and viceroys by his traitorous intrigues with Russin, only comple ed the confusion. It formed no part of Lr's plan to bring about a reconciliation; a persona grata to no party, whichever came uppermost he had nothing to hope for, and his only prospect lay in preventing an understanding, and his entire energies have been devoted to this end. The Court and its surroundings had equally no desire to bring about a reconciliation, end in this point alone it consistently worked with the arch intriguer. On the other hand the great viceroys were sincerely desirous for the restoration of order, and in this they were unexpectedly assisted by the Governor of Shantung. LIU KUNG-YI openly declined to follow the reactionary party in its career of madness, and was sufficiently strong to engage in the cause of order his colleague in the Hu provinces; the Futai of Shensi, Manchu though he was, refused to have his province made a
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BLUE BOOK, CHINA NO. 5.
£
at
(Daily Press, 18th June.) The Blue Book, China No. 5 (1901), which reached this Colony by Sunday's French mail, is entitled Further far- respondence concerning the Disturbances in China, and takes up the story from the point at which it stopped in China No. 1 (1901). It commences with a letter from Sir. F. PLUNKETT to the Marquis of SALISBURY, dated Vienna, 27th September, 1900, and terminates with one from Lord LANSDOWNE to Sir E. SATOW on the 31st December. As is usually the case with Blue Books there is little contained in the correspondence that is new.
Light is thrown on the rather tortuous negotiations among the Powers themselves and between them and China over the punishment of the officials guilty of complicity in the 80- called Boxer" rising and the viola- tion of the sanctity of ambassadors. From the Blue Book the attitudes of the
04
communication to Sir E. MONSON on the
17th October. He himself, on behalf of the British Government, agreed to the basis, subject to cach Power holding a fort of its own on the Tientsin-Taku road, instead of the forts being garrisoned internationally. The United States accepted the French basis under reserve, and wished the Powers to make a collective declaration of their deter- mination to preserve the territorial integrity and the administrativeentirety of China, with open and equal commercial intercourse be- tween China and the world. On the 23rd. November Sir E. SATOW telegraphed to Lord LANSDOWNE the news of the actual drafting of the Note and on the 24th that all the Ministers were agreed upon the text. However, the Government of the United States was not perfectly satisfied and urged that the negotiations might be shipwrecked by insisting upon conditions too difficult of performance for China, and from which it would be impossible for the Powers to draw back, and Mr. HAY objected more particu- larly to the use of the words "irrevocable conditions." On the 7th December Sir E. SATow telegraphed that authority to sign the note had been received by the United States Minister and to retain the word "irrevoca- ble." However, it was not until the 22nd December that Mr. CONGER actually signed the Note, in which the word “irrevocable was retained, but "absolutely" omitted. On the 24th of the same month the Note, duly signed, was presented to Prince CHING, and four days later the Imperial Decree was communicated by the Chinese plenipotentia- ries in which the Emperor accepted the
focus of disorder, and fortunately in the various Powers stand out more clearly than principles laid down in the twelve Articles
long run the newly appointed Viceroy of the two Kwangs, TAO Mu, was sufficiently patriotic to follow the like course.
On the one hand then we have the curious spectacle that the nominal government of the Empire is bent on carrying on to the end those principles of misgovernment that have re. duced the state to its present condition, while the most powerful of the provincials are equally determined to maintain within their jurisdictions the universal principles of law and order. To a certain extent our Government has had the good sense to see this and act on it, and on the Yangtsze at least has succeeded in maintaining a good understanding with the viceroys had it pursued a like course in the north, there is some evidence that its efforts there might have been equally successful. It, however, preferred there to coquette with the elements of disorder; and the conse quence is that after eight months of in- effectual effort, the man of its choice has proved the truth of the advice given, but
1
before, but otherwise the documents before serve mainly to confirm what we have learnt before from unofficial and semi-official sources.
One of the earliest documents of interest is a letter from Lord SALISBURY to Sir F. LASCELLES, dated the 2nd October, in which is the purport of a conversation with Count| HATZFELDT. To the German proposals on the question of punishment, Lord SALIS- BURY made two reservations. He would not agree to the participation of British troops in any expedition to the west of the Province of Chibli to ensure that certain offenders were at all costs to be arrested; and considered that, in the event of China refusing to deliver the offenders, Her Majesty's Government must retain liberty of action to enter into any agreements with the Chinese Government which it might be
to the interests of Great Britain to make.
The actual starting point of negotiations was a memorandum communicated to Lord SALISBURY by M. CAMBON, French ambas
presented in their entirety.
THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND THE GOVERNMENT.
(Daily Press, 19th June.) It may not unnaturally have caused a little surprise that at the recent meeting of the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce certain members should have thought it necessary to attempt to explain away a very reasonable letter of the Chamber to the local Government with regard to the sanita- tion of the Colony. In particular, those who remember the strong position taken up. by the same Chamber in the great plague year, 1894, will wonder what has happened since then to furnish any reason for the timid opinions expressed on the 11th instant. With so excellent a precedent to follow, surely the Chamber had every cause to write as they did in their letter of the 7th instant. The Chairman spoke at the monthly meeting of his "holy horror of interference in any way in local politics."