494
Astræn Channel effective. It is needless to point out how vital it is to the prosperity of Shanghai to have its approach by water con- served, and I venture to express the hope that diplomatic representations will bring the Centrál authority to agree that, cost what it may, the scheme for improving the Hwangpoo will be carried out without delay and to a finish. That the commercial community of Shanghai is tak ing deep interest in this work is shown by the arrangement that has been made recent- ly by their Chamber of Commerce to obtain a report from English engineers of the highest standing on the scheme that is being carried out by Mr. de Rijki. We must hope that report will set at rest the doubts which have been expressed in certain quarters regarding the scheme and put a quencher on all agitation against it.
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM.
All those connected with China will watch with interest the outcome of the recently iu- augurated Provincial Assemblies as a first at- tempt to introduce Constitutional Government in the great Empire, though other reforms-a stable currency is the chief one-may seem to many of us more pressing.
THE BOYCOTT MOVEMENT.
In former years what was known as க "Guild taboo
.was.. occasionally put in force against foreign firms when they re- fused to settle claims the considered unjust. But business was not suspended with a firm except for the direct actions of that firm. "Boycott," as recently practised by the Chinese, is of an altogether different character. It is instituted against peoples and firms who are neither responsible for, not have any connection with, the alleged grievance that is made the pretext for the boycott. The Central and Provincial authorities must be brought to recognise the necessity for adopting strong measures to eradicate this growing canker of "boycott" that has recently been so much in evidence.
HONGKONG UNIVERSITY PROJECT.
I am glad to turn to a more agreeable subject. You will have noted, I am sure, with gratifica- tion the response which has been made to Sir Frederick Lugard's appeal for funds to endow a University for Hongkong, in pursuance of Mr. Mody's munificent offer of the necessary build- ings on condition the Government would give the land and that a stated sum should be sub- scribed as an Endowment Fund. That appeal was made in January, and we were able to advertise, last month, in the Times that the sum asked for, £110,000, was practically assured. This is not the place nor is there time to enlarge on the features by which the project is inspired. The opinions we expressed when we endorsed the appeal have been fully justified. You will have noted as a gratifying feature the liberality-I might say almost the eagerness- with which our Chinese friends have contributed to the Fund. You have seen it announced also that the Home Government has consented to give £300 annually for scholarships which the King has allowed to be called King Edward VII. scholarships a fitting memento of the fact that it was under His Majesty's reign that the University was founded.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
JAPAN QUESTIONS.
[December 6, 1909.
of efficiency and integrity to Customs
come 89
which the Service has attained should be In Japan we have had fortunately few burn- ing questions to engage our attention during one of the main objects of British policy. the year. I am glad to say that as re:ards No question was at the present time more trade marks there appears a fair likelihood keenly discussed, or with greater apprehension, that piracy will not in the future be allowed the amongst Englishmen in China than the ques- license it has had in the past, and I trust that tion of Sir Robert Hart's successor when the the Japanese trader will be brought to time came-as come it must and soon for him understand that there are better ways of to lay down the reins. Few doubted that the trading than copying foreign packing and Chinese Government would fulfil the letter of trade marks in order to push the sale of their solemn engagement towards Great Britain his imitation wares. Let us hope that before by appointing a British subject, but it was many years pass the ordinary Japanese traders feared that British influence might not avail may come to be actuated by the same high to secure the appointment of a strong man whom moral tone that permeates the ranks of their te great majority of the service would wel military and naval countrymen. (Applause)
a worthy successor to Sir Robert The question of taxation of perpetual lease-Hart, and might be brought reluctantly to holders in the old Treaty Ports, which has again acquiesce in the appointment of someone less cropped up, is, I understand, receiving the fitted, by experience or by character, to maintain attention of the British Government, and I think the legitimate independence of the Customs you will agree with me that it would be indis- Service at a time when amongst the Chinese creet to comment on this occasion on a matter themselves there was a certain tendency to that is best left in diplomatic hands, and as restrict that independence and to favour those who were prepared to show greater subserviency regards the Treaty revision which is to come in
to the Chinese bureaucracy. (Applause.) For, 1911 nothing can yet be said.
if on the one hand competition with other countries, often State-aided and State-directed was growing more and more fierce, there was also a new spirit among the Chinese themselves, which manifested itself too frequently in a resentment of foreign influence and a boisterous assertion of Chinese sovereign rights against the foreigner within their gates. (Applause.) Nothing struck him more during his recent
THE MEMBERSHIP.
attention of the
I am far from having exhausted the topics which have engaged the Committee, but I have, I think, touched on the
more important, and I have only to say further that if numbers mean anything we are indeed prosperous, for there are now almost 1.100 members on the roll of the China Association, while its finances are in a most flourishing condition. (Loud applause.)
Mr. H. WHITEHEAD proposed the health of the visitors in a felicitons speech, in which he touched upon the accomplishments of some of the distinguished men gathered round the board, He conpled with the toast the name of Mr. Valentine Chirol, foreign director of the Times, whose knowledge of Near and Far Eastern matters he described as unsurpassed.
MR. CHIROL'S SPEECH.
Mr. CHIROL, in responding, spoke of his recent trip to the East and said he could not conceal his opinion that the position of this country in China was not what it was when he first went out to the Far East, just after the war between Japan and China in 1895. The British position was still a great one, but it was no longer the position of unchallenged and apparently unassailable pre-eminence which it then held. Speaking of the present position of the railway question, he admitted that under present conditions international co-operation might be more advantageous than cut-throat competition, but it should be co-operation based upon complete equality and recip rocity of treatment-(applause)-and not, as in a recent case, imposed under the compulsion of accomplished facts savouring not a little of sharp practice. (Applause.) It had been something of a shock to powerful a British him to know that so institution as the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, which had rendered immense services to the interests of Great Britain in the past, now included in its Court of Directors no small pro-, portion of German names, representing the most important German firms in the Far East, which were also the most relentless, and often the most successful, rivals of British trade and industry. (Hear, hear.) Possibly he had not We were able to announce also that a per-made sufficient allowance for the growing manent endowment has been effected of the cosmopolitanism of finance, but he would have School of Practical Chinese, which was founded liked to see these matters more reciprocity, eight years ago through the liberal subscrip- and he could not imagine representative tions of certain members of the Association, Englishmen being admitted in the same with the intention that when its success and
generous fashion to the board of the Deutsche status under the London University were as-
Asiatische Bank or other equally enterprising sured an endeavour would be made to transmute German concerns in China. (Laughter and the subscriptions into an endowment. Those
applause.) conditions have been attained, not altogether perhaps without tribulation, as Mr. Gundry, who initiated and engineered the scheme with the tenacity for which he is noted, might tell us if he were present. The School is being carried on most satisfactorily at King's College, an appeal for endowment has been gener- ously answered, and its future is assured so far as any finance can be held assured under the conditions which the Budget opens out. It is, I think, gratifying to reflect at the present juncture when the subject of Oriental studies is to the fore that this Association had, years before the movement began, realised the need and had given it practical expression.
SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL CHINESE.
!
Few questions were of greater importance for British trade, as well as for the financial credit of China, than the future of the Maritime Customs. It was a great satisfaction to know that Sir Robert Hart, one of the distinguished visitors that evening, had made up his mind to return once more to China. (Applause.) He would not do violence to Sir Robert's well known modesty by praising his life's work, but he might be allowed to give a word of praise to zhe splendid body of men whose loyal and tealous work for China under their great chief, were apt, perhaps, to be overshadowed by the unique prestige attached to his name. The maintenance of the standard
and over-
visit to China than the sudden whelming inrush of ideas within the last decade. Into what shape they would ultimately crystal- lize he would not attempt to prophesy, but certainly within twenty years' time or sooner we should have a very different China to deal with than the China of twenty years ago. With many of the aspirations of Young China they were bound to sympathise, but they should remember also the claim which the busy settlements in the Treaty Ports had upon the protection of the British Government for the rights of admin- istrative self-government, which were the charter of their prosperity. If they analysed the pre- sent situation in China it would be found that where individual energy and individual en- terprise could still achieve success, Englishmen still held their own, though the success was less marked and less assured. The failures of the weakening which he had indicated seemed to him to proceed chiefly from the fact that we had not learnt the lesson of the neces national forces, sity of co-ordination of based upon perfected methods of national education, which Germany above all had learnt, which Japan had learnt, and which the United States, though more tardily, were now showing they also had learnt. Organisation and co- operation should be the watchwords.
Passing to the excellent results of the work of the China' Association in endowing a chair for the study of Chinese in London and of Sir Frederick Lugard in the creation of the Hong- kong University, he appealed to the Imperial legislators, especially the Labour members, to re- member that British commercial interests, which included those of the manufacturing classes at Home could not be divorced from our poli- tical influence or even from British prestige, odious as that word apparently sounded in some democratic ears. (Laughter and applause.) He was dead against pavement of members, but he would cheerfully support a grant from the Treasury for sending prospective administrators and legislators round the world by Egypt and the East through Australasia and Home by Canada. (Applause.) If Englishmen in hina were determined to work hard and to pull together and to consider themselves each in his own sphere of activity to
some extent trustee for British national interests, he was confident this country would retain in the twentieth century a position not unworty of that which the British in the past century created for them in that great Empire. (Loud Applause.)
:
Mr. BYRON BRENAN, in an amusing speech, proposed the health of the Chairman, which was received with great enthusiasm. Mr. SCOTT briefly replied, after which an adjournment was made to the reception room for more exchanges of "tales of the days that are gone." The chief topic of discussion was the return of Sir Robert Hart to China. Sir Robert goes out in the