SOUTH-WEST CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
C. O.
[March 10/130
SECTION 1:22 MAR 04'
150
Sir,
No. 1.
India Office to Foreign Office-(Received March 10.)
India Office, March 9, 1904.
I AM directed by Mr. Secretary Brodrick to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 19th February, relative to the undelimited frontier between Burmah and China in the neighbourhood of the N'Maikha River.
In reply, I am to say that the telegram from the Government of Burmah of the 23rd December, 1903, inclosed in the letter from the Government of India of the 7th January, 1904,* appears to indicate that the case for claiming as British territory the country draining into the N'Maikha River rests upon the grounds stated in the letter from the Government of Burmah of the 3rd May, 1900, which formed the tenth inclosure in the letter from the Government of India of the 14th June, 1900, forwarded to the Foreign Office with Sir H. Walpole's letter of the 18th July, 1900.
No further evidence bearing directly on the nature of the rights of the Chinese Government in the N'Maikha Valley has been received from India, but it seems possible that the "subsequent correspondence" referred to in the telegram from the Government of Burmah of the 23rd December, 1903, may refer to Consul Litton's report of the 30th January, 1903. That report, however, gives no definite information on the subject of Chinese rights, but treats the territory in question as practically unappropriated, the claims of China based on control or jurisdiction being described as of the most shadowy nature, while those of Burmali are regarded as resting on geographical and ethnographical considerations.
As to the passage in Mr. Adamson's report of the 23rd May, 1900, referring to proofs in support of the fact that "the Chinese have never governed the tract in question," to which Sir E. Satow calls attention, it seems probable that the evidence referred to by Mr. Adamson is the same as that contained in the above-mentioned letter of the 3rd May, 1900, from the Government of Burmah.
In these circumstances, Mr. Brodrick has requested the Government of India, by telegraph, to furnish Sir E. Satow with any further evidence that they may be able to supply disproving the contention of the Chinese Government as to their rights in the tracts in the N'Maikha Valley claimed by them.
I have, &c.
(Signed) A. GODLEY.
* Sent to Foreign Office, January 28, 1904.
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