The Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
4
Matter sentimental objections have more justification than fiscal forebodings. I doubt if Yunnan opium, conveyed viâ Burmah to Canton, would be much more serious rival to the Patna and Malwa drug than is now the same opium conveyed thither viâ Kuangsi. But I think that the suggestion to relax the rule should come from the other side; and, for obvious reasons, this suggestion should be cast in general terms, and should be, so to speak, for value received. To put it plainly, I would have the Yunnan Government (moved thereto by the Commissioner of Customs at Tengyüeh) propose to the Burmah Government that, in exchange for permission to import salt into Yunnan (or into Yungchang Prefecture) the Burmah Government should agree to allow all Yünnan products (except copper cash) to pass through Burmah to Kuangtung on payment of a transit charge of, let us say, one-eighth of the export duty.
I fear, however, that on trial it would be found that the objections of the Yunnan Government to such a proposal are not less deeply rooted than any on the British side of the frontier.
I have, &c.
(Signed)
W. H. WILKINSON,
SOUTH-WEST CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
No. 1.
159
[May 9.]
SECTION 4.
Sir E. Satow to the Marquess of Lansdowne.-(Received May 9.) (No. 86.)
Peking, March 14, 1904.
My Lord,
IN continuation of my despatch No. 43 of the 3rd February, I have the honour to transmit a translation of the note which I have received from Prince Ching in reply to mine of the 30th January, with reference to the proposed boundary between Burmah and China north of latitude 25° 35'.
Copies of this reply are also being sent to the Indian Government and to the Lieutenant-Governor of Burmah under flying seal for His Majesty's Consul-General at Yunnan-fu.
I have, &c. (Signed)
ERNEST SATOW,
Your Excellency,
Inclosure in No. 1.
Prince Ching to Sir E. Satow.
March 11, 1904.
ON the 30th January the Board had the honour to receive your note to the effect that by Article IV of the Burmah Convention of 1894, which remained unchanged by the Convention of 1897, the portion of the Burmah-Yünnan frontier which lies to the north of latitude 25° 35′ north was reserved for a future understanding, when the features and conditions of the country were more accurately known; that on the 28th July, 1898, Sir Claude MacDonald addressed a note to the Tsung-li Yamen inviting them to issue orders that no attempt was to be made to exercise Chinese authority on the west of the range forming the watershed between the NMaikha and Salween Rivers; that the Yamen had replied that the note had been sent to Yüunan; that no objection was expressed at the time or during the whole of the following year; that since 1900 the region in question had been more carefully examined by British officers, the result being to show the watershed of all streams that drain into the N Maikha, or Little River, from the east is the most satisfactory and most easily recognizable natural boundary; that this boundary, which has been treated as a provisional boundary hitherto, your Excellency is instructed by His Majesty's Government to inform the Chinese Government that they intend henceforth to regard as the actual boundary between China and Burmah unless and until a settlement is reached, and that if this frontier be not respected, and armed forces be sent across it from the Yunnan side, there will be risk of their coming into collision with British troops.
Your Excellency added that you were instructing His Majesty's Consul-General in Yunnan to make a similar communication to the Viceroy of Yunnan, and that, in view of the fact that the authorities of that province had for a year and a half no objection to make to a frontier almost identical with that now indicated, they ought to find no great difficulty in acquiescing in the present arrangement.
The Board communicated this to the Viceroy of Yunnan by telegraph, asking him to make inquiry and send a Report, and his reply has now been received.
He states that, as regards Sir C. MacDonald's note of 1898, with regard to Chinese officials taking troops into territory north of the N'Maikha River, repeated investigations made in obedience to instructions failed to show any river of the name of N'Maikha. When subsequently, in 1900, the British troops crossed the frontier and "burnt and slew" the border camps at Tzuchu and Hpare, the Sub-Prefect of Tengyueh, Yang Chun, taking the maps and records of the native Chiefs, went to meet the two British Prefects of Bhamo and Mijitkina and Mr. Taw, and produced evidence that in the locality in question the foot of the mountains was the parting of the waters of the Small River and the Ching River, and that there was no flowing into the Lu Chiang, as was known to the British.
The fact that no objection was expressed in 1898 must not be taken as tacit consent.
[1980 -4]