(This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.)
SOUTH-WEST CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[32284]
No. 1.
727
[September 24.]
SECTION
38276
RECEIVED
Consul-General Wilkinson to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received September 24.) 17.00) 06
(No. 19.) Sir,
Yunnan-fu, August 3, 1906.
I HAVE the honour to inclose copy of a despatch which I have addressed to the Government of Burmah on the subject of Chinese claims to territory west of "Scott's Line."
The maps which should accompany the present despatch I have asked the Government of Burmah to be good enough to cause to be copied, since their reproduction here would involve undue delay.
I have, &c.
(Signed)
W. H. WILKINSON.
Inclosure 1 in No. 1.
Consul-General Wilkinson to Government of Burmah.
(No. 29. Confidential.) Sir,
Yunnan-fu, July 30, 1906.
WITH reference to the question of the frontier from the Namting River to Nalawt ("Scott's Line"), Shih Taotai has handed me the map, which I now forward to you in original, together with a Memorandum of which I inclose translation.
Shih Hung-shao, as you will remember, when Acting Intendant at Tengyueh, was associated with Messrs. Litton and Leveson in the survey of the border country north of Manung Pum. On the arrival of the substantive incumbent, Kuan Yi-yung, he was transferred to Pu-erh as Acting Intendant of the I-nan Tao (the Southern Circuit). On his way to the latter post he passed through Yunnan-fu, where he called on me and told me that he had received instructions to report to the Provincial Government on the question of the Namting-Nalawt frontier. Premising that I had no authority to discuss the matter, I gave him a copy of sheets No. 4 N.E. and No. 4 S.E. of the Indian survey, sheets on which "Scott's Line" had been marked by your Department.
These sheets, as you will have observed, form the basis of Shih Taotai's present map. From them his draughtsman has traced, on the same scale (4 miles to the inch), the physical features as surveyed by Major Renny-Tailyour in 1899-1900, while the political divisions (of the Chinese Sawbwaships and Chenpien Sub-Prefecture) are added, together with a mass of Chinese place-names. What is especially noteworthy, Shih Taotai's map
marks-
(1.) The degrees of latitude and longitude;
(2.) The respective outfalls, into the Mekong or into the Saluen, of the chief rivers;
(3.) The various watersheds.
It does not define, in so many words, the boundary claimed for China; but it is to be supposed that this boundary lies along the coloured lines to the west of the map,
The convenient circumstance that all the printed charts of the debated order (with the exception of the spurious "Hsieh map" and the small lithographed sheet bound up with the Blue Book containing the Agreement of 1897) are drawn to the same scale enables a comparison to be readily made between-
(a.) "Scott's Line";
(b.) The line laid down by Brigadier-General Liu and Taotai Ch'en in 1900 (Inclosure 10 in Burmah Political Department, No. B.C., 1900, 7); and
(c.) The line which Shih Taotai is apparently now recommending.
[2147 aa-1]