C.O.
[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government]
P. 23 SEF 08
AFFAIRS OF CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[31044]
No. 1.
[September 7.]
SECTION 4.
Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received September 7.)
(No. 334. Confidential.) Sir,
Peking, July 14, 1908.
WITH reference to my telegram No. 133 of the 8th inst., I have the honour to report that Sir Walter Hillier came to consult me on that day with regard to a communication which Count Rex, the German Minister, had addressed to the Wai-wu Pu, announcing that he had taken over charge of Turkish interests in China.
The Wai-wu Pu had asked Sir Walter for advice on the subject, and before giving it he wished to talk the matter over with me.
We discussed the question from various points of view—the religious, commercial, and political; but I did not attempt in any way to influence the opinion he had formed that the safest course for the Chinese Government was to inform the German Minister that, while they would be pleased to receive through the German Legation any communications which the Sultan or the Ottoman Government might address to them, they could not agree to extend extra-territorial privileges to the Turks in China.
Neither Sir Walter Hillier nor I was aware at the time that the French Legation had hitherto claimed the right to represent Turkey in China, nor does the fact seem to have been known to any of my colleagues here.
A day or two later, however, the French Minister informed me that he had been in the habit of obtaining passports for Turkish subjects in China, of whom there is a considerable number at Harbin and also on the Yünnan Railway, and that the German action, which must, he thought, have had its origin in Constantinople, had taken him quite by surprise.
He had telegraphed to Paris for instructions, and had been told to make no change for the present.
The Wai-wu Pu, I understand, have adopted Sir Walter Hillier's advice to the extent of verbally informing the Secretary of the German Legation, in the absence of the Minister, that they cannot accord an ex-territorialized position to Turks in China.
It may be of interest to note that the Sultan has on at least two previous occasions made an attempt to enter into direct relations with the East.
In 1890 Osman Pasha came to Japan as the bearer of a Turkish decoration to the Mikado, but the man-of-war which carried the Mission, the "Ertogrul," foundered on her way between Yokohama and Kobe.
A second Mission, which seems to have owed its origin to German advice, reached Shanghae in 1901, but ended in a fiasco, the Envoy, Enver Pasha, and his suite returning to Europe via Nagasaki, Vladivostock, and the Trans-Siberian Railway.
An account of the genesis of this Mission will be found in Sir Ernest Satow's despatch No. 258, Secret, of the 12th July, 1901.
There is a Turkish "mufattish," or inspector, who has been sent out by the Sultan at the request of a Chinese "mufti" travelling in the Yang-tsze Valley at the present time, but, although there are some 16,000,000 Mahommedans in China, few of them recognize the Sultan of Turkey as their spiritual head, and the idea of Pan-Islamism finds no favour with them.
Were a full measure of German protection to be extended to Turks in China it is possible that it might hamper the arrangements for the restriction of the import of Turkish opium, which were described in my despatch No. 152 of the 31st March last.
This, and the possibility that Persia might likewise place her interests in charge of the German Legation, seems to have weighed with the Wai-wu Pu.
Turkey, Persia, and Siam are all countries which, like China herself, concede extra-territorial privileges to foreigners, and China foresees difficulties if she enters into relations with them on the same footing as with other Powers.
Siam, for instance, over whom she once claimed a shadowy suzerainty, might seek the protection of Japan, and the anomaly of Siamese enjoying in China rights denied to Chinese in Siam is one that Chinese public opinion would keenly resent.
I have, &c.
(Signed) J. N. JORDAN.
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