This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
282
C.O.
AFFAIRS OF CHINA,
CONFIDENTIAL.
[38020]
No. 1.
[November 2
SECTION 5
42997
24 NOV 08
(No. 406.) Sir,
Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.~(Received November 2.)
Peking, September 8, 1908.
I HAVE the honour to transmit to you herewith a summary of last month's events not recorded in separate despatches, which has been drawn up by Mr. Seeds, Third Secretary in His Majesty's Legation.
I have, &c.
(Signed) J. N. JORDAN.
Inclosure in No. 1.
(Extract.)
Monthly Summary of Events.
Shantung.
WHILE the southern provinces were being swept by floods, as stated in the last monthly summary, Shantung was in the grip of a drought which, varied by severe hailstorms, has caused widespread distress in that province. Some of the peasants benefited by the measures taken to relieve the famine, others removed themselves and their families to districts not affected, and some had to resort to raising money by cheap sales of their female children. It is hoped, however, that a sufficiency of rain has fallen lately to save the autumn crops.
The new Governor, Yuan Shu-hsün, who gained notoriety as Tuotai at Shanghae, has started drastic reforms in a provincial administration which has hitherto been notorious for extravagance and corruption. Wholesale reductions in the number of officials, police reforms, attempts to enforce the Anti-opium Regulations, the penalizing of all speculation in "futures," to all of these has the Governor been devoting his energies with a whole-hearted thoroughness which has earned for him from the German press the nickname of the "Iron Broom."
According to the accounts received from His Majesty's Consul at Chinanfu, Shantung would appear to be the home of great missionary activity, as evinced by feuds between Roman Catholics and Protestants, the completion of a magnificent cathedral near Chinanfu, and resistance to the tax levied for the repair of the Confucian temples. German Roman Catholics are endeavouring to establish a mission at Ch'ü-fu, where they are meeting with opposition from the Hereditary Confucian Duke, who is interested in education, and does not wish to have his control over the education and morals of the people interfered with.
France in South China.
His Majesty's Consul at Bakhoi reports that the port of Kuangchouwan in Kwangtung, in spite of its long occupation by the French, is far from being in a prosperous condition. The harbour works, carried out at great expense by the French naval authorities, are sheer waste, and Port Beaumont exists only on shelves of dusty archives. The military Settlement is little better than a heap of ruins, and the civil Settlement, which carries on an insignificant trade, bears the stamp of decay.
The French hope to obtain a great influence over the education of the Chinese, at any rate in South China, by the establishment of the proposed Franco-Chinese University at Hanoi. Students are to be attracted by the cheapness of the course, the expenses of which will be even less than they are in Japan. It may, however, be noted that a Franco-Chinese school established at Hanoi some years ago seems to have met with but very indifferent success, boasting at present only of some twenty or thirty Chinese students.
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