}
{
This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.)
AFFAIRS OF CHINA,
CONFIDENTIAL.
[1668]
No. 1.
28 JAN 09 129
[January 13.]
SECTION 2.
(No. 575.) Sir,
Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received January 13, 1909.)
Peking, December 21, 1908. ON the receipt of your telegram No. 128 of the 24th October last, I telegraphed to his Excellency the Governor of Hong Kong for a copy of his despatch of the 3rd September to the Earl of Crewe respecting the working of the Chinese Telegraph Administration in the leased territory, and Sir F. Lugard's reply, copy of which I have the honour to inclose, reached me on the 16th November.
As the Imperial mourning had just commenced, and all public business was at a standstill, I had no opportunity of moving in the matter until a few days ago, when the arrival of Mr. Dresing, the Foreign Adviser to the Chinese Telegraph Administration, made it possible for me to ascertain before approaching them officially what the views of the Chinese Government on the question were likely to be.
Mr. Dresing, as you are aware, recently acted as Representative of China at the Lisbon Conference, and has since then concluded Telegraph Agreements with Japan in regard to Manchuria. He has an intimate acquaintance with the history of Chinese telegraph arrangements, and it seemed desirable to utilize his knowledge and experience in endeavouring to arrive at some practical understanding with the Chinese Government.
I therefore communicated to him verbally the substance of the request made by Sir F. Lugard and the arguments used in support of it, and suggested that he should move the Telegraph Department of the Board of Communications to meet the views of the Hong Kong Government.
Mr. Dresing appreciated the objections to the maintenance in British leased territory of the length of telegraph line from the new frontier to the old boundary, and to the continued existence of a Chinese telegraph station at Shamshuipo; but he strongly deprecated disturbing the arrangement under which the Chinese Telegraph Company has always held an office in Hong Kong in the same building as the offices of the Eastern Extension and Great Northern Telegraph Companies. This, he said, would raise the question of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company's rights at Woosung and Sharp Peak, and would, in his opinion, react unfavourably upon the interests of the British Company generally in China."
Mr. Dresing undertook to recommend a solution on the above lines to the Telegraph Administration, and I authorized him to do so on the clear understanding that its eventual acceptance or rejection would rest with the Governor of Hong Kong.
The telegraph authorities appeared at first inclined to fall in with the proposal, but later on professed themselves unable to do so without consulting the Wai-wu Pu. The latter Board, as was to be expected, raised difficulties, referred to the correspondence which had passed in 1904, and saw no reason why they should recede from the position which had been taken up at that time by the Telegraph Administration at Shanghae. They pointed out that a similar state of things existed at Wei-hai Wei, where they had a telegraph line running through the leased territory and a telegraph station on the mainland, opposite to the island; and that at Kiachow they had a Chinese telegraph line of some 30 miles passing through territory leased to Germany, a Chinese telegraph station at Tsing-tau, another station between Tsing-tau and the frontier of the leased territory, and that Germany had never raised any objections to these arrangements. Why, therefore, should the Hong Kong Government make such difficulties at the present
moment?
Mr. Dresing, at my request, explained that I had approached them through him in an informal and indirect way in the hope of arriving at an amicable and satisfactory arrangement without entering into a protracted correspondeuce, but that if they persisted in their refusal, I should probably be obliged in due course to treat the question officially.
There the matter rests for the present, and I should not have proceeded so far without
your instructions, had it not appeared to me to be important to take advantage [2116 n-2]