[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
CHINA RAILWAYS.
CONFIDENTIAL.
C.O.
[May 8.]
22029
SECTION 1.
REC
[17479]
Sir,
No. 1.
Rose 2 JUL 09
Messrs. Pauling and Co. to Foreign Office.~(Received May 8.)
26, Victoria Street, Westminster, London, May 7, 1909.
I HAVE the honour to inform you, by the direction of my board, that they have received information from Lord ffrench that, in reply to a question put by the Chinese Government to the Japanese Minister at Peking, as to what was the distance held by the Japanese Government to be that within which the Chinese Government could not construct any railways, under the secret convention between China and Japan (which has been so frequently referred to in previous correspondence between ourselves and His Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs), the Japanese Minister at Peking has categorically refused to give any answer, or to define any distance outside which China would be permitted to build railways in the direction of Mongolia from the Imperial Chinese Northern Railway.
I am desired to ask you to be good enough to bear this fact in ruind, and to take such stops as may be deemed advisable by His Majesty's Secretary of State to be helpful to us, because it appears to us to be possible that, when we have completed the survey of the Chenchow-Taonan-fu Railway, and when the Chinese are desirous of entering into a contract with my company for the financing and construction of this line, the Japanese Government may again raise their veto against the contract, on grounds precisely similar to those which they have put forward in the case of the Fakumen extension.
A glance at the map will show that the construction of a line from Chenchow to Taonan-fu is neither parallel, nor could it be held to be detrimental, to the South Manchurian Railway system, from which it is widely separated from every point of view.
I have, &c.
[2264 h-1]
J. M. SCOTT,
Secretary.
610