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This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.17198
[B]
RECE
R14 AUG 09
253
CHINA RAILWAYS.
CONFIDENTIAL,
[July 27.]
SECTION 1.
[27619]
No. 1.
Sir Edward Grey to Count Benckendorff.
Foreign Office, July 27, 1909. Your Excellency,
WITH reference to the communication which you were good enough to make on the 20th instant to the effect that the agreement arrived at between the Hong-Kong and Shanghae Bank, the German-Asiatic Bank, and the Banque de l'Indo-Chine for railway loans in China was considered detrimental to the interests of Russia represented in China by the Russo-Chinese Bank, I have the honour to inform your Excellency that it appears to His Majesty's Government that, as this agreement is a purely private one arrived at between the banks in question, any participation in it on the part of other financial bodies is a matter for arrangement between the latter and the banks.
If arrangements are made whereby the Russo-Chinese Bank shares in these and future financial undertakings there will certainly be no objection on the part of His Majesty's Government, who, so far as they are concerned, are, as regards future business as to which no engagements have yet been entered into, under no obligation to support the Hong-Kong and Shanghae Bank should other British firms wish to compete and should the Chinese Governinent choose to employ them.
I would point out that the two specific railways, i.e., the Canton-Hankow and the Canton-Szechuan Railways, about which difficulty has arisen, were subject to special obligations into which the Chinese Government had entered with the British in the caso of one railway, and with the British and Americans in the case of the other. This has complicated the arrangements respecting them, which are therefore no precedent for future negotiations respecting other railways.
ani, &c.
]
[2336 dd---1]
E. GREY.