This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.!
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[378]
C O 3448
[January 4.]
SECTION 1.
3 FEB !!
No. 1.
Downing Street, January 3, 1911.
yon,
Colonial Office to Foreign Office.-(Received January 4.)
Sir,
I AM directed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to transmit to reference to letter from the Colonial Office of the 19th November, copy of a despatch with and telegram from and to the Governor of Hong Kong on the subject of the taxation of foreign opium at Canton.
I am, &c.
FRANCIS J. S. HOPWOOD.
Enclosure 1 in No. 1.
(Confidential.) Sir,
Governor Sir F. Lugard to Mr. Harcourt,
Hong Kong, November 14, 1910. WITHIN a few days of the date on which I left Hong Kong to proceed on leave to England the Acting Viceroy of the Liang Kuang provinces endeavoured to enforce certain regulations in regard to Indian opium imported by Hong Kong merchants into Canton and other ports under his jurisdiction which had for their object the imposition of a tax amounting to 288 dollars per chest (7 dol. 20 c. a ball-40 balls
per chest), together with the establishment of a monopoly in the hands of a selected Chinese firm, and the enactment of various restrictions on purchasers for the alleged disregard of which the opium was seized and detained, and fines and imprisonment inflicted on the dealers. This action, which is a repetition in a slightly different and aggravated form of similar attempts, which in the years 1902, 1903, 1904, 1907, and 1908, had been frustrated by the prompt action of His Majesty's Minister at Peking, and the cousul- general at Canton, acting on the instructions of His Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has formed the subject of appeals and protests by the merchants concerned, and by the local chamber of commerce, which have in turn been the subject of continued strongly worded representations to the Chinese Government by His Britannic Majesty's Minister at Peking in the name of His Majesty's Government, but up to the present date without effect, for the regulations remain in force, and the situation to-day is practically the same as it was in May last.
Sir Henry May, who administered the Government in my absence, has addressed seventeen despatches, aggregating, with their enclosures, some 322 pages (besides a printed memorandum of thirty-seven pages), to Lord Crewe on this subject, and I fear that the unavoidable bulk of these representations (dealing with specific cases) may have tended to some extent to obscure the main issues. I venture, therefore, to restate briefly the points which appear to me from a perusal of these documents to demand
immediate and serious attention :—
1. His Majesty's Government have stated that the regulations in question are contrary to treaty (Foreign Office letter of the 16th Angust, 1910). His Majesty's Minister at Peking has so informed the Chinese Government. He has further, under Foreign Office instructions, protested against their continued enforcement (with consequential seizures, &c.) while the whole opium question is under discussion. The Chinese Government at Peking has on its part tardily admitted that they are contrary to treaty, and has instructed the Viceroy to cancel them. The orders of the Wai-wu Pu to the Viceroy are:
"The so-called prepared opium tax is in reality another tax on raw opium, therefore all opium seized must be released; no fines must be imposed" (see enclosure to despatch of the 13th September, 1910. The authenticity of the telegram was admitted by Wai-wu Pu: Max Müller, the 13th October, 1910). The Viceroy has not obeyed these orders, and Mr. Max Müller, in bis despatch of the 13th October to Sir Edward Grey, states that Grand Councillor Na Tung "made the usual excuse that the board could not instruct, but only advise a Viceroy." This, in effect, means that the representative of the Chinese Government accredited to deal
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