[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government. 190
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[2014]
No. 1.
[January 22.j
SECTION 3.
Sir,
Foreign Office to India Office.
Foreign Office, January 22, 1913. I AM directed by Secretary Sir E. Grey to transmit to you herewith, copy of a letter from the London Chamber of Commerce, relative to the opium question in China, in which they urge that His Majesty's Government should impress upon China the necessity either of giving facilities for working off the accumulated stocks, or of taking them over, or that if such a settlement is impossible, the Government of India should repurchase the stocks.
Sir E. Grey proposes to reply, subject to the concurrence of the Marquess of Crewe, that the efforts of His Majesty's Government have been unremitting throughout the past year to bring the Chinese Government to a sense of their treaty obligations, and to enforce their observance by the Chinese provincial authorities, but that so far they have been unavailing: that in view of the large accumulation of stocks at the treaty ports, to which the Chamber refer, the Indian Government have proposed to suspend the sales of opium from the 1st April next: but that neither would it be practicable for the Indian Government to repurchase the stocks, nor is there any means of forcing the Chinese Government to take them over.
I am at the same time to transmit to you, copy of a telegram from His Majesty's consul-general at Shanghai, forwarding a statement from the opium merchants as to the treatment of the imported opium stocks by the Chinese Government, and to suggest for Lord Crewe's consideration, that His Majesty's Minister at Peking might be consulted as to the advisability of demanding from the Chinese Government a refund of the duty which has been paid on the opium,
I am, &c.
W. LANGLEY.
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