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IMMUTE.
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1932dan 382 dolar (enoa ki
atm for a wing da
is no avasta
This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government, and should be returned
to the Foreign Office if not required for official use.]
313
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NO_DISTRIBUTION
Cypher Telegram to sir B. Alston. (Peking).
Foreign Office. February 17th, 1921. 4.45.p.m. No. 70. (R).
• URGENT.
Your telegram No. 74.
American Embassy has sent us a stiffly worded memorandum on the same subject, of which the following is the gist:-
American Goverment are amazed to learn that His Majesty's linister at Peking has protested against this contract and has 1.sisted upon its cancellation on the ground that it infringed the rights claimed by the Marconi Company under their
contract of May 1919.
Apart from the propriety of this step American Goverment desire to meet on its merits the contention
that any Government can justly claim for its nationals the right to exercise any such monopoly or preference for the supply of materials or equipment as would debar American citizens from the right to contract freely with the Chinese Goverment for any category
of supplies. The support of such a preferential or
exclusive right would create a doubt whether the
American Goverment had quite understood the attitude
of the British Goverment in the recent efforts to
co-operate in making effective the principle of
equality of commercial opportunity in China.
American