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China has broken up and that reunification is a remote vision,
and will therefore take no step towards formal recognition of
any Chinese regional authority. If His Majesty's Government
would but take up with the Cantonese Authorities the question
of the nature of recognition which can be given them and the
conditions upon which it could be given, including tariff
revision, I do not doubt that we should seen see an end of all
anti-British agitation in Kuang-tung. Canton is not at heart
hostile to us and, since the Russian ringleaders and the
bolshevized anti-British agitators have for the most part
left Kuang-tung, there are already signs of a rapprochement
between Hong Kong and Canton. It is now that we should
endeavour to effect an honourable and peaceful settlement; for
it is at a moment of uncertainty, like the present, that the
Canton Government is likely to be most ready to come to terms
with this Colony in a working agreement really desired by both.
In that case 1 should welcome the continued existence in Hong
Kong of a Customs administration under a British Commissioner
of the Foreign Inspectorate, friendly to both parties. 1
should even be willing to give effect to the recommendation
made by Sir R. Hart in 1898 that, so long as the Kowloon Commissioner remains British, the Foreign Inspectorate should
be allowed to maintain its office in Hong Kong and that the
status of the Kowloon Commissioner as an official of the
Foreign Inspectorate of the Chinese Laritime Customs should be
formally acknowledged. I am not opposed to the principle of a
Chinese collecting station in the Colony itself, provided the
control is in British hands: on the contrary I consider that
this principle, which has already been admitted in order to
facilitate