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be served if the Chinese Government were invited to give assurances that the surrendered balance of the Indemnity funds should be mainly devoted not to the construction of new lines but to the rehabilitation of existing railways, a matter which is admittedly one of urgent necessity in the interests of China itself, that preference should be given to those railways in which there is a British financial interest, and that in every case all orders for bridges, locomotives, rolling stock, rail and all other railway equipment necessary for the rehabilitation in question shall be placed in the United Kingdom.
The suggestion that the funds should be used for rehabilitation of existing lines as being more immediately advantageous to China than new construction should commend itself to the Chinese Government as it appears to accord with the views put forward by the Chinese Minister of Communications in connection with the meeting of the Chinese National Communications Conference held in August last. Mr. Wang Po Chun appears to have recognised that the placing of existing railways on a satisfactory basis was a metter of more urgent importance than the extension of the railway system and in a "General Plan on Communications" submitted by him to the National Government a few weeks before the opening of the Conference, he set out proposals for certain
definite works which called for immediate attention.
The Board have also considered whether any of the other works recommended by the Chinese Indemnity Advisory Committee of 1926 might be specially brought to the notice of the Chinese Government in this connexion, such, for example, as the Chihli river and Huai river conservancy schemes. are, however, disposed to think that there might be some
They
difficulty/