Tientsin British Committee of Information.
MEMORANDUM No. 28.
The Problem of Extra-territorial Privileges in China.
Tientsin, October, 15th 1929.
The Englishman in China is confronted with many difficulties. Not the least is the fact that there still lingers in the minds of his fellow countrymen a tradition of the once Gorgeous East, a picture of the buccaneering spirit but thinly veiled and a fantastic belief in 'piles' only waiting to be made. In consequence Public Opinion tends to class the Chinese with the oppressed races and appears to be willing to sanction measures which might be supposed to relieve Great Britain of her share of any odium.
But the Chinese are not and never have been an oppressed race so far as the British are concerned. Nor were the so-called unequal treaties, as once pointed out by Sir Austen Chamberlain, of our making. They were the result of circumstance and of a spirit which in large measure survives to-day and makes their continued maintenance in certain direc- tions a necessity.
If there was ever justification for a romantic picture of the Englishman in China it has long since passed away. Its place has been taken by a grim struggle for existence while life is shorn of many of its trappings. The work of close upon a century, to be exact 87 years since the Treaty of Nanking between Great Britain and China, is gravely threatened. The economic fabric built up upon the fourdation of the so-called unequal treaties,--which considerations of Chinese Government revenue, the trade requirements of the country, the prosperity of the great Chinese merchant class, the maintenance of British Trade in one of the world's potentially greatest markets, and Justice to foreign vested interests, all demand shall be conserved, is seriously jeopardised. Chinese politicians demand change. Yet as everywhere the economic is ultimately the dominating factor. The problem becomes in fact
one of how to effect political change without economic disaster.
When this Committee was first formed in March 1922, a circular letter was issued approaching this problem with the broadest sympathy from the point of view of Chinese interests and aspirations. It was explained that the Committee's object was to assist with direct information those interested or whom it was hoped to interest in Chinese affairs. It was further pointed out that notwithstanding the importance of maintaining sound relations between China and the British Empire, in view of the number of other questions demanding attention it was necessarily difficult for those charged with ultimate decisions to find time or opportunity to keep in touch with the problems of China and the just claims of the British position. The Committee proposed therefore to supply dispassionate statements of fact, and ventures to claim that this principle has been consistently adhered to. In proof may be cited its abstinence from criticism or from adopting any line which could embarrass the Government at Nanking. The time appears to have arrived, however, when the position in many matters of critical importance calls for examination and a record of the facts, however unpalatable and disappointing they may prove to be.
It is the object of this memorandum to resume briefly the present position in regard to Extra-territorial privileges. At the same time a brochure has been prepared containing a series of able articles written as a continuous study of the subject by the Editor of the
4