.34
435
Opposition of Hongkong
to Customas blockade and to discriminatory trade taxation.
Hongkong."
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But Alcock's far-sighted attempt to deal with the Hongkong problem was doomed
to be thwarted. The British Government decided to defer to the wishes of the merchants, and although not convinced that the step it was taking was "calculated to promote the real interests of the commercial and industrial classes," yet decided to advise the Queen not to ratify the Convention.ţ
§ 7. The Hoppo's blockade, therefore, was continued, and feeling on both sides ran higher than ever. Ample evidence of this exacerbation will be found (1) in the petition to Her Britannic Majesty from a group of Chinese merchants, resident in Hongkong, praying for protection from the actions of the Chinese revenue cruisers; (2) in the report submitted by the Commission appointed in December 1873 by Sir Arthur Kennedy, then Governor of Hongkong, to investigate the complaints against these cruisers and the Customs stations in the neighbourhood of Hongkong; (3) in the memorial on this topic submitted by the Hongkong Chamber of Commerce to the Home Government; and (4) in the resolutions passed at a public meeting held in the City Hall, Hongkong, on 14th September 1874- The Governor, writing to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, put the case in a nutshell when he stated: "Complaints of a like nature appear to be almost the inevitable result of a free British port being in such close juxtaposition with the Chinese territory, where duties are levied, and will recur so long as there are Customs laws on one side, and a large population with strong inducements to break them on the other"; and again: "It is beyond doubt that a not inconsiderable number of Chinese junk owners are in the habit of consulting their individual interests by violating Chinese Customs laws, and making this Colony the basis of smuggling operations, for which its geographical position affords every facility, and the profits, it is to be presumed, exceed the loss and risk, or the practice would not be continued. The Chinese Customs Officers and Revenue Collectors, with a knowledge of these facts, lose no opportunity of seizing and confiscating every Chinese junk for which they can find a pretext, and the characterless class of persons employed as subordinates in that service makes it too probable that honest and innocent traders are often grievously harassed and plundered."§ At the same time he repudiated the only remedial suggestion, made by the Commission he had appointed, namely that of employing "armed steam launches at the outlets of the harbour to protect Chinese trading junks arriving and departing," declaring that he was "convinced that the shortest, best, and only remedy for disputes and references which have existed for years, endangering our good relations with the Canton Government, is the recognised establishment of a branch of the Chinese Foreign Inspectorate at Hongkong itself." Some relief from the abuses complained of was effected when the Canton authorities early in the seventies adopted the course of action, which had been recommended by Hart, the Inspector General of Customs, in 1869 and agreed that the patrolling cruisers should be placed under the supervision of an
* British Parliamentary Papers: China No. 10 (1870), p. 11.
+ British Parliamentary Papers: China No. 11 (1870), p. 4.
+ British Parliamentary Papers: "Correspondence relating to the Complaints of the Mercantile Community in Hongkong against the Action of Chinees Revenue Cruizers in the Neighbourhood of the Colony" (1875), pp. 2-4, 7-11, 12–15, 31, 32.
§ Ibid., p. 5.
| Ibid., p. 5.
¶ Ibid., p. 6.
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English officer in the Chinese Maritime Customs service and that foreign officers should be employed on the cruisers themselves to see that illegalities were not committed. The essential features of the situation, however, remained unchanged. The agitation increased especially against the practice of the Canton authorities in treating goods going to and coming from Hongkong as goods going to or coming from a foreign country, and therefore liable to the export and the import charges of the Treaty Tariff. This was bitterly resented and claimed to be unfair discrimination against the Colony, while goods going to and coming from Macao continued to be treated as goods going to or coming from Chinese territory," and therefore liable to the lighter charges of the Native Customs tariff. To make matters worse, the provincial Native Customs regulations at that time required that all native goods from the four lower prefectures of the province destined for shipment abroad should first be conveyed to the treaty port of Canton (direct export abroad from a non-treaty port being strictly forbidden); from which it followed that such goods were called on to pay (a) the Native Customs export duty at port of shipment when being despatched to Canton, (b) a special fee at Canton Native Customs, and (c) export duty at Canton according to the Treaty Tariff The Chinese authorities were technically within their rights in making such lovies, but insistence on those rights was gall and wormwood to the traders in Hongkong. To reach a solution Sir Thomas Wade, then Commission of
inquiry called for British Minister at Peking, seized the opportunity of the drafting of the Chefoo Convention by Chefuo Con- (September 1876) to insert an article (Clause VII of Section 3) calling for the appointment of vention of 1876. a commission to inquire into the smuggling from Hongkong into China, and to devise a "system that shall enable the Chinese Government to protect its revenue without prejudice to the interests of the Colony." This was the first official recognition in a ratified Convention on the part of the British authorities that it would be a wiser policy to come to an understanding with the Chinese Government to enable it to protect its revenue without prejudice to the interests of the Colony, rather than to continue to endure the inconveniences of the Hoppo's methods of controlling trade. As many of the terms of the Convention required also the consent of all the other Powers represented at Peking, and as the securing of this consent took time, it was not until nine years later (July 1885) that the Chefoo Convention with its Additional Article, arranging for the simultaneous collection of import duty and likiu on foreign opium, was ratified by the British Government, and the Commission, called for by both Convention and Additional Article, duly appointed.
§8. This Commission, composed of Sir Robert Hart, Inspector General of Chinese Hongkong Opium Customs, and the Taotai Shao Yu-lien (B), representing China, and Mr. James Russell, the Agreement, 1886, Puisne Judge of Hongkong, and Mr. Byron Brenan, H.B.M.'s Consul at Tientsin, representing Great Britain, met in the summer of 1886. The joint commissioners for China had come authorised to offer the closing of the Customs stations in the neighbourhood of Hongkong in return for the Colony's acceptance of a plan by which Chinese opium hulks might be anchored in Hongkong waters for the bonding of all opium imported from abroad and for the collection of China's
* Vide foot-note*, p. 13.
+ British Parliamentary Papera: "Further Correspondence relating to the Complaints of the Mercantile Community in Hongkong against the Action of certain Revenue Cruizers in the Neighbourhood of the Colony" (1876), pp. 17, 18, 23-25, 33-35, 38, 39.