436
437
Control of
Customus stations
and of revenue cruisers handed
over to Chinese Maritime Custome Service.
opium revenue.*
( 10 )
But as the Hoppo, with a view to economy, had some time previously reduced his cruising flotilla and thereby relaxed the blockade considerably, the Hongkong representative looked askance at the proffered gift. He declined it, but expressed himself willing to accept co-operation. The outcome of the Commission's labours was the Opium Agreement, signed at Hongkong on 11th September 1886. By virtue of this instrument the Chinese Maritime Customs-which had hitherto confined its attentions solely to foreign shipping at the treaty. ports-was for the first time to be entrusted with the control of Chinese craft sailing out of Hongkong into Chinese waters and vice versa, and also for the first time with the collecting of likin and, as a natural consequence, of Native Customs duties. The Agreement provided not only for the collection of duty and likin on opium under the cognizance of the Inspector General, but also for the settlement of disputes between Hongkong junks and the Native Customs revenue stations or cruisers in the neighbourhood. It was therefore natural and indeed round Hongkong inevitable that the management of the Hoppo's stations round Hongkong should devolve upon the newly created Kowloon office of the Maritime Customs, a result necessitated not only by its work of controlling all opium movements, but also by its position as arbiter in settling complaints made by junks against the Hoppo's stations or cruisers. The Hoppo's patrol service and four stations at Kowloon, Capsuimoon, Changchow, and Fotochow were accordingly handed over to the Inspector General to administer, and at the same time, for the greater convenience of the trading public, the Hongkong Government-instead of insisting on the letter of the Agreement that the office of the foreign Inspectorate should be established on Chinese territory on the Kowloon side-permitted, without extending official recognition, the opening in the city of Victoria of an office of the Chinese Maritime Customs, where a British Commissioner of Customs, appointed by the Inspector General, functioned as the Chinese official in charge of the Kowloon district and of all the Chinese revenue-protecting agencies within its limits. The Agreement also removed the grievance of Hongkong merchants regarding duty discrimination by providing that junks with their cargoes trading between Chinese ports and Hongkong should not be subject to any dues or duties in excess of those leviable on junks and their cargoes trading between Chinese ports and Macao. On the 2nd April 1887 the Kowloon Commissioner was able to commence the levy of likin and chingfei on general cargo, the collection of Tariff import duty and Convention likin on opium on the 14th of the same month, and on 1st July the collection of Native Customs duties on general cargo according to the existing tariffs. The transfer thus effected was, however, not a root-and-branch one, for there still remained at each of the stations agents of certain corporations who had farmed the collections of likin and other local levies on certain articles of trade, such as kerosene oil, matches, and so forth. To convince the provincial authorities that the operations of these agents were an inconvenience to merchants and a constant source of friction, and that this method of collection was not only wasteful but also unnecessary, took some little time, but by June 1890, as soon as all vested interests had been satisfactorily disposed of, all these agencies were removed and the Maritime Customs service was left as the sole revenue authority at all the stations ‡
Removal of discriminatory trade taxation.
p. 682.
* L.G. Circular No. 418, Second Series.
+ Hertelet: "Chins Treaties," Third Edition (2 vols., London, 1908), Vol. I, pp. 90, 91 (vide Appendix F).
Customs publications: Statistical Series, No. 6.-" Decennial Reports, etc., 1882-91," First Issue (Shanghai, 1893),
( 11 )
Kowloon Terri-
9. This so-called Kowloon Office of the Chinese Maritime Customs in the city of Extension of Victoria continued to function, on sufferance, till the summer of 1898-the year of the tory, 1898. international scramble for leases of Chinese territory,—when the question of the extension of the territory of Hongkong brought up sharply once more the issue of the Chinese Customs operating
on Hongkong soil. Sir Robert Hart, to whom the matter was referred by the British Minister, Sir Robert Hart's proposed, apart from special provisions for the control of opium-
(1) That the right of the Chinese Customs to maintain its office in Hongkong should be formally admitted, the status of the Commissioner of Customs as a Chinese official recognised, and the existing stations to be maintained, although inside the newly leased territory;
(2) That the Chinese Customs should have the right to collect dues and duties in Hongkong on general cargo, as well as on opium, shipped to and from China, and that for the control of junks the Chinese Customs should have one or more special jetties at the junk anchorages;
(3) That the revenue cruisers should continue their activities within the waters of
the loased territory;
(4) That no arms or munitions of war or contraband goods should be shipped in Hongkong on board any vessel proceeding to a Chinese port without a permit issued or countersigned by the Chinese Customs; and
(5) That the Hongkong Government should pass such legislation as might be
necessary to give effect to these provisions.*
•
These proposals were endorsed by the Canton provincial authorities,† but met with unqualified opposition from the Hongkong Chamber of Commerce, which was "profoundly convinced that the freedom of the port can only be properly safeguarded by the withdrawal of the Chinese Customs stations to Chinese territory, and the refusal of permission to Chinese Customs officials to collect duties either in the Colony or its waters." This opposition was supported by the London Chamber of Commerce and by the China Association in London, which latter body maintained that "to authorise the collection in Hongkong of duties (likiu included) on all goods and merchandise carried from or to any Chinese ports in Chinese vessels
would be to place Hongkong on the level of a Chinese treaty port,"§ and then proceeded to add: "if the presence of Customs stations on the adjacent mainland and at the entrance of the harbour, and of Customs cruisers in the waters surrounding the Colony, has been a hindrance and a source of vexation when these territories and waters were Chinese, the annoyance would be less endurable still when they assumed the character of foreign establishments within territory under British control." As a solution of the opium difficulty the Association, with the approval of the Hongkong branch, suggested that the Colonial Government might arrange to collect on behalf of the Chinese Government, against actual cost of collection, duty and likin on all opium
* British Parliamentary Papers: China No. 1 (1899), Enclosure in No. 294, pp. 201, 202 (vide Appendix G). + Ibid., Enclosures in No. 382, pp. 283, 284.
+ Ibid., p. 282.
§ Ibid., p. 296.
|| Ibid., p. 296.
proposals for Chinese Customs control.
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