14
SHANGHAI,
January 21st, 1930.
Mr Shigemitsu onlled at 11 a.m. to-day. He had
just returned from Nanking and evidently wished to have a talk on things generally,
but
He began by saying that C. T. Wang had agreed that there were so many things to be discussed between China and Japan that the only method of making progresa was to tackle them one by one, and he agreed with Mr
Shigemitsu that tariff autonomy should be the first;
he had insisted, on the other hand, that all these
separate issues should be dealt with in one treaty and not in separate instruments. Mr Shigemitsu intimated that
Dr Wang had shown most interest in Extra-territoriality
but added that so far his own Government's attitude and
instructions were unknown to him.
Turning to what evidently chiefly interested
him at the moment, he asked whether in my discussions
so far with C. T. Wang anything had been said about
inland water navigation. I told him the subject had not even
been mentioned sincle last June, and I again went
over the whole ground of what I had told Mr Saburi in
Peking last month. Mr Shigemitsu was evidently in some
dilemma as to how this question should be handled. He said it was important to prevent a Chinese press campaign
developping about it. At the same time, the Japanese firm
particularly interested - the Nisshin Kissen Kaisha -
were very stiff and disinclined to any form of compromise.
I told him that in my earlier talks with Wang he had
always got back to the possibility of two solutions: (a) a system of licensing for a period of years, or (b) some
form of Sino-foreign shipping company with 51 per cent
Chinese and 49 per cent foreign capital. I had not felt it worth while sounding our shipping companies on either
of