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Foreign residents with extraterritorial rights (British, American, French, Belgian, Scandinavia Dutch, Italian, Swiss, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese) are amenable only to the jurisdiction of their res- pective national Courts.
All residents in the Settlement, however, have to abide by the Land Regulations and Bye-laws, which are enforceable
(a) upon Chinese residents and foreigners without extraterritorial rights, through the Chinese Courts named above.
(b) upon foreign residents with extraterritorial
rights through their national courts.
The Land regulations place the policing of the Settle- ment in the hands of the Council. The Council itself, in its corporate capacity, is amenable, when defendant, to the jurisdiction of a Court of Consuls, consisting (in January, 1931) of the Consuls-General for Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States and Japan. (Vol. I, Part II, p. 194, par. 58 and p. 170, pars. 13-15.)
(d) Chinese Government's Fiscal Powers.-After a long controversy (detailed in Vol. I, Part II, pp. 103-7) "the position which the Council eventually succeeded in establishing with regard to likin* was treated as applying generally to other taxes which attempts were made to levy from time to time on various commodities, and it came to be recognised that, with the exception of customs duties. and land tax, no Chinese taxes could be collected within the Settlement, and that any collectors of unauthorised taxes found operating within the Settlement were to be liable to be prosecuted and punished.
"This is still the general position maintained by the Council though provision has recently been made by agreement with the National Government for the enforce- ment within the Settlement of certain national taxes, the agents for such enforcement being the Council's own officers." (Vol. I, Part II, p. 107.)
* A tax on goods in transit, originally of 1 per cent, ad valorem,
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IV. SUMMARY OF QUESTIONS AT ISSUE.
VITAL MATTER OF SECURITY.
The main questions at issue, accordingly, are:
THE
(1) The future of extraterritoriality in relation to
the International Settlement:
(2) Whether rendition of the International Settle-
ment should take place forthwith:
(3) Whether a Charter issued by the Chinese Govern- ment would provide a satisfactory substitute for the present international basis of the Settle- ment's régime:
(4) The degree to which the existing, treaty-based
régime, if maintained, should be modified:
(5) The ultimate goal of such policy, and the time
required to reach it.
At the root of all these questions is the vital one of security, as the following quotations from the report illustrate.
"Security-in the double sense of (a) protection against external violence and prevention of internal dis- order, and (b) adequate safeguards for the enjoyment of personal rights, including rights of property-is provided in a far higher degree in the Settlement than in any area under Chinese control, and this feature of the Settlement régime is of vital importance to the great commercial banking and industrial interests centred there, and there- fore to the position which Shanghai occupies to-day as China's chief trading and financial centre." (Vol. II, Part V, p. 121.)
"Owing to the forces at present available for the protection of the Settlement, and to the fact that in the Settlement the rule of law is maintained on the basis of treaty provisions, the Settlement enjoys a greater degree of security than can at present be provided in centres
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