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ments to be made in the areas, and an undertaking to enter into immediate negotiations for the rendition of the British concession at Canton. To the draft article was attached a draft exchange of notes providing, on our side, that His Majesty's Government would support immediate negotiations for a solution of the question of the extra-settlement roads at Shanghai, subject to specified safeguards, and, on the Chinese side, that British subjects resident in areas in China in which Chinese administrative jurisdiction did not apply would enjoy all such exemptions from Chinese jurisdiction as were enjoyed by the nationals of any other country; this latter formula being designed to cover in a form more palatable to the Chinese the position of British subjects in non-British concessions. The upshot of a lengthy discussion was that the Minister for Foreign Affairs insisted absolutely (a) that there must be a time limit for the excluded areas, and (b) that the exclusion of Hankow could not be considered; but he improved on his previous proposals (which had been first the International Settlement at Shanghai, and then the Greater Shanghai area, for a period of three years) to the extent of offering the reservation of Greater Shanghai for five years and an area at Tientsin for three. This was a notable advance in that the principle of the reservation of an area at Tientsin was for the first time accepted on the Chinese side. I was also able after keen argument to get the Minister for Foreign Affairs to agree to the duration periods we wanted, namely, ten years for the whole treaty and five for articles 2 and 3. I refrained from committing myself to anything more than an examination of Dr. Wang's further offer, and no progress was made on other points of detail in my draft; but I was encouraged by what had been accomplished to feel that the process of bargaining along the lines we had from the outset had in mind was beginning, more sinico, to produce results. It was agreed that we should take another river trip and continue our conversations on the following day. Discussing, as I always did, what had passed at this interview with my American colleague immediately after, the same thought struck both of us, namely, whether our formula for the duration of exemption from Chinese jurisdiction in the reserved areas, based on the Foreign Office proposals for a joint commission, &c., and containing an undertaking to start negotiations within five years, might not be somewhat dangerous, since the Chinese could under it press to open negotiations immediately after the treaty was signed ; and whether it might not be better to meet the Minister for Foreign Affairs and prescribe a term of years during which we should have an assured breathing space for a definite period.
Reserved Areas: Discussion of May 25: Minister for Foreign Affairs offers
Shanghai for Maximum of T'en, and Tientsin for Five Years.
58. On the 25th May, Dr. Wang and I once more embarked with Mr. Teichman in the latter's motor launch, Wanderer, and continued our discussions for three or four hours on the river. I put up an amendment to my previous draft, with a view to finding a wording which would to some extent meet Dr. Wang's object of a time limit and also improve the draft from our point of view by stipulating for a definite minimum breathing space of five years and linking up the termination of that period with the outcome of the negotiations which were to be entered upon within that period. We discussed this draft on and off for four hours, relieved at intervals, when the atmosphere became too strained, by small talk and excursions on shore. At a suitable moment, and in response to Dr. Wang's specific enquiry, I gave him to understand that, if he would accept our draft, I should be prepared to recommend to you the dropping of the reserved area at Hankow, again subject to all outstanding points being settled to our satisfaction. He insisted, however, returning to and repeating the point again and again, that he could not possibly accept anything on the lines of our draft because there was no definite time limit; if the negotiations provided for had no result, extra-territoriality would continue indefinitely at Shanghai; and to that neither he nor any other member of the Chinese Government could ever agree. Again at the appropriate moment I sprung on him the suggestion that we should cover the whole proposition with a final time limit of ten years, the duration of the whole treaty. He rose gradually, but insisted that, to justify his action vis-à-vis Chinese public opinion, there must be a clear-cut differen- tiation between Shanghai and Tientsin both as regards period and area; in the case of the former, the special circumstances attending the existence of the
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