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section continually suffers loss on account of the inefficiency of the Chinese section: and that was so apart from the unpaid debt of approximately one million dollars which resulted from the disturbances in
South China; he pointed out that this debt had not hitherto been pressed. He went on to say that while the Chinese section was short of full efficiency, such standard as it succeeded in maintaining was largely maintained through the help of Hong Kong.
He put
it that it was not possible to deal with a single item of the Agreement without taking the Agreement as a whole. The Chinese section had departed from the Agreement e.g. in the matter of sleepers, and this had occasioned the British section loss. Hong Kong had expended capital in maintaining the line but China had failed to maintain her section. AS
a result much possible traffic had been lost and Hong Kong suffered. If the Chinese section was kept fully
efficient it was possible that less than 35% of the fares would have paid us better than we were being pai d at present. It was not however the fault of Hong
Kong that traffic had been lost.
4.
18
Mr. Hsieh was in favour of a total r evision of
the Agreement but emphasized that his chief point was
the division of the fares. Beyond the fares he
stated that many of the clauses of the existing
Agreement go beyond the sphere of the Chinese Ministry
of Railways, for instance, that dealing with the
question of passports which should be in the province
of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and of Customs
which comes under the Minister of Finance.
The se
distinctions