8 Ah Scott (70)
9 Copy of let ja Ashley Clark to AR Fraser
12.10.426 of 13.10.42.
I attended a meeting at the Foreign Office yesterday at which the India Office, the Burna Office, Ministry of War Transport, Board of Trade, and the Dominions were also represented. It was explained to us that the U.S. authorities were understood to be likely to submit their draft Treaty regarding extraterritoriality to the Chinese at the beginning of next week, and it was, therefore, desired that any observations which the U.K. Goverment might have on the American draft should be communicated to the American Ambassador immediately.
The Foreign Office had prepared a draft of notes for discussion, and these were considered at the meeting. The following points of particular Colonial Office importance emerged in the discussion.
The U.K.. draft, which would be based in the main on the U.S. draft, would be made in the name of His Majesty and would apply to all territories under H..'s sovereignty, suzerainty, protection, and mandate, in so far as the authority determined by these relationships was vested in H.M. G. in the U.K. It was anticipated that some of the Dominions would signify their acceptance of the Treaty as applying to themselves by an Exchange of Notes with the Chinese Government, and that others would try to agree on their own Treaty with the Chinese Government. There would be a definition clause in the Treaty which would explain that throughout the references to the "territories of His Majesty" or "nationals of His Majesty" would refer to the territories specified in the clause above and to persons belonging to those territories. The Agreement will, therefore, bind protected States, e.g. in India or Halaya, which are not, strictly speaking, territories of H., nor inhabited by nationals of H.i.
The Foreign Office said there might be a little difficulty in discussion with the Chinese over the position of the Leased Territories of Hong Kong. It was our assertion that these territories were for the period of the lease British territory, but the Chinese might claim that they were Chinese national territory which had been leased to the British authorities and so constituted a special form of extraterritoriality which should be abrogated as inconsistent with the present Treaty. It was the general feeling of the Foreign Office at the meeting, however, that this was ♦ special pleading, and that we should not take it into account in our consideration of the question at this stage.
and
The Foreign Office are going to suggest an addition to Article 5 of the U. S. Treaty. This Article in the U. S. draft has been framed in order that the U.S. might preserve their system of immigration quotas for Chinese entering the U.S., on that their policy is in line with the policy of parts of the British Empire, e.g. Australia, Burma, and Malaya. We are, therefore, going to try and follow their draft as far as it goes, though we have a different problem in that the U. S. are one territory, whereas we are dealing with a number of territories. It will, therefore, be necessary for us to make it clear that we are not agreeing to free movement of Chinese immigrants from one territory within the Empire to another. In order to preserve national treatment for British subjects in China it is proposed to add a paragraph to the American draft on the following lines:-
"In