113
. PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
பப்
Reference :--
C.O.882/11
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
214
ENCLOSURE 2 IN No. 27.
The following communiqué is jointly issued by the Chinese and the British delegations who are negotiating the anti-British boycott and strike questions:-
The negotiations for the settlement of the anti-British boycott and Canton-Hongkong strike questions opened at noon to-day at the Canton Foreign Office. All the members of the Chinese and the British delegations were present. Mr. Eugene Ch'ên, Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is head of the Chinese delega- tion, opened the proceedings with the following speech:--
་་
In formally opening these negotiations to-day we wish to extend to the British representatives a friendly welcome from our Government. We wish also to express the desire of those in whose name we are authorised to speak that the question which we are charged to resolve may be approached in a sense and in a spirit of realism, and of determination to secure its settlement on terms which, while assuring to British nationals in the Liang-kuang a friendly and profitable market for their goods and services, shall enable the Chinese people as represented by our Government to go on, un- hindered, with the work of unifying and modernising China and, on this new basis, to strive to build a great structure of relations with the outer world.
It is manifest that striking and real changes are taking place in this country, socially, economically and politically. These changes, generally, are a necessary consequence of the structural re-adjustment or new equilibrium which is in process of establishment, consciously as well as uncon- sciously, between the Chinese people organised as a social aggregate and the new conditions of environment resulting from their definite inclusion in the larger system of the modern world.
Whether these changes are good or bad for the Chinese people is mainly a question for them to decide if they are truly to be regarded and treated as an independent nation, and not as a people fit and suited for the exercise of inter- national tutelage. At any rate it is a fundamental thesis of the Chinese Nationalist Movement-which is the greatest of the forces underlying and sustaining the new equilibrium-- that the time has come when the Chinese people must be free to work out their own salvation. And though most of the country is unhappily to-day under the domination of leaders, medieval and therefore reactionary in their outlook and methods, the dynamic section of the Nation as represented by the intelligentsia, the students, the workers, the agrarian and industrial and commercial groups-the classes definitely thrown up as political forces by the post-war factors in operation in our midst-are with the Nationalist Govern- ment at Canton in its assertion of this right to national independence.
new
215
Whatever may be the immediate course of events in China it is certain that the torch lit by the Chinese Nationalist Movement shall never be extinguished, and it must therefore be recognised as an enduring reality in the internal and inter- In these circumstances national politics of this country. what should be the attitude of a country like England vis à vis this New China? There are people who insist that what England has, England must hold in China at all costs. This is what may be called the diehard posture; and the past and all vital experience show that it makes for resistance to And change, for friction and strife, and ultimately for war. war, it is admitted, is never a real solution in modern conditions.
Opposed to this attitude which is rooted in a past of dead and dying conditions, is the conception of a changing China with new emerging classes of political workers who are con- scious of the inherent strength and incalculable possibilities of Chinese resources and Chinese man-power under effective organisation. Such a conception demands, as a practical corollary on the part of friendly Powers, a new view of the Chinese background and a new policy to establish Sino-alien relations not on the old historic basis of treating China as a war-defeated nation of the period of 1842, but on the principle of equality which to-day underlies the relations of the smallest and the greatest members of the world-system of independent states and sovereignties.
We believe that this statement of what is called the Chinese question is not in fundamental opposition to the real interests of any genuinely trading Power in China. And therefore, if the British are here genuinely to trade-solely to sell their goods and to buy our goods as they do when they go to China, and the other independent States-Nationalist Nationalist Government as its instrument of power and achievement, need not necessarily be a danger to British nationals in this country.
If this view of the matter be sound, then mere consider- "face" ought not to ations of prestige and what is known as be allowed to bar the road to a practical settlement of what is in truth one of the practical questions oft-times posed by the ironic spirit in history to search out man's patience, his goodwill, and his good sense."
After the transaction of some formal business, the negotiations were adjourned to Friday at 10.30 a.m., when Mr. Eugene Ch❜ên will state the Chinese case.
ENCLOSURE 3 IN No. 27.
NOTES OF PROCEEDINGS. No. 2.
The second meeting of the Conference was held on the 16th July, at the Foreign Office, at 10.30 a.m.-Cars and arrange- ments as before.