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. PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON |
| ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
C.20542/26.
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No. 33.
The Governor of Hongkong to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
Secret.
SIR,
(Received 3rd November, 1926.)
Government House, Hongkong, 5th September, 1926.
In continuation of my secret despatch of the 17th September,* I have the honour to report the following further developments in respect of the special effort now being made to terminate the anti-British boycott in Kuang-tung.
2. Mr. Eugene Ch'èn has replied, in a letter dated the 16th September, to Mr. Brenan's letter of the 10th September, con- cerning the attitude of the Canton Government toward the strike pickets, the boycott and the Hongkong Government. This correspondence has now been published as a Sessional Paper, and I refer you to my despatch No. 404 of the 24th September, in which copies of it are enclosed. Mr. Ch'ên explicitly denies that it is the policy of the Canton Government either to support "Canton strikers," or to injure Hongkong, or to "develop the This reply is, of course, anti-British boycott throughout China." quite satisfactory, if it is true; but I consider that it has been dictated purely by fear of our possible warlike action and that it was written in order to secure delay; for the Canton Gazette and the Man Kwok Yat Po, both which newspapers are controlled by the Propaganda Bureau of the Canton Government under the Director of Propaganda, Mr. Ku Mang-yü, who was one of the three official delegates appointed by the Canton Government to meet Messrs. Brenan, Kemp and Halifax at the July conference. continue to be violently anti-British in tone and to support the boycott. I enclose* some specimen copies of recent issues of the Canton Gazette. Moreover, on the 16th September, the very day on which Mr. Eugene Ch'en's letter was written, His Majesty's an anti-British Consul-General at Hankow telegraphed that boycott was being worked up there; and a mass meeting was held at the General Chamber of Commerce at Canton on the 22nd consider the extension of the anti-British September "to economic boycott movement.'
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3. On the 18th September, Mr. Eugene Ch'en wrote to Mr. The text of this Brenan the letter of which I attach a copy.‡
letter was telegraphed to the Foreign Office by Mr. Brenan on the 18th September, and it was published on the afternoon of the 20th September. Mr. Brenan had for some days before the 18th
‡ Not printed. § Enclosure 2.
* No. 32. † C.20103; 26; not printed.
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September been in continual contact with Mr. Ch'ên, warning him of the extreme danger of allowing the present state of affairs to continue; and at an interview on the 17th September, Mr. Ch'ên told Mr. Brenan that arrangements had been made to end the boycott on or before the 10th October and to levy certain taxes instead, explaining that these taxes were to raise the funds necessary for liquidating the boycott organisation, which it would take a few weeks to accomplish, and that they would be levied on goods of all nationalities with no discrimination against the British. Mr. Ch'ên at this interview further said that the British authorities would not be asked for a formal agreement or for assistance with the Chinese Maritime Customs, but would only be asked not to raise objections. Please see Mr. Brenan's tele- gram to the Foreign Office, dated the 18th September.
"
to confirm the 4. But the letter itself, written by Mr. Ch'ên statement" made on the 17th September, is not quite in the form which might have been expected from the report of the interview. Mr. Ch'ên states that "arrangements have been made to end the boycott on or before 10th October (most probably at the end of September)"; and he also states that the proper Chinese authorities will levy a special consumption tax of 23 per cent. on ordinary imports and 5 per cent. on imported luxuries, together The with a special production or producers' tax on exports." letter does not in any way make the cessation of the boycott con- ditional on our raising no objection to the new taxes. It leaves this to be inferred from the fact that these otherwise discon- nected matters are embodied in the same letter and from the fur- ther fact that the letter of the 18th September is written "to confirm the statement made at the interview of the 17th Septem- ber."
It would, of course, be much to our interest to keep these matters quite separate; and this is also, I understand, the view of His Majesty's Government, for you propose in your telegram of the 22nd September* to say nothing about the method by which the Canton Government intends to raise funds for liquidating the boycott organisation, as by maintaining silence now. we shall be in better position later to deny, if necessary, that the removal of the boycott was dependent on taxation, the latter being the affair of the Canton Government, to which we were not even asked to agree.
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5. I may here point out that the 10th October is the anniversary of the outbreak of the rebellion against the Manchu dynasty at commemoration Wu-ch'ang in 1911, and that it is observed as a day" in China. The Cantonese troops, as it happens, are now besieging Wu-ch'ang, which is still in northern hands. Other- wise the date has no special significance; and, of course, from a financial point of view the yield of the new taxation, even if it were imposed effectively at once, would not by the 10th October have produced the many millions of dollars which, as we have hitherto been led to believe by Mr. C. C. Wu and others, are necessary for liquidating the boycott organisation. It is more
* C.17886/20; not printed,