CO537-1657 — Page 44

2.

territory. Mr. Kwok again made the excuse that he was waiting until the method of establishing Chinese administration had been fully

worked out. I pointed out to him that at this stage in the matter no question of method could possibly arise seeing that the question whether any change should be made had not even been broached.

Mr. Kwok then tried to argue that the Chinese claim to exercise some jurisdiction over Kowloon City had not in fact been entirely allowed to lapse during the period since 1899. As instances

of the practical survival of the Chinese claim and of the existence of some differentiation between Kowloon City and the rest of the

New Territories he asserted as follows:

(a)

That the Chinese inhabitants of Kowloon City had at various times since 1899 paid taxes to the Chinese Authorities.

I said that if that was so the unfortunate people must have had to pay double taxation, for I was sure that the Hong Kong Government had neither let them off any Hong Kong taxation nor been aware of the fact that they were being attended to by Chinese tax collectors. (b) That the interior of Kowloon City had been entirely neg-

lected by the Hong Kong Government, the roads were in poor condition, and the police never entered there.

(c)

That some sort of negotiations with the Hong Kong Government had been conducted by his predecessors in the office of Commissioner for Foreign Affairs Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces, namely Dr. Kan Che Ho and more recently Dr. Phillip Tyau, and that one of these two, the latter I think, had been regarded by the Hong Kong Government as a regular nuisance because of his interest in the matter. Mr. Kwok could not tell me precisely what had been the nature of these negotiations but he said that they had had something to do with the exercise of Chinese Civil Administration in Kowloon City. He thought that Dr. Phillip Tyau's negotia- tions had been with Sir Geoffry Northcote or at any rate in Sir Geoffry's time.