CO537-1657 — Page 54

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Memo carlosed as

os/3832

Pape 10 bud

1318

Chinese Minister in London on the 30th May, 1899,

stating that "after the recent experience which

they have had, not only of the worthlessness

of the protection extended by the Chinese garrison

at Kowloon, but of the additional danger involved

in its presence, it is impossible for

His Majesty's Government to allow the resumption

of Chinese authority within the Walls of that City".

The Chinese Government did not accept this

decision, but after much discussion on the subject,

the matter appears to have been 'shelved' owing to

the Boxer Rebellion and no further reference was

made to it for over thirty years. *

"In the revival of Chinese nationalist sentiment

after the War an irredentist attitude regarding the

'New Territories' of Hong Kong has mildly manifested

itself. The development of Kowloon i.e. the British

Pennisula into a large modern city with wide streets

of stone buildings has reached and passed the

old Chinese walled city and it has for some time been

clear that the continued existence of that small area

could not long be exempted from the building and

town-planning developments in the surrounding area.

The leases of the small Chinese pig-keepers and

others who reside in the area expired at the end of

1933 and the Government resolved not to renew the leases

but to allow a year's grace for the inhabitants to

take up other (and superior) accommodation elsewhere

on favourable terms. The intention was to devote part

at any rate of the walled city site to be laid out as

a public park. This provided the occasion for an

agitation to be whipped up amongst certain Chinese

in Canton and the walled city against an alleged

infringement of the Chinese rights in the area, based

upon the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1898. The

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