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PART II
General Comments
1.
The provision reserving a measure of Chinese juris- diction within the leased territories appears in three leases Kowloon (British) Wei-hal-wei (British) and Kinchow (Russian). The following points may be observed:-
(a) These three are all walled cities of importance
from the standpoint of Chinese prestige inasmuch as they were administrative centres and of historic significance. Hence the desire of the Chinese to retain some jurisdiction within them for face- saving reasons.
(b) The qualification as to the military requirements
of the lessee rower appears in the two British leases but not in the Russian.
(c) In the case of the Russian lease the provision was
an afterthought baing a modification of the Convention of March 27, 1899.
(a) The fact that the Convention of March 27, 1898,
purported to be without prejudice to Chinese authority (sic "sovereign rights") shows that the mere provision allowing Chinese officials to exercise jurisdiction in the walled city did not have anything to do with sovereignty as this (whatever it meant) had already been reserved and the Additional Agreement could not reserve more than had been reserved already.
2. The lessee is granted "sole jurisdiction" in the leased territory by the two British leases and by the French lease. By implication the same was true under Article IV of the Russian lease (the text of this document is not very coherent) and by Article II of the German lease.
3. Some attempt is made in the case of the French and Russian lease to make it clear that the lease is without prejudice to Chinese sovereignty; Article II of the German lease (this is the only lease containing a specific prohibition against sub-letting to another Fower without Chinese consent) seems to have been drafted with the same intention. Nothing of this sort appears in the two British leases.
A.
Generally it appears that in all the leases there is an intention to recognize an ultimate Chinese sovereignty over "the leased territories, but, by granting sole jurisdic- tion to the lessees, the exercise of this sovereignty was renounced for the term of the lease. The special provision regarding jurisdiction in the walled cities of Kowloon, Wei-hai-Vei and Kinchow could not therefore add anything further in this respect, unless it amounted to excluding these cities from the lease altogether and that contrary to the Chinese argument was clearly not so.
4
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No satisfactory explanation appears available why military requirements made the abandonment of Chinese juris- diction in Kowloon necessary but not in Wei-hai-wei.
5.
6.
In connection with the Russian lease it is interesting
to note/
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