Extract from the
"Times","
15
15 September, 1898.
THE FAR EAST,
EXTENSION OF HONG-KONG.
The news that Sir Claude MacDonald had suc- ceeded in obtaining an extension of British Kau-lung was received in Hong-kong with cordial gratification; but recent telegrama make it evident that this satisfaction has been materially damped by the discovery of reservations which are held to be pregnant with trouble. While the territorial froutier has been pushed back some 10 miles, Kau-lung city is left under Chinese jurisdiction, and a promise that we will do all we can to prevent Chinese revenue from suffering from the change has been taken advantage of to demand that a Commissioner of Customs and his staff shall be admitted, and recognized, and empowered to collect Chinese dues in Hong-kong. The consequences would, it is affirmed, be to create an Alsatia in one case, and in the other to admit a principle that should be vigorously opposed in the interesta not only of trade but of British prestige in South China and Heng-kong. These aspects will probably be mitigated; but it is easy to conceive that, as presented nakedly to the colonists, they look very forbidding indeed.
When alluding, in December last, to the pro- ject of enlarging the colonial area, we remarked that the extension was advocated on civil as well as military grounds. Not only did the safety of the colony require that the boundary line should be pushed back beyond the range of modern artillery, but the power of policing the opposite mainland would conduce to poace and good government, and the inquisitorial practices of Chinese revenue cruisers would be checked. The present impression in Hong-kong clearly is that the military object has beon gained at the expense of the civil; and our Correspondent telegraphed on August 21 that the Chamber of Commerce preferred abandoning the extension to admitting such restrictions on the freedom of trado. The convention has been drawn, no doubt for the sake of consistency, on lines similar to those which have been truced in the case of Shan-tung. For the Wei-hai-wei Convention also -while conceding sole jurisdiction to Great Britain over a belt of land ten miles wide along. the coast line of the bay-provides that Chinese officials shall continue to exercise jurisdiction within the walled city "except so far as may be inconsistent with naval and military requirements for the defence of the territory leased"; while a recent telegram from Peking statos that a Chinese Custom-house is to be established on German territory at Kiao-chau. Hong-hong would contend that the cases are dissimilar, and it may be well to consider its plea. There is no likeness, to begin with, between the cities of Wei-hai-wei and Kau-lung. The first is inhabited, so far as our knowledge extends, by a population of the ordinary Chinese class; whereas Kau-lung is a resort of thieves, gamblers, receivers of stolen goods, and of the scum which is constantly ebb- ing and flowing between Hong-kong and Canton. It is a source of more than enough trouble already. Isolated within our new territory it would be au Alsatia of the worst conceivable kind. Chinese Customs control in Hong-kong would be equally intolerable. That the mouths of Chinese revenue collectors water and their fingers itch at the spectacle of its commerce needs no demonstration; | and their efforts to lay hands upon it soon consti- tuted an annoyance which found expression in the following clause of the Chifu Convention of 1876 :- The Governor of Hong-kong baving long complained of the interference of the Canton Customs rovenne cruisers with the junk trade of the colony, the Chinese Government agrees to the appointment of a Commission to consist of a British Consul, an officer of the Hong- kong Government, and a Chinese official of equal rank, in order to the establishment of some system that shall enable the Chinese Government to protect its revence without prejudice to the interests of the colony.
Several years elapsed before this agreement was given effect, owing to delay in settling the new system of opium taxation which was indicated in another clause. In 1885, how- ever, a Commission, sitting under the presi- dency of Sir James Russell (then chief Judge of Hong-kong), reached an agreement under which regulations were made controlling the preparation and movement of opium in the interests of the Chineso fise; a Commissioner of the Imperial Chinese Customia was stationed at Kau-lung, and
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a tacit understanding was reached that his presence in the colony, unofficially, for purposes connected with his duties, would not be opposed. The objects in view were not easy of attainment, and it says much for all concerned that the arrangement has proved endurable in Hong-kong, while enuring to the immense advantage of the Chinese revenue. That it has been endured, however, with some impatience may be inferred from the language of a memorial addressed by the senior member of the Legislative Council to the Governor, urging the necessity for an extension of Kau-Inng, in 1894 :-
The police of the opposite mainland (wrote Mr. Chater) and of the numerous villages that lie along it at all points round the city and harbour would be in our hands, with what beneft to the peaco, order, and good government of the culony you best know.
The Kau-lung gambling hells, pawnshops, and dealers would vanish.
marine store The Chinese customs, with all its cruisers, revenue stations, revenne farmers, detectives, and spies, would be done away with; and with it the constant possibility and probability of troublesome disputes with the Chinese Mandarins and people. Our population would have room to spread, manufactories would find space to plant themselves, &c.-irrespectively altogether of the strategical con- siderations involved.
Perusal of this forecast may enable us to realize the feeling with which the colony learned, shortly after the convention had been signed, that Sir Robert Hart had made the follow- ing demands :-That the Commissioner of Customs, now known as the Kau-lung Commis- sioner, shall be fully recognized in Hong-kong and by the Hong-kong Government as an Im- perial Chinese officer, and his office in Hong- kong recognized and acknowledged; that the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs shall be authorized to collect in Hong-kong the Chinese dues on all goods or merchandise carried from or to Chinese ports in Chinese vessela; that they shall have set apart for them, to facilitate their operations, two or more jotties in the harbour near the junk anchorage; that the Customs launches shall retain the
same right of search and seizure in the newly-coded waters as when these were wholly Chinese, &c. It is superfluous to continue the enumeration. The arrangement would be nearly paralleled by the admission of French revenue officers in Guernsey with power to collect French Customs dues, instead of waiting till merchandise entered a French port-though we must imagine Guern- rey, in order to complete the simile, a depôt for the foreign trade of northern France, and imagine' that trade carried on to a considerable extent by native sailing craft; for it is at Chinese junks that these shafts are aimed. The answer to any such proposal on the part of France would ob- viously be that the proper place to collect her Customs was on her own soil. But the case of Hong-kong is admittedly peculiar, in respect both of its trade and situation and of the laxity of Chinese fiscal administration on the mainland. Much has been tolerated, accordingly, that would not be tolerated under other conditions, and good will has been strained in facilitating the action of the Customs staff. The colony is prac- tically supervised by Chinese Customs employés, and the surrounding waters are patrolled by armed steam launches. When a further request is made to transfer the Chinese Customs collec- torate to British soil it is time to remark that the proviso in the Chifn Convention had two sides. The object was not only
enable the Chinese Government to protect its revenue," but to devise a method of doing so without prejudice to the interests of the colony," which has been long complaining of the interference of the Canton Customs revenue! cruisers with its junk trade."
to
It is easy, in the light of these reflections, to comprebend the Hong-kong Chamber's counter- demand that Chinese revenue stations and revenue cruisers should be removed beyond the limits of British territory and waters.
Mr. Brenan takos occasion in his report on the trade of Canton to hint at a special arrangement for vessels plying on the West River. The agres- ment under which that river was opened to foreign trade provides that the regulations should he based on those in force on the Yang-tsze. But the conditions are different :--
On the Yung-tsze the point of departure or arrival is Shanghai, a port nder Chinese control, On the West River the corresponding port is Hong-kong, free British port where the Chinese Government can have no control. A steamer leaving Bhangbai for a Yang-taze port has been loaded under Chinese Customs super-
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