CO129-316 - Governor Sir Blake - 1903 [1-4] — Page 604

#83

Hong Kong,

27th. March, 1903.

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590

sir,

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 20th. instant anent the Currency question, and in order to be in a better position to deal with this subject I have purposely delayed replying until now so as to sound the views of the majority of the Nan Pak Hong Merchants and Chinese Bankers and now beg to enclose a copy in Chinese expressing their views on this subject together with a translation of same.

With the views as expressed by the Merchants and Bankers, I am entirely in accord.

An exchange which shifts from day to day is no doubt exceedingly inconvenient for the purposes of trade. But until China goes gold Hong Kong can hardly, without loss to her trade, try the doubtful experiment of changing her Currency and establishing one upon a gold basis unsupported by her immediate neighbour China, a silver using Country, and after all Hong Kong is a distributing centre and occupies the position of a Commission Agent for all manufacturing countries

Her prosperity to a very great extent depends on her

trade with the interior of China.

To establish a gold basis in Hong Kong without China doing the same is I apprehend somewhat like the carrying on of trade between a gold using and a silver using Country.

The gold using country buys in gold and is paid by the

sin silver, silver using country if silver is cheap, but if the gold using country insist upon axis being paid in gold, the silver