CO129-326 - Foreign Office - 1904 — Page 595

[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]

BOUCH-WEST ORINA.

CONFIDENTIAL.

No. 1.

592

[October 3.]

SECTION 1.

Consul-General Wilkinson to the Marquess of Lansdowne.--(Received October 3.)

(No. 9.) My Lord,

Yunnan, August 18, 1904.

I HAVE the honour to inclose copy of a despatch which I have to-day addressed to His Majesty's Minister on the expediency of at once securing for British exploitation

the concession of a railway from Burmah via Tali to Yüanan-fu.

I have, &c.

(Signed) W. H. WILKINSON.

Inclosure in No. 1.

Consul-General Wilkinson to Sir E. Satow.

(No. 22. Confidential.)

Sir,

Yünnon-fu, August 18, 1904.

I HAD the honour to receive, on the 13th instant, your telegram No. 16 in reply to my telegram No. 14 of the 29th June.

You tell me that His Majesty's Government could not authorize the application I had suggested-for the concession of a railway from Burnah to Tali and Yunnan-fu

because there is no present prospect of capital being forthcoming.

1 was aware of the position which His Majesty's Government have generally adopted, not to apply themselves for a Railway or other Concession in a foreign country, but to wait until their offices were requested by British capitalists. At the same time, I felt, and continue to strongly feel, that the present is a case where an exception should be made. To quote from the Memorandum respecting Railways" (Inclosure No. 3 in Colonel Manifold's letter to the Foreign Office, copy of which was furnished to me in your despatch No. 4 of the 7th April last):

"The great importance of the Burmah line rests in the fact of its counter- halancing the French railway from Tonquin. When once the latter is completed, communication between Burmah and the Upper Yang-tsze will be cut off, and there will be a chance of Yunnan becoming practically a French province. A railway from Burmalı, if constructed for the present up to Yunnan-fu, would save this."

Again (Major Davies' "Military Report on Yunnan," Part I, p. 90): "The French are just now (1899) going to begin the construction of a railway up to Yünnan-fu, and they expect to reach there in seven years. Any railway we may make from Burmah to the Yang-tsze must also pass near or through Yünnau-fu. The point is of vital importance to us, as a French occupation of Yunnan-fu would cut off Burmah from the Yang-tsze Valley and thus prevent the construction of a connecting line between. India and China."

If we must describe a French railway from Tonquin to Yunnan-fu as a grave obstacle to the connection of India with our sphere of influence on the Upper Yang-tsze, what are we to say of a French railway to Tali? Though the French were to occupy Yunnan-fu, it is possible that we could still develop the old trade route from Burmah through Tali into the Chienchang Valley; but with Tali also under French domina- tion, our sole remaining access from India into Szechuan would be Sarat Chaudra Das' suggested road from Sadiya to Batang, or the still more problematical passage

via Lhassa to Tachienlu.

That the French contemplate an extension of the Laokai-Yunnan-fu Railway westward to Tali has been made evident by the insertion on their official railway maps of an "embranchement vers Tali." Article 11 of their Agreement of the 28th October last gives them the right to construct "des embranchements se rattachant à la ligne principale."

It is true that such construction cannot, according to the Agreement, be made until after the completion of the main line, and that it is dependent on an 'accord" with the provincial authorities of Yunnan and an "eutente between the

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