[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
CHINA RAILWAYS.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[2105]
No. 1.
342
[January 19.]
SECTION 3.
C.O.
7655
28 FEB 07.
Consul-General Wilkinson to Sir Edward Grey.—(Received January 19, 1907). -
(No. 32.) Sir,
Yunnan-fu. November 20, 1906. WITH reference to my despatch No. 30 of the 13th instant, I have the honour to inclose copy of a further communication addressed by me to the Government of Burmah, covering translation of the reply from the Wai-wu Pu to the telegrams of the Yunnan Government, on the subject of the Tali reconnaissance and the Tengyuch Railway,
I have, &c.
(Signed) W. H. WILKINSON.
Inclosure 1 in No. 1.
Consul-General Wilkinson to Government of Burmah.
(No. 48. Burmah. Confidential.) Sir,
Yunnan-fu, November 19, 1906. IN my despatch No. 46 to you of the 11th instant, I inclosed translation of two telegrams sent by the Yunnan Government to the Wai-wu Pu on the 25th October and 2nd November respectively.
Chiang Li-ch'eng, English Secretary to the Governor-General, brought me two days ago a copy of what purports to be the reply of the Wai-wc Pu; of this I beg to inclose translation. I cannot, of course, be certain that it contains the whole answer trom Peking, still less that no other instructions have been received from the Central Government.
You will observe that the dates given in the reply do not agree with those stated in my despatch. As regards that of the 17th October, I think that the reference must be to the Confidential telegram that formed Inclosure No. 1 to my despatch in question. That telegram was dated on the copy conveyed to me as the 25th October, but it may have been sent a week or more earlier, or the reference may be to a previous message that I have not seen. As regards the second date, the 5th November, this is evidently the day on which was received at the Wai-wu Pu the Yunnan telegram of the 2nd November that formed my Inclosure No. 2. When I telegraphed to you yesterday the substance of the Wai-wn Pu's reply, I gave the date as "the 12th November," the date of its receipt here. It should have been "the 10th November."
What I anticipated in my despatch to you would happen has happened: the Wai-wu Po has summed up this Government's telegram of the 2nd November as importing that I have agreed to the countermanding of the reconnaissance. I pointed this out to Chiang Talaoyeh, repeating that I had carefully explained to him and to Kuei Ta-jen, that all I undertook to do was to pass on to your Government the arguments set out in his Governor-General's note, and that I had, and have, no power to stop the reconnaissance. In my formal reply, I added, I had said that I am awaiting an answer from India. Chiang agreed with me, but said that Kuei Ta-jen is claiming credit for having convinced me. (On the strength of this, apparently, he has just been promoted to be Prefect of Cheng-chiang Fu).
The matter is, in any case, of little or no consequence. What is of interest is the Wai-wn Pu's statement that when Sir John Jordan comes to negotiate they will "argue with him by the Treaty "-in other words, that they will take their stand by the wording of Article XII of the Convention of 1897, which Article unquestionably contemplated construction by China herself of the railways that are eventually to be linked up with the Burmah system. Sir John Jordan, however, should have little difficulty in demonstrating how this Article has been modified by the Concession to France in 1898 of the Laokai-Yunnan-fu railroad, and by the final admission in March 1902, on the part
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