CO129-343 - Public Offices & Foreign Office - 1907 — Page 430

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

424

C. O.

CHINA RAILWAYS.

CONFIDENTIAL.

9150

[February 108EC?

SECTION 1. REGE 12 MAR 07,

[5150]

No. 1.

Consul-General Wilkinson to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received February 16, 1907.)

(No. 36.) Sir,

WITH reference to my immediately preceding despatch, I have the honour to

Yünnan-fu, December 31, 1906. inclose copy of a Report to His Majesty's Minister at Peking, stating that the Govern- ment of Yunnar has practically agreed to the Tali reconnaissance.

I have, &c. (Signed)

W. H. WILKINSON.

(No. 52.) Sir,

Inclosure 1 in No. 1.

Consul-General Wilkinson to Sir J. Jordan.

Yünnan-fu, December 20, 1900. IN continuance of my immediately preceding despatch, I have the pleasure to report that the Yünnan Government has practically yielded in the matter of the Tali

reconnaissance.

Ou the 20th instant I received from His Majesty's Acting Consul at Tengyueh a telegram informing me that the Taotai had confidentially communicated to him the telegraphic correspondence that had passed between his Intendancy and the Yüonan Government. The Governor-General instructed the Taotai to stop all Burmah officials, especially Mr. Lilley, and stated that the settlement of the reconnaissance questiou rests with the Wai-wu Pu and the British Minister at Peking.

I forwarded on the 21st to you Mr. Ottewill's message as above, adding that Mr. Lilley and his party desire to start on the 1st proximo. I took the opportunity to report that I had communicated, on the 15th instant, to the Governor-General the last paragraph of your telegram No. 20 (the opinion of His Majesty's Secretary of State that the reconnaissance forms an integral part of last season's survey, and that similar protection should accordingly be afforded). When doing so I had, I observed, omitted the words "unless there is serious opposition."

A day or two later I learnt that two of the so-called "Directors of the Yüunan- Szechuan and Tengyueh Railways Company" had telegraphed, in the name of the gentry generally, to the Wai-wn Pu protesting against the reconnaissance on the ground that since last season's survey their exclusively Chinese Tengyueh Railway Company had been established. If the reconnaissance were allowed, they more than hinted that it would be met by forcible resistance.

In telegraphing this news to you, I permitted myself to observe that the establish- ment of the Chinese Railway Company after the Governor-General had agreed to discuss proposals from the Government of India and before such discussion had taken place, was an affront to His Majesty' Government, and that we could not recognize any such Company. You could, I added, safely assure the Wai-wu Pu that it is only two or three noisy scholars that object for their private ends; all that the Taotai at Tengyueh asks is that the party shall be delayed until a decision is reached between you and the Wai-wu Pu. I again ventured to submit that the only move, but a move certain to succeed, is to insist on equal treatment with the French; half measures merely leave room for argument, purposely designed to waste time.

On the 25th I received the Governor-General's reply to my despatch of the 15th December. (I inclose copy and translation.) This reply embodied, as you will observe, a Petition from the "Directors," the gist of which-but not the form-coin- cided with their telegram to the Wai-wu Pu, the threat excepted. The Governor- General concluded by inviting me to meet them on the following day (the 26th) at the offices of the Railway Company, in order, as he naïvely says, to get an inkling of the

[2368 g-1]

B