[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
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AFFAIRS OF CHINA.
RECE
C. 0.
9970
[February 23 MAR 07,
465
CONFIDENTIAL.
[6018]
No. 1.
SECTION 4.
Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received February 23.)
(No. 9. Very Confidential.) Sir,
Peking, January 7, 1907.
I HAVE the honour to transmit to you herewith copy of a despatch from His Majesty's Consul-General at Shanghae, forwarding translation of instructions, as published in a Chinese newspaper, which were recently issued by his Excellency Chang Chih Tung on the subject of rebellious Societies in the provinces bordering upon the Yang-taze.
Some of the statements contained in this paper are so improbable that I should hesitate to trouble you with them were it not that similar alarmist rumours reached me through Sir Robert Hart in October last. Sir Robert at that time told me, on the strength of secret information, the source of which he was not in a position to disclose, that there was very serious disaffection amongst the troops in the Yang-tsze Valley, and that he was inclined to connect the movement which was supposed to be going on there in some indirect way with some of the Legations in Peking. He assured me that the Viceroy, Yuan Shi-Kai, anticipated serious trouble in the Yang-tsze region, and had made special arrangements for sending troops there at a moment's notice.
Although I did not attach very serious importance to these statements, I thought it well to telegraph to the Consul-General at Hankow and the Consul at Nanking, and ascertain if they had any information that pointed to disaffection amongst the troops.
The former's reply was generally of a reassuring nature. The local Taotai had, he said, in March last casually expressed some doubt as to the loyalty of the Hupei troops, but that was the only word of doubt he had heard on the subject since 1900. Both Honan and Huann were, he added, full of Secret Societies, but that was the normal state of things.
Mr. Ker reported from Nanking that he learned confidentially that some three months previously the Viceroy of Chibli had warned his colleague at Nanking against emissaries of Sun Ya Tsen, and gave the names of forty returned students from Japan who were supposed to be implicated in an anti-dynastic movement. Sun was, he said, supposed to have at his disposal a sum of 10,000,000 dollars belonging to the Triad Society, California, and the authorities had reason to suspect that arms and ammunition were being smuggled in by Secret Societies.
Mr. Ker subsequently supplemented this information in a private letter, extract from which I have the honour to inclose.
Since then there has been the rising in the Province of Hunan, which formed the subject of my telegrams Nos. 242 and 244, but which has now been apparently suppressed.
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I asked His Majesty's Consul-General at Hankow to ascertain who the " foreign adviser was whose Report is quoted in the Viccroy's instructions, but Mr. Fraser can only discover that it is a foreign official in the north, who is not in his Excellency's employ.
There is undoubtedly a feeling of unrest and a good deal of noisy agitation going on in many parts of the Empire, but, so far as I can judge, there is no indication of any concerted anti-dynastic movement with which the Government is likely to find it difficult to cope.
The most unsatisfactory symptom I notice is the excessive nervousness of the Central Government to run counter to popular feeling, even where this feeling assumes an entirely unreasonable form, and unless a firmer attitude is taken in this respect, there seems to me to be a danger that the provinces will practically each become a Government unto themselves. The hold the Central
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