CO129-343 - Public Offices & Foreign Office - 1907 — Page 499

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

493

(B]

AFFAIRS OF CHINA.

CONFIDENTIAL.

[7679]

No. 1.

[March 9.]

SECTION 3.

C. 0.

10923

REGE 26 MAR 07,

Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.--(Received March 9.)

(No. 42. Confidential.) Sir,

Peking, January 23, 1907. IN my despatch. No. 9, Very Confidential, of the 7th instant, I had the honour to transmit to you copy of a despatch from Sir Pelham Warren, inclosing translation of an extract from the "Nan Fang Pao" of the 15th December, being instructions from his Excellency Chang Chih Tung on the subject of rebellious societies. I stated that I had asked His Majesty's Consul-General at Hankow to ascertain who the "foreign adviser }}

was whose report is quoted in the Viceroy's instructions, but that Mr. Fraser could only discover that it was a foreign official in the north who is not in his Excellency's employ.

I have now received a despatch frore Mr. Fraser stating that the instructions were based on a communication from the Viceroy Yuan, which did not specify the foreign and native officers who supplied information as to the secret societies.

"The

Mr. Fraser has also obtained information throwing light on the blanks and obscure allusions contained in the instructions. "Certain foreigners" on p. 2 appear to be four Frenchmen, whose Chinese names only, however, have been discovered, and whom it has not been possible to identify.

Bank" (p. 2), with which the money collected by the societies is said to be deposited, is the Hong Kong and Shanghae Bank. A certain country (p. 4) from which munitions of war had been purchased is America, and the three Powers (p. 4) who have made agreements with the Wai-wu Pu are Great Britain, Japan, and France.

71

My French colleague informed me some days ago that he had reason to believe that Sun Ya Tsen was in close collusion with a number of foreigners. He knew for certain of one French deputy who was in constant communication with him, and about whose action he had received a remonstance from the Wai-wu Pu. He added that this was by no means an isolated instance.

Colonel Munthe, a Norwegian subject and Aide-de-camp to the Viceroy Yuan, mentioned to me a short while ago that the French Government had detected a sale of 75,000 stands of arms in Tonquin to a revolutionary body in China, and had warned the Wai-wu Pu of the transaction.

In conversation with Tong Shoa-Yi, I recently alluded to the insinuations against foreign Powers contained in the Viceroy's instructions, and said that, so far as Great Britain and British subjects were concerned, they were totally unfounded.

While fully admitting this, his Excellency assured me, confidentially, that three French officers stationed in Peking had exposed themselves to very great suspicion of maintaining intimate relations with the revolutionary party in China, and that their action had formed the subject of an official remonstrance addressed to the French Minister, who had acted very correctly in the matter. Two of these officers, Tong added, had left Peking, but the third was still here.

I have, &c. (Signed) J. N. JORDAN.

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