2
3
(Translation.) Sir,
Inclosure 3 in No. 1.
Wai-wu Pu to Sir J. Jordan.
January 21, 1907. WE have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter informing us of the intention of Mr. Reid, engincer-in-chief of the Peking Syndicate, to proceed to Pingtingchow for a few days for the purpose of collecting specimens of the coal, iron ore, and limestone of the district for examination and analysis in London.
As the Board informed you in a note of the 10th January, the Governor of Shansi is unable to issue the permit applied for by the Peking Syndicate to open mines in that locality. Should the Syndicate send their engineer-in-chief to Ping- tingchow to collect specimens of coal, iron ore, and limestone, it is certain to give rise to misunderstandings among the people of the locality which will be difficult to allay.
We trust, therefore, that your Excellency will instruct Mr. Reid not to proceed.
We avail, &c.
Inclosure 5 in No. 1.
Mr. G. Brown to Sir J. Jordan.
Your Excellency,
Tien-tsin, January 28, 1907. I HAVE the honour to acknowledge receipt of your Excellency's letter of the 26th instant regarding the claim of 2001. a-day from the 1st January, 1907, lodged with the Wai-wu Pu by your Excellency, under instructions from His Majesty's Government on behalf of the Peking Syndicate as damages for the refusal of the Governor of Shansi to issue a coal-mining permit to the Syndicate according to the Agreement of 1898, and I beg leave to tender the acknowledgments of the Syndicate to your Excellency for the clear presentation of the Syndicate's case and the refutation of the arguments advanced against it, as well as for the renewed intimation to the Wai-wu Pu that continued delay will entail a periodical increase of the amount set down for compensation.
I have, &c. (Signed)
GEORGE BROWN,
Agent-General.
Your Excellency,
Inclosure 4 in No. 1.
Mr. G. Broum to Sir J. Jordan.
Tien-tsin, January 23, 1907. ALL my information still points to the fact that the chief opponent of the Syndicate's rights in Shansi is his Excellency Ting Niebtai (acting Fantai), who is endeavouring to obtain coal-mining machinery from any firm in Tien-tsin that can be got to supply it, using as one of his agents Mr. McCoy, son-in-law of the Rev. A. Sowerby, of Taiyuanfu, the latter being, as your Excellency will remember, the keen intermediary of his Excellency Ting in the preliminary negotiations commencing last November for a conference which the latter professed to be anxious to have with me, but which I am firmly convinced was merely a pretext to create further delay.
This
Mr. McCoy was formerly in the employ of Messrs. Buchheister and Co., of Tien-tsin, but resided at Taiyuanfu, where he arranged various deals in machinery with his Excellency Ting Nichtai. A British member of another Tien-tsin firm called on me recently and informed me that he had been approached by a Chinese gentleman named Cheng Yu, of the Shansi Educational Board (P), on behalf of his Excellency Ting, whose name was also endorsed on the card produced to me, for the purchase of machinery to be used in the Syndicate's Pingtingchow area. British gentleman, who is intimately connected with mining ventures in North China, and well acquainted with the places set apart in the Agreement of 1898 for the Syndicate's operations, refused, so he said, to have anything to do with the matter unless his Excellency Ting could put down in advance 200,000 taels, the probable cost of the machinery required, a condition which was not complied with. From the same course I also learnt that a pump and boiler supplied by Messrs. Buchheister and Co. had lately gone up to Pingtan, in Pingtingchow, under the charge of a German operator, for a shaft within the limits of the Syndicate's permit area as defined in the application of November 1905. My informant had himself seen it on the way.
I need not point out to your Excellency that such a proceeding is in distinct antagonism to the assurance given me at the Wai-wu Pu by his Excellency Tong Shao-yi that no foreign machinery or capital other than the Syndicate's should be employed and that reports of attempted dealings in that direction with foreign firms in Tien-tsin were baseless.
I have, &c. (Signed) GEORGE BROWN,
Agent-General.
Your Excellency,
Inclosure 6 in No. 1.
Mr. G. Brown to Sir J. Jordan.
Tien-tsin, January 29, 1907. WITH reference to the concluding paragraph of your Excellency's letter of the 26th instant, informing me that the Wai-wu Pu took exception to Mr. Reid's proposed visit to Pinglingchow, I would point out that there would seem to be a misapprehension of the nature of Mr. Reid's mission, which the Wai-wu Pu erroneously connect with the application for a permit to open mines in the district-altogether another question.
My communications to your Excellency of the 18th December and 8th instant referred solely to the Agreement for smelting works in Shansi of the 3rd July, 1905, by which instrument the Chinese Government became, on certain well-defined terms, a co-partner with the Syndicate in this undertaking. The Syndicate is anxious that this Agreement should be carried out at once and is prepared to fulfil its part. It is absolutely necessary as a preliminary that specimens of the coal, iron ore, and limestone should be submitted to analysis in London, and it is advisable that such samples should be collected by an expert, who could at the same time point out the most advantageous site for the works with due regard to the location of the most suitable minerals and the vicinity of the railway.
I hesitate to interpret the Wai-wu Pu's letter to your Excellency as an admission that, in a simple, unobjectionable, and temporary proceeding of this nature, the Chinese Government, which itself has a proprietary share in the enterprise, is powerless to control a section of its subjects, and therefore cannot afford the necessary authority and protection in fulfilment of its obligations, especially in a district now closely linked to Peking by the Cheng-tai line.
At my interview with your Excellency on the 24th instant, I received the impression that Mr. Reid's journey, if unobtrusively carried out, need not be indefinitely postponed. My information from Mr. Stewart at Pingtan, who has also been written to on the subject by the local Magistrate under telegraphic orders from the Governor (copies and translations inclosed herewith), is that, although a modified boycott of his establishment still continues, the neighbourhood is otherwise peaceful, I and he does not anticipate any trouble for Mr. Reid during the latter's short visit. may mention that Mr. Reid expects to leave for England very soon, and it is important that he should take the mineral samples with him.
I have, &c. (Signed) GEORGE BROWN,
Agent-General.
[2418 -6]
B 2
608
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.