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[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.81
CHINA RAILWAYS.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[21151]
No. 1.
440
SE: 08
[June 19:]
SECTION 1.
Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received June 19.)
(No. 124.) (Telegraphic.) P.
FRANCE and China.
Peking, June 19, 1908.
On the receipt of your telegram No. 95 of yesterday's date, I made unofficial representations to the French Minister as to the inadvisability of pressing the claim for the extension of the Chengting-Taiyuan-fu Railway. Hitherto, I said, we had been able to point to the Anglo-French railway projects as purely industrial under- takings, a fact on which we had always laid great stress; but the action of France in the present case would be ascribed by the Chinese to political motives, and might lead to preference being accorded to our competitors. I could not agree with the French Minister's argument that our attitude in regard to the Chekiang Railway had been open to the same objections. In that case we had only brought pressure to bear in order to insure the due carrying out of a signed Agreement, made in the year 1898, in which France had secured for herself in Yunnan distinctly more advantageous railway rights.
M. Bapst declared that he had not demanded the railway extension merely as a In reparation to be made by China for the recent incident on the Yunnan frontier. the appointments of unfriendly officials in Yunnan, and in other ways, the Chinese Government had been persistently disgracieux in their attitude towards France, although the authorities in French Indo-China had to a large extent successfully kept in check the Chinese revolutionaries in Tonquin, In M. Bapst's opinion, China now had an opportunity to make some amends by acceding to a request which, he added, was not by any means being presented for the first time.
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