CO129-360 - Public Offices - 1909 — Page 127

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Paraphrase of telegram from Sir J. Jordan, Peking, to

Sir E. Grey, No. 33, dated January 23rd, 1909.

Hankow-Canton Railway.

See your telegram No. 22 of yesterday.

I presume that the proposed arrangement would not

affect the rights as to engineers and material, which,

in return for the Hongkong Government loan, were se-

cured under the agreement of September, 1905.

The British agents in China have strenuously and

successfully upheld those rights which have repeatedly

been recognized by the Chinese, who will probably re-

pudiate the whole agreement if any further modifica-

tion is made without their consent. I submit there-

fore that His Majesty's Government should safeguard no

arrangement which fails to safeguard those rights.

I strongly deprecate that any purely financial

loan should be made to China for railway purposes and

in view of our experiences in the working of the Shang-

hai-Ningpo and Tientsin Pukow agreements (see my des-

patches