CO129-361 - Public Offices - 1909 — Page 269

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

AFFAIRS OF CHINA,

CONFIDENTIAL.

257

C.O. 15433

[April 5.1

SECTION 2.

LEGP 7 MAY OC

No. 1.

[12897]

(No. 123.) Sir,

Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received April 5.)

Peking, March 17, 1909.

I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch No. 565 of the 31st December, and No. 25 of the 29th January last, informing me of the object of Mr. Mackenzie King's Mission to China, and instructing me to give him ance in my power.

assist-

every

I lost no time in placing myself in communication with Mr. Mackenzie King immediately be arrived in Shanghae, and acting upon his advice I explained at length the objects of his Mission to the Wai-wu Pu, and prepared them generally for the reception of his proposals for the restriction of Chinese emigration to Canada."

Mr. Mackenzie King and the other members of the Opium Commission, reached Peking on the 6th instant, and on the 9th the first interview on the subject took place at the Wai-wu Pu with his Excellency Liang Tun-yen, whose long residence in the United States made him specially qualified to deal with such a question.

The exhaustive accounts prepared by Mr. Mackenzie King himself, copies of which I have the honour to inclose, of what passed at this and a subsequent interview on the following day, render it unnecessary for me to do more than touch upon the leading points of the discussion, and sum up very briefly my impression of the results that have so far been achieved.

Mr. Mackenzie King explained with great clearness and force the economic and political reasons which rendered a policy of restriction necessary. The difference in the standard of living between Orientals and the people of the North American continent, formed an important element in the competition of the labouring classes, and this led to an agitation for exclusion both in Canada and the United States, which no representative Government, charged with the duty of preserving good order, could afford to ignore.

Broadly speaking, there were two methods of dealing with the question. One consisted in the issue of prohibitory enactments in the nature of exclusion laws; the other was voluntary restriction by a foreign country of its own emigration. The latter was the system adopted by Japan and India, both of whom had entered into arrange. ments with Canada, under which they undertook to exercise a certain degree of control over their own emigration.

With China there had so far been no arrangement, and restriction had been enforced by means of a poll tax. Canada had no wish to maintain an invidions discrimination against China, and wished to ascertain whether China would not herself undertake the restriction of her own emigration.

Mr. Liang said that he could not discuss any proposal which aimed at the exclu- sion of all labourers. He could say at once that the Chinese Government would adhere to its traditional policy of discouraging contract labour. While advocating ou principle of liberty of movement for free labourers, he intimated the possibility of adopting some temporary measure of restriction, on the understanding that provision should be made for such gradual increase as circumstances permitted. The poll tax he regarded as a violation of Treaties concluded with Great Britain.

Mr. Mackenzie King, it will be seen, combated this latter contention with great skill, and pointed out forcibly that Canada did not wish to restrict any classes of Chinese from going to Canada other than the classes amongst her own people whom she was prepared to prevent from going to China. Students, merchants, tourists, and officials from China would all be welcomed, and those were the classes from which the Canadians in China were drawn. Mr. Liang, of course, retorted that such an agree- ment would be reciprocal in name rather than in reality, as Canadian labour did not wish to come to China, and would not succeed if it did. He concluded by saying that China had to guard against a repetition of what had occurred in connection with the interpretation of the 1894 Agreement with America, which had resulted in a boycott of American goods in China, and he asked Mr. Mackenzie King to furnish him with a written statement setting forth what was desired.

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