[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government
235
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
(3047)
No. 1.
209 [January 27.]
SECTION 1310
Sir,
India Office to Foreign Office.-(Received January 27.)
India Office, January 26, 1910.
I AM directed by the Secretary of State for India in Council to acknowledge the receipt of your letters, dated the 6th and 7th January, 1910, respectively, on the subject of the opium regulations at Canton.
I am to remark that with regard to these and similar regulations of the provincial governments in China, Sir Edward Grey, with Viscount Morley's concurrence, has approved the teras of the instructions given by Sir John Jordan to the consul-general at Canton in his letter of the 17th June, 1909, and subsequently to the consul at Nanking in his letter of the 13th August, 1909. Sir John Jordan there explained that the regulations made by the Viceroy of Canton and the similar regulations at Nanking were not open to formal protest so long as they were confined in their application to retail sellers of raw opium, and were carried out in a proper spirit and in such a manner as not to interfere with the wholesale trade between the British importer end the native purchaser.
It is presumed that the action to be taken in respect of the recent incident at Canton should be in accordance with the above-mentioned instructions.
It is not clear that the requirement which the Canton Viceroy has laid upon the native dealers in foreign opium, whereby they are forbidden to sell raw opium to unlicensed persons, amounts to direct interference with the wholesale trade. The traders in question, though they deal wholesale with the importers of foreign opium, would appear to be retailers in their dealings with Chinese purchasers, and it is in this capacity that they have been made amenable to the regulations.
It would be difficult to maintain that the regulations have been improperly applied, merely because restrictions placed on the retail business of the dealers may indirectly affect the wholesale trade.
It would seem that Sir John Jordan is not insensible to this difficulty, and that he rests the case for protest on the more general ground that the regulations in this and in other respects are being worked by the Canton Viceroy in an unfair spirit, with the object of creating a monopoly or of discriminating against foreign and in favour of native opium. Viscount Morley is unable to form an independent opinion from the papers before him as to how far this is the case, but he infers from the tact that the Wai-wu Pu have acknowledged the reasonableness of the Minister's representations, while professing inability to interfere with the provincial government, that there is substaatial ground of complaint.
The Government of India have recently expressed the opinion that the present agreement for a progressive yearly reduction in the export of opium from India should not be continued beyond 1910, unless, among other conditions, guarantees are given that the merchants engaged in the wholesale opium trade with China will be allowed free trade within the treaty ports, and that the number of wholesale dealers will not be arbitrarily diminished. If Sir Edward Grey sees no objection, Sir John Jordan might be authorised, if he finds it necessary, to inform the Chinese Government that the freedom of the wholesale trade in the treaty ports between native dealers and the importing merchants was regarded as a condition of the arrangement by which the Indian Government agreed to a progressive reduction in the opium trade in the three years ending 1910, and to point out that should proposals be made by the Chinese Government for a continuance of that arrangement for a further term on the ground that China has fulfilled her share of the existing agreement, the Indian Government will naturally expect to be satisfied that the condition in question has been observed, and that it will continue to be observed by the provincial governments.
I am, &c.
R. RITCHIE.
[2606 dd-1]
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