CO129-382 - Public Offices - 1911 — Page 270

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

AFFAIRS OF CHINA.

CONFIDENTIAL.

[53]

No. 1.

C O

3447

[January 2.]

of 3 FEB ||

SECTION 2.

(No. 501.) Sir,

Sir G. Buchanan to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received January 2, 1911.)

St. Petersburgh, December 27, 1910.

I ENQUIRED of M. Sazonow yesterday whether there was any truth in the reports which had been published in the press respecting the intention of the Russian Government to make a military demonstration on the Chinese frontier in consequence of the treatment which certain Russian officers had met with at the hands of the local Chinese authorities.

His Excellency replied that the reports in question were exaggerated, but that the Russian Government had been obliged to make serious representations at Peking on account of the non-fulfilment by the Chinese Government of its obligations under the Russo-Chinese Treaty of Commerce. Under this treaty Russia had the right to import into Mongolia all goods free of duty, but the Chinese Government had refused to exempt from duty the tea which Russian merchants were in the habit of exporting from Manchuria by the Siberian Railway and of reimporting subsequently into Mongolia, on the ground that the treaty only applied to goods of foreign origin and not to native goods.

The Chinese Government had further refused to recognise a consul whom the Russian Government had appointed to reside in a town in Manchuria, of which I did not catch the name. In the event of their persisting in this refusal, the Russian Government proposed to instal the consul in his post under the escort of a sotnia of Cossacks.

I have, &c.

GEORGE W. BUCHANAN.

[1850 b--2]

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