CO129-383 - Public Offices - 1911 — Page 107

This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's

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13346

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AFFAIRS OF CHINA.

CONFIDENTIAL.

[10482]

No. 1.

25 R !

[March 22.]

SECTION

Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.--(Received March 22.) (No. 26. Confidential.) Sir,

Peking, January 18, 1911, WITH reference to your despatch No. 365 of the 20th October last instructing me to report on the course of the negotiations for the revision of the Sino-Russian Commercial Treaty of 1881, I have the honour to communicate to you the substance of a conversation which I had recently with the Russian Minister on the subject.

M. Korostovetz informed me that the Chinese had raised the question of revision some three years ago, and that the Russian Government had then accepted the principle of a tariff for the overland trade. The Chinese Government have not yet, however, given any formal notice of revision, but it is expected that it will be given between February and August of this year, the months in which the signature and ratification of the treaty of 1881 took place.

According to M. Korostovetz, the Chinese have been paving the way for revision by studiously violating the terms of the 1881 arrangement. Not only is the traffic across the frontier hampered in every conceivable way, but old boundary disputes which had long been dormant are being revived with significant activity.

Two acute delimitation questions are pending. From a point to the west of Manchouli, the station where the Chinese Eastern Railway enters China, to the junction of the Argun and the Shilka, a distance of over 500 kilom., the frontier has not been delimitated since 1727. The configuration of this region has undergone considerable changes and islands have formed in the bed of the Argun. A mixed commission which had been engaged in examining the question for some months had recently been dissolved without arriving at any decision.

Another dispute relates to Ussa, a district on the Mongolia--Yenesei border, some 300 miles north of Kobdo, which has long been a debatable region. According to M. Korostovetz, the houses of the Russian Cossacks who had settled there were burned by the orders of the local amban.

While fully crediting M. Korostovetz's assertion that China is showing unusual activity on the Russo-Chinese frontier, just as she is doing on the frontier co-terminous with the possessions of our Indian Empire, I am inclined to think that he rather exaggerates the difficulties which the forthcoming negotiations are likely to encounter. There has been marked difference in Russian policy here since the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese Convention, and Russia now feels that, in dealing with China, she can count upon the support of Japan in making demands which she would not have ventured to advance a year or two ago.

I am sending copy of this despatch to his Excellency the Viceroy of India.

I have, &c.

J. N. JORDAN.

(1918 -1]

Vay