CO129-383 - Public Offices - 1911 — Page 13

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Sir H. May as to the stage in descent at which China

will agree to withdraw its claim to regard Chinese born

abroad as Chinese subjects, before we proceed to enter

into negotiations on our own account.

The Dutch Minister informs me that the Chinese

All

Government fully realize that their present Law of

Nationality is unworkable and must be revised.

legislation in China is in a very fluid condition et

present and this particular enactment would no longer,

I fear, form a solid basis on which to base an arrange-

ment with China.

The Ministers of the Wai Wu Pu have little or no

knowledge of these questions which are left to other

departments and for the purposes of the negotiations

with the Dutch Minister it has been necessary to recall

to Peking the Chinese Minister at the Hague who has had

long experience abroad.

As to the inhabitants of the Kowloon extension and

Wei Hai Wei, I do not think that the Chinese will ever

admit that the two cases are in any way distinct.

They

regard both as leased, and not as ceded territories.

The wording of both leases is practically the same

ex-

cept

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except that the former is an enlargement under lease

of Hongkong which is territory previously ceded by

Treaty. Both places are, from the Chiness point of

view, on the same basis as Klacchow end Dairen and so

long as the Germans and Japanese do not claim to

protect Chinese inhabitants of Klaochowand Dairen out-

side the limits of the leased territory, I do not see

how we can expect to enforce such a claim.

The

Chinese snswer would simply be that Kiaochow wes

leased to Germany for 99 years in March 1898, that

Kowloon was, as a political concession, similarly

leased to Great Britain for the same period three

months later, and that the treatment in both cases must

be the same. Had there been any idea of a cession of

territory, as distinguished from lease, we should,

they would add, have doubtless stipulated, as the

Japanese did in the case of the cession of Formosa,

that the inhabitants should have the right of "orting".

(see Article V of Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895).

It never, of course, occurred to the Chinese that

the principles of international law were going to be

strictly