CONFIDENTIAL.
389
(No. 95.) R.
Sir Edward Grey to Sir J. Jordan (Peking).
YOUR despatch No. 234 of 23rd May.
Foreign Office, June 17, 1912, 6 P.M.
Your representations have my entire approval.
The provincial authorities are doing everything to hamper the trade in Indian opitum and nothing to prevent the cultivation of the poppy.
You should inform the Chinese Government that, after careful consideration of the facts before thein, His Majesty's Government have reluctantly come to the conclusion that their present policy aims, not at the extinction of the opium habit, but at the substitution of the native for the foreign drug, thus defeating the humanitarian objects of His Majesty's Government in negotiating the agreements of 1907 and 1911. China, by flagrantly violating her promises under articles 1 and 7 of the agreement of 1911, has conferred on His Majesty's Government the right to denounce that agreement, and the Chinese Government must feel that the Indian Government is acting generously as far as China is concerned in continuing the reduction of export in face of her attitude, and that China would not be entitled to complain if the Indian Government cancelled or suspended on their side the operation of the agreement.
We are reluctant to bring the question of opium into the larger question of recognition, but His Majesty's Government could only be expected when the time comes to grant recognition to the Republic of China if the Chinese Government were in a position to give such assurances as would fully safeguard British treaty rights and interests, and it will be obviously impossible for them to accept as satisfactory assurances on this point as long as the Chinese Government has to admit its inability to enforce treaty provisions in the provinces.
The continued failure of the Central Government to impose its will throughout the country, of which these flagrant breaches of an agreement signed at the request of China little more than a year ago form only one of many instances, must materially retard the recognition of the Chinese Republic by His Majesty's Government, unless a considerable improvement in that respect is shown before the time comes for recognition.
(Repeated to India.)-
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