CO129-426 - Public Offices - 1915 — Page 525

Suppressed portion of Sheech.

Rent 16 JUN 15

518

Reports have reached us from China 'that some remarkable and very significant information has come to light in connection with the liquidation of German firme by British subjects in Hongkong. It is stated that in the process of liquidation it has been discovered that a German atate-aided Financial Trust

the has been at the back of certain prominent German firms, main object of which Trust has been to assist in transferring British trade from British to German channels.

This end has been to some extent accomplished by giving facilities to German firms which enabled them to sell British goods to Chinese on terms of long credit, involving so much risk that British firms have been partially driven out of the trade. The Trust is elgo said to have enabled German firme to enter contracts at actual cost, or in some cases below cost, by making special indirect return to the firme on behalf of the Government; these returns being generally the equivalent

The German of ordinary trading profits on the contracts. Government's instructions to the Trust are said to have been to do ita utmost to oust British merchants from the trade, so ao to prove to the Chinese that Germans were in a better condition to cater for the trade than their British competit- ora even in their own colony. It is also said that German firas have represented to the Chinese that the British goods they were selling were of German manufacture, evidence of which is found in the fact that immediately after the declaration of war, when Chinese learnt that no goods could be shipped from Germany, the market in Hongkong rapidly advanced, for a few days, until the Chinese discovered that the goods were of British manu- facture and that further supplies were obtainable through British firmo. It is angested that the operations of this Financial Trust may possibly have had some bearing on the large indemnity olaimed by the German Government from China for commercial

From time to time losoco after the first Chinese revolution. other opportunities have arisen for recovering bread cast on the

For watero by such an institution as this Financial Trust. Oxample the German expedition to Chira after the Boxer outbreak was no larger than the British The German Prece, which is sometinca truthful, makes much of the fact that German soldiers are not mercenarieą" they did not arrive in China until after the Legations had been relieved and although the ir behaviour to the civil population was exactly the same as their behavious in. Belgium, they need not have fired a single cartridge; notwithstanding all this the German indemnity for military and Commercial losses amounted to £13,900,000, while the British indemnity wae £7,600,000.

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