CO129-470 - Public Offices - 1921 — Page 315

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IMMUTE.

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1932dan 382 dolar (enoa ki

atm for a wing da

is no avasta

This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government, and should be returned

to the Foreign Office if not required for official use.]

313

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NO_DISTRIBUTION

Cypher Telegram to sir B. Alston. (Peking).

Foreign Office. February 17th, 1921. 4.45.p.m. No. 70. (R).

• URGENT.

Your telegram No. 74.

American Embassy has sent us a stiffly worded memorandum on the same subject, of which the following is the gist:-

American Goverment are amazed to learn that His Majesty's linister at Peking has protested against this contract and has 1.sisted upon its cancellation on the ground that it infringed the rights claimed by the Marconi Company under their

contract of May 1919.

Apart from the propriety of this step American Goverment desire to meet on its merits the contention

that any Government can justly claim for its nationals the right to exercise any such monopoly or preference for the supply of materials or equipment as would debar American citizens from the right to contract freely with the Chinese Goverment for any category

of supplies. The support of such a preferential or

exclusive right would create a doubt whether the

American Goverment had quite understood the attitude

of the British Goverment in the recent efforts to

co-operate in making effective the principle of

equality of commercial opportunity in China.

American