CO129-477 - Public Offices - 1922 — Page 343

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ENCLOSURE NO. 1 IN ACTING CONSUL GENERAL AT SHANGHAI'S

DESPATCH NO. 123 OF 15 MAY 1922 TO PEKING.

Shanghai.

Sir:-

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8th May, 1922.

342

In accordance with your instruction I have the honour to

report on the recent cases in the Mixed Court in which that

Court has taken jurisdiction over Chinese registered as

Spanish proteges.

The protection extended to Chinese by certain of the

foreign consulates, notoriously the Spanish, has been a constant

source of annoyance to the Mixed Court, the police and to

litigants generally for many years, but for the purposes of

this report I need only refer to the Resolution passed at the

Conference of British Chambers of Commerce held at Shanghai

in November 1921, which is as follows:

"That this Conference deprecates the growing tendency of certain foreign consulates in China to afford protection to Chinese by process of naturalisation or other means, as it is notorious that in the majority of cases the applicants for naturalisation are not actuated by any desire to leave their own country to take up their residence in a foreign state, but take this simple means of evading their just obligations and liabilities and escaping from the jurisdiction of the Courts of their native country to which they would otherwise be amenable.

H

In the course of the discussion on this Resolution

Judge Skinner Turner said:

C.F. Garatin

"Whether the Mixed Curt is bound to accept, and not go behind the registration certificate given by s consulate I do not know. I am bound to say that the British Court is not bound by the certificate of registration| given by the British consulate....... I am bound to say that in this matter of claiming foreign interests it looks to me that too much weight is placed on the mere ipse dixit of the consulate concerned..... It has always struck me that it is possible that the Mixed Court, if it would sit up and take notice, might dispute some of these certificates. Suppose it went ahead and issued execution and sold the goods of such a person, what would the consulate have to say?...

Esq.,

Acting British Consul-General,

Shanghai.

Within