CO129-486 - Public Offices - 1924 — Page 335

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183

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4 in Custow dosestoh 55. ↑ to Foreign office of 17 20, 1ao4,

Grown Advocate

to

Legation, Peking.

Shanghai, 8th April,

1924.

332

sir.

I have the honour to transmit to you, as asked, a despatah from H.F. King, H.M's Consul, Swatow, (No.8 of March 31st last). and enclosures, on the subject of the nationality, and right to British protection, in China, of Mr. Yosp Seng Ioon.

It is true, as Mr. King points out, that at the time of ir. Yeap's birth, at Tamsui, Formosa was still under the

Formosa was incorporated in the suzerainty of China. Japanese Empire in 1895; and Mr. Yeap was registered as British subject at our Consulate at Tamaui in the year 1906: on, I have no doubt, the good grounds of the British nation-

father at ality of his father and of his grandfather; his

the time of his son's birth being, moreover, in the service of the British Consulate at Tamaui, which service of his father sufficientlý accounts for his being born there, and not at Penang.

Au regards Mr. Yeap's gharacter and his fitness for recognition and Mr. King's suspicions that Mr. Yeap has been If there trafficking in opium, and probably other drugs:➡ were any faote to warrant such suspicions, ir. Teap, as a British subject, should have bem dealt with under the Opium Prohibition Regulations 1919 (King's Regulations No.22 of 1919)| I note, moreover, that Mr. King says that his sole ground for declining to renew registration of Mr. Yeap as a British subject was that he had not been born on British soil. As to the Chinese claim that Chinese blood carries with,

I have the honour it Chinese nationality in perpetuity i-

advice