CO129-491 - Public Offices - 1925 — Page 525

部訊問國中

513

HOW FOREIGNERS LIVE AND CARRY ON TRADE IN CHINA

A Reply to the Statement of the China Association, London. Prepared by the Chinese Information Bureau.

ER

(I) The first assertion made by the China Association-that China is not an open" country in the sense that foreigners may freely enter the country and reside and carry on business wherever they please is misleading. China is an open country, in this sense, to those foreigners (Germans, Austrians, and Russians) who have given up extra-territorial rights and are willing to submit to the law of the land. It is not an open country to those foreigners who insist on retaining extra-territoriality, and, while living and making their living out of China, will submit to no law but that of their own Consul."

The

When the China Association speak of the rights and powers granted to the foreigners in the Treaty Ports, it must be remembered that the Treaties were imposed on China by force of arms. China did not desire the presence of foreigners. She feared them, because of their conquests in the East, and the gifts which they brought originally mainly British opium from India. Treaty Ports were forced open after the Opium war of 1840-42, after the Anglo- Chinese war of 1857-60, after the wars which deprived China of Burma and other territories, by means of treaties dictated by the victors to the vanquished.

(II) The China Association minimise the grip which foreigners have on China. They make no mention of Leased Territories (why is Wei-Hai-Wei still in British hands ?); of penetration by railway concessions of control by means of loans, often raised against the wishes of all but a small clique; of the fact that China is still not free to fix her own Customs Tariff nor to collect her Customs revenue, which is controlled by the foreigners under a British Inspector-General of Customs (so long as British trade in China predominates). Nor do they refer to the large question of the exclusive financial control of the Consortium of British, American, French, and Japanese banking groups, preventing China from raising money in the open market.

(III) The Association also under-state the areas of the Foreign Settlements and Concessions :-

(a) They speak of two ports, at which there is an "International Settlement," and of five or six ports where "Concessions" have been granted. Mr. Austen Chamberlain, in the House of Commons, enumerated seventeen Treaty Ports at which there are Foreign Settlements and Concessions.

(b) In the same way, the China Association give a wrong impression of the size of the Concessions, by quoting only the area of the British Concession, at Canton, where there is also a French Concession; at Hankow, where there are also French and Japanese Concessions, the three Concessions extending continuously over two miles of river frontage.

(IV) The Association state that the Concessions are most of them exclusively occupied by foreigners." They are at pains to show how little, if any, control the foreigners exercise over the Chinese in the ports where they

have settled.