CO129-492 - Governor Sir Clementi - 1925 [12] - 1926 [1-5] — Page 470

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troops, including the Russian-trained cadets from the Whampoa Military College, paraded down the Chinese esplanade facing the French and British Concessions on the island of Shameen. When the Chinese soldiers were opposite the island, they deliberately opened fire killing one Frenchman and wounding four British and one Frenchman. The fire was returned by the French and british and many casualties were inflicted on the Chinese, chiefly by the fire from a French machine gun. Consequent on this affair at Canton the strike of Chinese labourers in Hong Kong and the anti-British boycott in Kuang-tung was organized, not for industrial reasons, but as a patriotic protest against the unequal treaties which had been imposed on China by force.

8.

Japan, although the primary cause of the

Canton affair, was not directly concerned in it and

skilfully contrived so to use it as to direct Chinese

agitation away from herself. She settled the anti- Japanese strike in Shanghai in the following manner:- * On 12th

August the Japanese Consul General and the Chinese Commissioner for Foreign Affairs after protracted

negotiations signed an agreement by which the mill-owners

undertook to recognize the mill-hands' Union, when the

Chinese Government shall have produced and enforced labour

union regulations, and to make a charitable grant towards

the workers' losses during the strike, besides minor

concessions in the matter of pay and the powers of foremen.

By the end of August, some 50,000 employees of the Japanese

cotton mills had returned to work (Report on Foreign

Affairs, Vol. vi., No. 4, p.355).

9

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Since then the policy of Japan has inclined

to almost unreasonable patience in southern China and she

has studiously avoided any conflict either with the

Canton