this country.
2
—
Whatever may be the immediate course of events in China, it is certain that the torch lit by the Chinese Nationalist movement shall never be extinguished, and it must therefore be recognised as an enduring reality in the internal and international politics of In these circumstances what should be the attitude of a country like Eng- land vis-à-vis this New China. There are people who insist that what England has, England must hold in China at all costs. This is what may be called the die-hard posture; and the past and all vital experience shew that it makes for resistance to change, for friction and strife and ultimately for war. And war, it is admitted, is never a real solution in modern conditions.
"Opposed to this attitude, which is rooted in a past of dead and dying conditions, is the conception of a changing China with new emerging classes of political workers who are conscious of the inherent strength and incalculable possibilities of Chinese resources and Chinese man-power under effective organisation. Such a conception demands, as a prac tical corollary on the part of friendly Powers, a new view of the Chinese background and a new policy to establish Sino-alien relations, not on the old historic basis of treating China as a war-defeated nation of the period of 1842 but on the principle of equality which to-day underlies the relations of the smallest and the greatest members of the world-system of in- dependent states and sovereignties.
"We believe that this statement of what is called the Chinese question is not in fun- damental opposition to the real interests of any genuinely trading power in China. And, therefore, if the British are here genuinely to trade-solely to sell their goods and to buy our goods as they do when they go to other independent states--Nationalist China, ani the Nationalist Government as its instrument of power and achievement, need not neces- sarily be a danger to British nationals in this country.
"If this view of the matter be sound, then mere considerations of prestige and what is known as 'face' ought not to be allowed to bar the road to a practical settlement of what is, in truth, one of the practical questions ofttimes posed by the ironic spirit in hist ory to search out man's patience, his goodwill and his good sense.'
]]
After the transaction of some formal business, the negotiations were adjourned to Friday at 10.30 a.m. when Mr. Eugene Chen will state the Chinese case.
No. 2.
SECOND JOINT COMMUNIQUÉ
RELATING TO THE
MEETING OF FRIDAY, THE 16TH JULY, 1926.
The following communiqué is jointly issued by the British and Chinese delegations who are negotiating a settlement of Chinese-British disputes in the Liang-Kuang,
The Conference resumed its sittings to-day at 10.30 a.m. when the Chinese De- legation stated their views on the origin of the anti-British boycott. They refrained from The Con formulating any conditions of settlement pending a reply to their statement. ference then adjourned till Monday, July 19th.
3
No. 3.
STATEMENT
MADE BY THE
CHINESE DELEGATION
AT THE
MEETING OF Friday, the 16în July, 1926.
343
In accordance with what are doubtless the wishes of the British delegation, we pro- pose to begin consideration of the anti-British trouble in the Liang-Kuang by first con- centrating attention on the aspect of it which has found expression in the anti-British: boycott.
What is this boycott? Ignoring mere details or purely accidental features, it consists essentially in Chinese workers refusing to load or unload British ships and in the Chinese people in our territory refusing to buy or deal in British goods, or to sell goods to the British. It is admitted that the boycott is an organised patriotic movement which has been sustained by the Chinese people in South China for more than a year.
If the anti-British boycott is to be SETTLED and not simply suppressed by force and so transformed into an enduring element in Chinese-British relations throughout China. it is necessary to find out, at least, its direct and immediate cause. In homely phrase, a malady is cured by treating its cause.
The anti-British boycott in its typical form began immediately after the events of June 23, 1925, off the Shameen. And none with a sense of causation can possibly doubt that the boycott was the first direct and immediate outcome of the killing and maiming of Chinese students and others on that fateful day. If, therefore, the anti-British boycott is to be terminated by a NEGOTIATED SETTLEMENT, we must first deal with the transaction of June 23, 1925.
Broadly speaking, the material facts of the case are not in real dispute save one, namely whether the British or the Chinese fired the fisrt shot. But even this point became of secondary importance when the entire incident is examined from the stand- point of juridical responsibility. Such an examination leads us first to a brief review of what may be called the causal background out of which sprang the tragedy of June 23.
It is an historical fact that the Chinese people as a whole were powerfully stirred by Sergeant Evanson's order to his men "to shoot to kill the Chinese students and others who demonstrated at Shanghai on May 30, 1925. In China, as elsewhere, school boys and girls of to-day are the rulers and workers of to-morrow, and a nation is necessarily inter- ested in its student class. There is also special reason why the Chinese people are interested in their students. A nation that is not dying must have an articulate group, and for reasons inherent in the present period of transition through which China is passing, this mark and quality of vitality in a nation is possessed by the Chinese student class. If China is to live her students must continue to voice the new economic and political needs of the Transition until a new equilibrium is estat listed between the Chinese people and the changed environ- ment in which they find themselves after three-quarters of a century of commercial, diplomatic and social intercourse with foreigners.
This view of the Chinese student class explains the range and depth of the repercus- sion of May 30 on the nation. Along the great line of the Yangtze at Hankow, Kiukiang. Nanking and in the North, notably in Peking, significant manifestations of national feel- ing and a new consciousness occurred. Even to-day, more than a year after the event, the conception of Sergeant Evanson's action on May 30 as a massacré persists in the Chinese Nationalist mind. And the sense of wrong engendered all the greater now that the bloodless handling of a far more dangerous crowd at Shanghai on the first anniversary of May 30 proves that Evanson's action was wholly unnecessary as an application of the doctrine of the preventive massacre, i.e., the prevention of a bigger massacre by the mob. which Lieut.-Colonel Hilton-Johnson and other British witnesses at the Shangliai Judicial Enquiry swore would have taken place had Evanson not ordered firing into an unarmed
crowd of students and others.
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