This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government, and should be returned to the Foreign Office if not required for official use.]
(F.52/10/10).
CHINA
Cypher telegram to Sir R.lc.cleay, (Peking),
Foreign Office, January 13th 1926.
No.18.
458
11.50 p.m.
My immediately preceding telegram.
If our view is, as you say, based on misconception of actual conditions, it would be better to see wherein difference of opinion lies rather than for us to argue points of detail.
2.
Our position is this:
(a) We are apprehensive lest in placing an over- whelming charge upon the very large new revenues accru- ing under interim surtaxes and later under tariff autonomy and in trying to make charge effective by maintaining or strengthening foreign control our action might, in present state of nationalist feeling, be re- sented as unwarrantable interference in Chinese domestic affairs; and lest we might be placing too heavy a re- sponsibility on customs administration and so jeopardis- ing its existence.
(b) We fear further that such a charge being largely in the interest of unsecured debts end to that extent solely for the benefit of the Central Government and its purposes might arouse resentment in China at large both against the Central Government for the time Jeing in office and against the foreign powers who alone have made possible both the raising and consolidating of these almost wholly disreputable loans.
Case against huge annual charge on customs is well put in paragraph 1 of your Conference telegram
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