CO129-507-9 Chinese Telegraph Office- Hong Kong- transfer to Cantonese control 4-1-1928 - 20-7-1928 — Page 87

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Enclo. No. 1.

discussion the Cantonese authorities pressed me to allow

a Cantonese merchant to be appointed as "Commercial Agent

in charge of the Chinese Telegraph Office in Hong Kong",

and I agreed that this might be done upon two conditions

namely:-

(a) that the Chinese merchant appointed should be

persona grata to the Hong Kong Government, and

(b) that he should be in fact a merchant and not an

official.

The English version of the proposed title was agreed to on

the spot and the Chinese translation of the title was

reserved for careful consideration. The Cantonese

authorities also made it quite clear that they were

prepared to nominate a commercial man acceptable to the Hong Kong Government.

3.

However, on the morning of the 16th March,

as I have already informed you, Marshal Li left Hong Kong

for Shanghai, and ever since then there has been a marked

reluctance on the part of his locum tenens at Canton to

take any definite action in political matters, pending

the Marshal's return. Nevertheless in order to carry

out the agreement made with Marshal Li, I wrote on the

20th March the letter, of which 1 attach a copy, to his

Majesty's Consul-General at Canton, enquiring whom the

Canton Government proposed to nominate as Comercial

Agent in charge of the Chinese Telegraph Office in Hong

Kong, when he might be expected to arrive in Hong Kong, and setting out the proposed Chinese title. I availed myself of this opportunity to observe that the Canton

Government