CO129-521-13 Chinese Customs- proposed agreement with Hong Kong 27-8-1930 - 16-10-1930 — Page 390

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that there is not the remotest hope of the Chinese accepting

Article 5 (or Article 10 for that matter) - that I have felt

from the very outset and that we may as well bury the

agreement straight away and start out to find a solution of the smuggling problem on other lines.

4.

For my part, I am more than willing to give you

all the assistance I can in obtaining a proper hearing for

any scheme of dual control that gives a real hope of sup- pressing the smuggling. I do not think that T.V. Soong will prove the worst stumbling-block; when I first mentioned

such a scheme on co-operative lines to him on my last

visit to Nanking, he did not seem unreceptive, though Maze

is at pains to make out that it is the Government that

will not consider any scheme that does not give the

Customs the position of independence that it insists it

must have in Hong Kong. I fancy the Nanking Government

would have some difficulty in turning down any scheme that

offered a reasonable chance of protecting their revenues

merely on the ground that it did not give the Customs all

the powers they hope to acquire in the Colony and its

waters.

5.

Maze has recently sent me confidentially,

I am

copies of certain reports by his Commissioner, Hayley-Bell,

who was instructed early this year to make an investigation

into the smuggling going on along the coast of China

between Swatow and Foochow, chiefly from Formosa.

sending copies of these reports, and Maze's covering letter

to the Foreign Office and to you. it is of interest to

note that Hayley-Bell came to the conclusion that as far

as this section of the coast was concerned at any rate,

the

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