432
433
l'revalence of
smuggling at Hongkong.
Establishment
by Cantou
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(then Mr.) Parkes (Article 6). The treaty, however, gave a decided impetus to the China trade generally. Some of the restrictions against which it had previously struggled might still exist to hamper it, but with a revised tariff, greater commercial facilities, and with Hongkong as a free port and a centre for trade operations, business ventures both lawful and unlawful could be carried on with much greater ease and security. Considering the circumstances, it was only to be expected that the altered condition of affairs, while fostering legitimate trade, should also tend directly to the encouragement of opium running and smuggling generally. The trado in opium especially offered strong temptations to clandestine trading. The new treaty, by one of the rules of trade (Rule 5) drawn up in pursuance of Article XXVI, had legalised the import of opium at a fairly high rate of duty, leaving all transport of the drug into the interior of the country entirely in the hands of the Chinese. Hongkong as a free port offered great facilities to those trading in this commodity, and while most of this business was conducted openly and in complete accordance with regulations, there was nevertheless, on account of the high rate of duty and the tempting profits to be made, a large amount of smuggling. Unfortunately, as the years passed the illegitimate trade grew to such proportions that in order to protect China's revenue rights and to deal with the very active smuggling in opium, salt, and munitions of war from Hongkong to China, which flourished exceedingly in the early sixties of last century, the Canton Viceroy Jui Lin (), anxious especially for his lawful revenue on opium, and after informing the British authorities in Canton and Hongkong, opened in 1868 on Chinese territory a number of stations on the east and the west sides of the Kowloon frontier for the sux of preventive collection of likin on opium when conveyed in Chinese junks. Shortly afterwards the Hoppo, or Superintendent of Customs at Canton, who, in addition to being the colleague of the foreign Commissioner of Maritime Customs, was also in charge of the original Native Custom House and its stations levying dues and duties, distinct from likin, on native vessels and their cargoes, decided that as the Viceroy's likin barriers had been a great success he could not do better than imitate so worthy an example. Accordingly, he proceeded to establish an active patrol of revenue cruisers, and also to open stations for the collection of those dues and duties coming under his cognizance, these stations being either in close proximity to those already established by the Viceroy or functioning in the same building with them.* One of these stations was at Capsuimoon (*), to guard the entrance to the Canton river; another at Changchow (), on the route to Macao and the west coast; a third at Fotochow (), near the Lyeemoon () Pass, to watch the trade from and to the east; and a fourth at Kowloon city. Shortly before this, from 1st April 1864, the Chinese Government had cancelled the privilege which had been allowed till then of permitting the shipment of Chinese produce in Hongkong with the same advantages as obtained at a regular treaty port. The Hongkong authorities and Hongkong merchants protested against the withdrawal of this transhipment privilege and objected strongly to the Hoppo's stations and water patrol, which they designated
authorities of
Custome statione round Hongkong
service of revenue cruisers.
* British Parliamentary Papers: "Hongkong: Report of the Commission
to enquire into the Circumstances attending the alleged Smuggling from Hongkong into China of Opium and other Goods" (1884), p. 6; also "Correspondence relating to the Complainte of the Mercantile Community in Hongkong against the Action of Chinese Revenue Cruizers in the Neighbourhood of the Colony" (1875), pp. 16, 36.
on the subject of the Revision
+ LG. Circular No. 2 of 1865. British Parliamentary Papere: "Memorials
of the Treaty of Tiantain" (1868), p. 27. British Consular Reports for China, 1865, p. 93.
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as the Customs blockade of Hongkong, regarding both as an unwarranted interference with the trade of the Colony. The patrol of the adjoining Chinese waters by armed Chinese revenue cruisers was particularly obnoxious to Hongkong traders, more especially as these cruisers, on the ground of being recognised as men-of-war, could, when not engaged in the suppression of smuggling, make free use of the waters of Hongkong harbour.
tion, 1869.
§ 6. To remove this tension, if possible, and to provide the Chinese Government with a Alcock's Conven- legitimate safeguard, Sir Rutherford Alcock, in his Convention, drawn up at this time and signed
a Chinese Consul
on 23rd October 1869 by him and by the Chinese Plenipotentiaries appointed by the Emperor,* proposed that Chinese duty-paid goods passing through Hongkong in transit from one treaty port to another should be accorded the same transhipment privileges as obtained at a regular treaty port (Article 5), and, mindful perhaps of the hint given by Lord Aberdeen to Sir J. F. Davis Proposal to allow that it might be necessary to tolerate the presence in Hongkong of a Chinese mandarin for the to function in control of the natives,† suggested as a quid pro quo that the Chinese Government be given the Hongkong. right of placing a Consul in the Colony to protect Chinese interests (Article 2). This latter suggestion met with fierce opposition from the Hongkong community, who, in their memorial to the Home Government opposing the Convention, maintained that such an official if appointed would "in reality be a spy on the Chinese merchants residing in this Colony "‡ and would use his position simply as a means of exacting contributions from his countrymen, that, unlike British subjects in China, Chinese subjects in Hongkong needed no Consular protection, that "the establishment of a Consul here, surrounded as he would be by a staff of Chinese officials and employees, would subject" the trade in native goods passing through the Colony "to a supervision resulting in the levy of taxes or duties for the Imperial Exchequer, in addition to those paid to the local officials,
and thus a deadly blow would be struck at the trade
•
and prosperity of this Colony."§ Alcock had little difficulty in answering these contentions, pointing out that China cannot be expected to confer upon Hongkong the benefit of allowing native goods to be transhipped there without losing their status as such except in return for some compensating advantage, that the Chinese are entitled both by treaty and by international law to adopt any measures on their own territory and in their own waters which they may consider necessary to protect their revenue from the loss of half a million pounds sterling, which they estimate they are called on to undergo annually "by this irresponsible proximity of a British free port at the mouth of one of their great rivers," that when the Chinese had endeavoured to enforce their revenue laws by means of cruisers and land barriers they had been met by a loud outcry of protest from both the merchants and the officials of Hongkong, and that, this being so, it seemed to him that if this latter method of trade control was so reprehensible and injurious, the only other alternative was to co-operate with the Chinese authorities by "giving them the means in accordance with international usage of exercising a perfectly legal and reasonable degree of surveillance over the trade carried on by the native vessels sailing from
* British Parliamentary Papers: China No. 1 (1870), p. 1.
+J. F. Davis: "China during the War and since the Peace" (2 vola, London, 1852), Vol. II, p. 45.
British Parliamentary Papera: Chies No. 6 (1870), p. 13.
Ibid., p. 19.
|| British Parliamentary Papere: China No. 10 (1870), p. to (vide Appenlix E).
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