440
441
Proposed Custome agreement with Hongkong: 1911 ilraft.
-( 14 )
China's opportunity. Through the Kowloon Commissioner, Mr. A. H. Harris, who succeeded Mr. Parr, the Hongkong Government towards the close of 1909 requested the help of the Chinese Customs in organising and getting into working order a scheme for the checking of imports of alcohol and spirits brought into Hongkong by native craft, as well as a system of bonding spirituous liquors to be controlled by the Hongkong Office of Imports and Exports. In this the Inspector General acquiesced, and Mr. D. Percebois, an officer of the In-door Staff, was seconded for service with the Hongkong Government. Mr. Percebois's work brought him into very close touch not only with the Imports and Exports Office but also with the Junk Office of the Hongkong Harbour Department, and by this he was able to make practical suggestions for the simplification and strengthening of the Colony's control of junk shipping, a control to which the Chinese Customs contributed by its system of junk pass books. This laid the basis for a policy of co-operation in the control of junks, the Hongkong licence books to be viséd by the Chinese Customs at their stations and the Hongkong Government reciprocating by a similar check in Hongkong waters of the junk pass books issued by the Chinese Customs.
§ 12 Yet another illustration of the improved relations at this time between the Colonial authorities and the Customs will be found in the friendly reception given by the Hongkong Government to proposals made by Mr. Harris that a fuller measure of co-operation, of benefit both to Hongkong and to China, would be obtained by an agreement or convention dealing simply and solely with Customs matters. The Government was ready for the suggestion, the way having been prepared, partly by numerous private conversations on this subject between Mr. Harris and some of the leading officials of the Colony, and partly by a memorandum submitted by Mr. A. G. M. Fletcher, who during the opening months of 1909 held the post of Acting Assistant Colonial Secretary, and who in the course of an inquiry into a case of infraction of the territorial rights of the Colony, arising out of a salt-smuggling affair in Deep Bay, had come to realise the impossible nature of the Colony's land boundary from the point of view of China's preventive service. Accordingly, in January 1910 Mr. Harris, with the approval of the Inspector General, submitted to the Hongkong Government the draft of a proposed Customs agreement and suggested that a small confidential committee should be appointed to go thoroughly into the question. The result of this committee's discussions with Mr. Harris was agreement in April 1910 on a tentative draft, which was passed coufidentially through the Hongkong Legislature, was forwarded to London on the 30th of that month, and received the British Government's general approval both of it and of the principles involved. By February 1911 the convention was in such shape that the Commissioner then considered the moment opportune to prepare and submit a Chinese version to the Canton Viceroy Chang Ming-chi (G), and at the same time to lay the whole matter officially before the authorities in Peking. That this convention did not then become more than a draft, though a live one, was chiefly due to the delay on the part of the Canton Viceroy in taking it up, who had been misled as to its nature by some of his subordinates, and subsequently to the outbreak of the Revolution in November 1911. One of its articles, however, namely Article XIII, dealing with Chinese Customs control of traffic on the Kowloon-Canton Railway, oponed on
* Vide Appendix H.
( 15 )
permitted to
4th October 1911, was incorporated as Schedule D in the Canton-Kowloon Railway Working Chinese Customs Agreement of 1911, and under its terms the Chinese Customs administration examines goods function in Hong- and collects duty, both import and export, in buildings provided by the Railway at the Kowloon ng territory at Kowloon railway terminus. This was a long step forward in practical co-operation, the Hongkong Government terminus. conceding, for the first time, to the Chinese Customs the privilege of examining goods and collecting Chinese duties on British Colonial territory, and the Chinese Government recipro- cating by waiving its right to stop all inward and outward bound trains at the frontier for the carrying out of all necessary Customs formalities. The arrangement was obviously one of great convenience to merchants and the travelling public generally.
ΓΕ
§ 13. Four years later (that is, early in 1916) Sir Francis May, then Governor of Revival of pro.
posed agreement: Hongkong, who from the very outset had taken a warm interest in the agreement, mooted 1918 draft. unofficially through Mr. E. G. Lowder, at that time Kowloon Commissioner, the reopening of Negotiations at
Hongkong and negotiations for ratification of the convention. The Governor, however, suggested that the basis Peking. of the proposed agreement might be broadened and made similar to the Kiaochow Customs Agreement, by which, in return for freedom to operate in Colonial territory, the Chinese Customs paid zo per cent of the import duties collected there to the Colonial Government. In effect, the Governor's suggestion was that the Hongkong Government would be willing to undertake the collection of all duties on cargo leaving the Colony for import into China in return for a commission on the revenue so collected. Mr. Lowder, after a careful statistical investigation, had no difficulty in proving to the Governor that such a proposal would not be acceptable to China, and further discussion of it was dropped. In April of that year (1916) Mr. Harris was reappointed to Kowloon, and the Hongkong Government immediately took up with him the question of revising the 1911 draft of the convention and getting it put into effect. Revision was necessary, as the Colonial Government intended to tax salt, wished to have a definition of non-open port" inserted, and proposed to give punitive powers to the Commissioner. A draft embodying these alterations and certain verbal changes was submitted to the Inspector General in the early autumn of 1916, and be in his turn forwarded it to the Chinese Government. It came in for criticism in several particulars, especially Article II, which dealt with the proposed arrangements for the control of salt. Early in 1917 Sir Richard Dane, Associate Chief Inspector of the Chinese Government Salt Revenue Administration, visited Hongkong, and on his representations several amendments were introduced into Article II in order to bring it into line with the recognised procedure of the Chinese Salt Inspectorate. These changes were accepted by the Hongkong Government, and a revised printed draft of the convention was forwarded by Mr. Harris to the Inspector General in April 1917. At the same time Sir Richard Dane submitted the revised salt article to the Chinese Government, and in the autumn of that year the latter Government sent to the Inspector General its approved version of the convention in Chinese. This version, along with an unauthorised English translation of it, was inadvertently published in the Peking Gazette for 19th-21st September 1917. The British Legation now appeared on the scene, with the result that correspondence ensued between the Legation and the Peking Wai-chiao Pu (#), more particularly on the proposed addition of a postal clause, and between the Legation and the Hongkong Government. On comparing the Chinese
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