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A Commission appointed in pursuance of that understanding agreed upon the following, among other conditions, which are expressed in an Agreement signed at Tientsin on the 11th September, 1886;—
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"That an office under the foreign Inspectorate shall be established on Chinese territory at a convenient spot on the Kowloon side for sale of Chinese opium-duty certificates, which shall be freely sold to all comers, and for such quantities of opium as they may require.
That junks trading between Chinese ports and Hong Kong, and their cargoes, shall not be subject to any dues or duties in excess of those leviable on junks and their cargoes trading between Chinese ports and Macao, and that no dues whatsoever shall be demanded from junks coming to Hong Kong from ports in China, or proceeding from Hong Kong to ports in China, over and above the dues paid or payable at the ports of clearance or destination.
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'That the officer of the foreign Inspectorate who will be responsible for the management of the Kowloon office shall investigate and settle any complaints made by junks trading with Hong Kong against the native Customs revenue stations or cruisers, and that the Governor of Hong Kong, if he deems it advisable, shall be entitled to send a Hong Kong officer to be present at and assist in the investigation and decision. If, however, they do not agree, a reference may be made to the authorities at Peking for a joint decision,"
The Commissioners concluded with an expression of opinion that, “if the arrangements indicated were fully carried out, a fairly satisfactory solution of the questions connected with the so-called 'Hong Kong blockade' would have been attained." The assumption was somewhat optimistic, as the arrangement has unquestionably proved more efficient for the purpose of protecting the Chinese revenue than for the alternative purpose of obviating the Customs blockade.
The Kowloon Commissioner is, as a matter of fact, located in Hong Kong, where he has an office and a staff. His presence is not, however, recognised officially; nor-thanks in a great measure, no doubt, to the discretion of the officers who have held the post-has their presence been seriously resented. No very definite objection could, in fact, be offered so long as no official status was assumed, nor official action unduly obtruded.
It is quite another thing, however, when the Government is asked to formally recognize the presence in Hong Kong of an Imperial Chinese Customs official and a Customs office and staff. It is still more serious when the Government is requested to authorize the collection, in Hong Kong, of duties (li-kia included) on all goods and merchandize carried from or to any Chinese ports in Chinese vessels. To concede so much would be to place Hong Kong on the level of a Chinese Treaty port, and to accept for it the position of a fiscal dependency of Canton. The first admission would injure its status as a free port; the second would injure its prestige as a British Colony.
Subsidiary demands that wharves and jetties shall be placed at the disposal of the Customs authorities to facilitate their operations; that the Customs cruisers and launches shall retain, in the waters of the newly ceded territory, the rights of seizure and search which
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they now enjoy; and that the Customs shall be allowed to retain their existing stations (two of which are in the very harbour, and others on islands in the immediate vicinity on the east and west) might almost suggest the presence of an underlying purpose to render impossible the acceptance of capital requests which it had appeared desirable, for some reason, to prefer.
Grievances which had been, hitherto, in some degree sentimental would then indeed assume a practical form. If the presence of Customs stations on the adjacent mainland and at the entrance of the harbour, and of Customs cruisers in the waters surrounding the Colony, has been a hindrance and a source of vexation when these territories and waters were Chinese, the annoyance would be less endurable still when they assumed the character of foreign establish- ments within territory under British control.
Great allowance has been made for the position of Hong Kong, and greater allowance still for the inefficiency of Chinese Administration. The British Government does very much more for the Chinese fise than any European Government would do for another Power; and the Chinese Government responds by a degree of intrusion which no European Government would admit. It is no exaggeration to say that the entire native junk trade with the mainland is controlled by the staff attached to the Chinese Customs Office in Hong Kong; for the Colony is supervised by Chinese native employés, while its waters are patrolled by Customs armed steam-launches; and we may be sure that very little escapes such a system under European supervision. The arrangements made in pursuance of the Chefoo Convention may have minimised the ostensible trouble, but it is open to contention that the result has been attained at the cost of sacrificing the freedom of the port. The maintenance of the rule that junks shall not leave their anchorage at Hong Kong after dark may afford another instance in point. Instituted, no doubt, with a view to piracy rather than smuggling, it has nevertheless greatly helped the Chinese Customs authorities to prevent evasion of the cordon which they have found it easier to draw around the island than along their own coast, and has-since the original motive ceased to be cogent-been regarded in the Colony chiefly from that point
of view.
That Chinese traders and junk owners dislike these conditions is well known. Neither are the reasons which deter them from remonstrance far to seek, when we remember the methods of Chinese mandarins and the facilities which knowledge acquired in Hong Kong may afford for action on the mainland,
The junk trade between Hong Kong and the mainland is an important distributing medium. If existing arrangements have prejudicially affected it, the intensity of the resentment felt at the prospect of further interference becomes intelligible.
It may be permissible to insist, again, that the Chefoo Convention had two aims, although the second was imperfectly attained. The Chinese revenue has been safeguarded; but the annoyance from the Canton Customs revenue-cruisers remains; and the removal of the Customs cordon was one of the greatest benefits which the Colony hoped to derive from the extension which it has so long desired.
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