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Reserved areas;
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Abrogation of conflicting clauses in existing treaties;
Authoritative text;
Duration;
Ratification; and Preamble.
Of the above, the first three had already been attacked by Mr. Teichman and Mr. Hsu-mo and I now took them up with the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The first was a very complicated and delicate question with the Chinese Government, who, it was well known, were determined on no account whatever to recede from the attitude that the general opening of the country to foreign residence and trade was to be retained as the final inducement for securing the abolition of the unequal treaties,' and was not to be granted until all the old treaty rights and privileges had been abolished and China's relations with foreign countries placed on a basis of complete equality and reciprocity." This was realised by His Majesty's Government, who had inserted in the original British draft a clause providing for residence and trade throughout China rather as a tactical move than with the intention of insisting on the point. The whole subject was indeed a complicated and delicate one on our side also in view of the attitude of the Dominions towards the question of Chinese immigration. I had therefore been authorised to put forward a revised draft article merely providing that British subjects should enjoy rights of residence and trade, &c., in all localities where the nationals of other countries enjoyed such rights. Even this formula was, however, unacceptable to the Chinese, since it might in their view be held to prevent them from granting full rights of residence and trade to the nationals of a country which had surrendered all old treaty privileges without at the same time according equal rights to British subjects before His Majesty's Government had reached the same position in connexion with the abandonment of special treaty privileges, e.g., concessions, troops of occupation, &c. The Minister for Foreign Affairs practically ádmitted that the Chinese Government would not open the country to anyone until all had surrendered all special privileges, but he could not be moved from what he described as a fundamental point in the policy of his Government. He offered the same declaration (the opening of the country when relations were on a footing of complete equality) as he had given to the Italian and other Governments who had concluded the Extra-territoriality Treaties of 1928, but His Majesty's Government had already considered and rejected this formula as unsuited to the circumstances of the present negotiations. Ultimately I agreed to submit to you a redraft embodying an addition to our formula providing that, where such rights of residence and trade were granted only on the fulfilment of certain conditions, such conditions would also have to be fulfilled by British subjects. Subsequently, after further telegraphic consultation with you, it was decided that it was undesirable for various reasons to accept such a conditional most-favoured-nation clause and that it would be better under the circumstances to defer the question of the opening of the interior to a later date and to rest content for the time being with the confirmation of existing rights in regard to travel, residence, trade, industry, and so on (see also paragraph 47 below).
Publication of Codes.
34. We next took up the draft article providing for the publication and communication to His Majesty's Government of the texts and translations of Chinese codes, laws, &c. This was another point on which the Chinese Govern- ment had throughout been extremely touchy, since they always reacted violently against any suggestion that their codes could be subjected in any sense to the scrutiny foreign Governments, or that they were under any obligation to provide official translations of their laws in any shape or form. No progress was made with this article, though we agreed tentatively further to explore the possibilities of reaching common ground in an exchange of notes. Ultimately, at a later stage in the negotiations, agreement was reached on a draft note to be addressed to me by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, which met our requirements sufficiently in this respect.
and so on.
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Personal Status.
35. Finally, we discussed the question of personal status cases on which we had been working for some time. The problem was how to create a bridge between our proposals, removing all such cases entirely from Chinese jurisdiction, and the Chinese proposals, merely providing for the application to such cases by the Chinese courts of British law. The whole subject bristled with knotty points, legal, administrative, and financial, including the complications connected with the administration of the estates of deceased persons, the levying of probate fees, I felt very strongly from the outset that we should never be able to reach a settlement unless we sought to keep our formula as simple as possible, working on the lines that, while in general British law would be applied by the Chinese courts in such personal status cases as might fall under their jurisdiction, cases in which only British subjects were concerned would be reserved for British jurisdiction. As had throughout been our experience in these negotiations, our attempts to induce the Chinese themselves to put forward new proposals in the place of their original draft produced no results whatsoever, and we were thus constrained in this case again to formulate new proposals ourselves. With this object in view I had discussed the matter fully with the Crown Advocate and Mr. Teichman, and, with Mr. Mossop's assistance, Mr. Teichman had already submitted and discussed tentatively with Mr. Hsü Mo a compromise redraft which seemed to meet the case from our point of view. This text was now discussed and I was finally able to reach agreement with the Minister for Foreign Affairs on a new draft article ad referendum to His Majesty's Government and without commitment on my side.
Reserved Areas: Discussion of April 27: Minister for Foreign Affairs offers
International Settlement at Shanghai for Three Years.
36.
After we had finished our work on the treaty texts I had a private discussion with the Minister for Foreign Affairs on what had by now become the major issue on which the fate of the whole treaty depended, namely, the question of the reserved areas. Dr. Wang now came out with his definite proposal, which he described as his furthest offer, the exclusion of the Settlement at Shanghai and the Settlement alone for a period of three years. I pressed him hard again and warned him that His Majesty's Government were most unlikely to consider anything so inadequate, but failed to make any impression on him. In such an atmosphere it was clearly useless to show my hand in regard to bargaining and for the time being I left it at that on the understanding that I would at once report his offer to you and await your instructions.
Negotiations of other Powers: Dutch and Norwegians Settle: American
Negotiations resumed at Washington.
37. In the meanwhile the Norwegian and Netherlands Ministers had concluded their negotiations and joined the majority by signing on the 23rd April agreements on the models of those concluded in 1928 with Italy, Spain, Denmark, Portugal and Belgium. The Norwegian Minister was good enough to communicate to me copies of the notes he had exchanged with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, which provided that Norwegian nationals would come under Chinese jurisdiction simultaneously with the nations of those countries which participated in the discussions of the Washington Conference. The Netherlands Minister was curiously secretive and neither communicated to me a copy of the text of the agreement, nor even informed me of its general purport, or of the fact that he had signed it. As regards the negotiations of the major Powers, the Japanese Chargé d'Affaires had been recalled to Tokyo to confer with his Govern- ment. The French were making no progress. While, as regards the United States, the State Department were discussing the texts of our agreed articles with the Chinese Minister at Washington, whither the American negotiations had been tacitly retransferred. It looked as though the State Department had never had any real intention of handing them over to Mr. Johnson at Nanking; that they had only considered doing so when they had at the outset reached a complete impasse with Mr. C. C. Wu; and that, as soon as, thanks to our agreed texts, they saw their way out, they immediately took matters back into their own hands. This transfer of the American negotiations back to Washington was, of course, welcomed on the Chinese side; and, though the procedure was cumbersome, we were able to keep
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