CO129-558-5 Territorial limits of Colony 28-12-1935 - 19-2-1936 — Page 4

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A copy of the Kowloon Extension Agreement,

1898, is annexed in Vol. I (p. 120) of Hertslet's

China Treaties.

The

survey of the boundaries of

the ceded area took place in 1899, and I attach a

copy of Eastern 66 in which is contained the report

X

of the Boundary Commission and other contemporary

correspondence relating to these events.

The Admiralty presume in their letter

(No. 1 in this file) that the limits of the Colony

were described in the Convention of 1898 by roughly

rectangular co-ordinates mainly as a matter of

convenience and not for the purpose of claiming

jurisdiction over any portions of the high sea

enclosed by those co-ordinates. This presumption

has some support from the findings of Mr. (now Sir)

James Stewart Lockhart and his Chinese colleague,

which considerably varied the line of the land

boundary as marked in the Conventional map since it had been

was roughly drawn as a straight line and was quite

impracticable as a satisfactory frontier line.

There seems, however, to have been some

purpose in enclosing within the ceded area a very

considerable extent of the waters surrounding

Hong Kong, and this purpose seems to have been to

cripple the action of the Chinese Maritime Customs

in maintaining what was called a blockade of Hong

Kong in their efforts to restrict the extensive

smuggling into China which was carried on from the

port of Hong Kong. See, for instance, the last

sentence of the China Association's letter on page 74

of E. 66. The rectangular area shown in the map

annexed to the 1898 Convention as far as the

Western, Eastern and Southern boundaries of the

area