CO129-567-5 Traffic of arms to China and Japanese air-raids on Kowloon-Canton railway 11-4-1938 - 19-1-1939 — Page 84

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MEMORANDUM.

Imports of Arms into China from Great Britain,

Germany and Italy.

1. Up to the end of May we have the Shanghai figures,

consisting of the item, originally in the published Chinese

Customs return, but lately obtained confidentially from the

Customs, showing the Government supplies admitted duty free.

This item is in fact understood to mean munitions.

From these figures it appears that from January to

May, inclusive, 4 came from the United Kingdom, 10.35% from

Italy and 55% from Germany. A fuller statement of the posi-

tion will be found in the attached Table, the calculations

in which have been done by Mr. Mears.

2. For the period later than May 1938, we have no such satisfactory guide as the Shanghai Customs figures. Our only basis for calculation is the Hongkong material and this only

In gives values of consignments in so far as they are known. many cases they are inevitably not known, so that one is re- duced to adding rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition to cases of dynamite and producing a result in Hongkong dollars.

The best I have been able to do is

to add together the values which are given.

b. in cases where the value of a given consignment is not known, but the value of another consignment of the same article is known, to work out the value of the

unknown consignment by arbitrarily giving it the value of the known one. (This is fair enough, as for our purpose an assumed uniformity of price gives the most nearly correct result).

/ c.