CO129-588-23 China- British extra-territorial rights- negotiations with China 28-3-1942 - 27-11-1942 — Page 290

COPY

(F_5477/828/10)

E the terrory

Colonial

Office (Mi Gent)

2

Ref 1452/12/42

1 1 4UE 1949

Dear Ashley Clarke,

287

copied to:-

British Embassy,

Washington, D. C.

July 22nd, 1942.

D.O.

10

With reference to Washington telegram No. 147 Saving, you may like to know that Hornbeck, during a conversation I had with him on July 17th, mentioned a report which had been received from Winant about a conversation with the Secretary of State, at which the latter had raised the question of making some gesture towards China such as the announcement of the termination of extra-territorial rights, and had urged that it was important that neither the United States nor Great Britain get out ahead of the other in this respect.

2. Hornbeck indicated general concurrence with this point of view. At the same time he said that a number of worthy United States citizens were urging that the United States should renounce their extra- territorial rights forthwith, and that the hundredth anniversary of the British-Chinese Treaty of Nanking, which fell in August next, should be used as the occasion. He asked whether worthy British subjects had been urging any similar action on His Majesty's Government. I said that as far as I knew they had not, and that in any case it seemed to me that the question of any such gesture was largely a matter of timing. Hornbeck said he thought it was very much a matter of timing. He did not think the present was the right moment. Extra-territorial rights had done China no harm, and in the last ten years had been of considerable assistance to her. The intelligent Chinese knew this at the back of their minds, though on the surface they felt that it would look well to be able to say that these rights had been abolished. Moreover, China was holding quite well at the moment. Neither the Americans nor we had any very strong cards to play or means of stimulating the Chinese if they became despondent and looked like collapsing, an idea which at the present moment he scouted. We should, therefore, reserve these cards for a moment when either we or the Chinese should be very low in the Far East, and a stimulus seemed essential. Otherwise clearly the time to deal with such matters was in the general settlement at the end of the war. He thought that a gesture of the kind would not be particularly appreciated at this moment, when things were comparatively all right, and further that, as a mere gesture of goodwill, it would not seem very valuable if made when we had been suffering a number of reverses. From this point of view a good will gesture would be better timed to coincide with a United Nations succes8.

3. When talking of representations made by worthy United States citizens, Hornbeck said he was amused that they should be urging the United States

Ashley Clarke, Esq.,

Far Eastern Department,

Foreign Office, S.W.1.

Government/

BIT.

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