Directory_and_Chronicle_1941 — Page 73

EXTRATERRITORIALITY

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2. I have communicated the contents of your letter to my Government and I am now instructed to transmit to you a reply in the following sense:

3. Animated by the friendly feelings which they have always entertained towards the Government and people of China His Majesty's Government have given their sympathetic consideration to the request of the Chinese Government relating to the abolition of extraterritorial jurisdiction in China.

The high importance of this subject in its bearing both on the political development of China and the future relations between China and Great Britain appears to demand that it should be closely examined from every aspect. In particular a just appreciation of the reasons for which and the manner in which the present system of extraterritoriality came into existence seems essential to a consideration of the proper method for dealing with the problem.

4. The system of extraterritoriality in force in China has its root deep. down in the past. For thousands of years before science had improved com- munications, the Chinese people were secluded from the rest of the world by deserts and the ocean and they developed a civilisation and a policy peculiar to themselves. A wide gulf was thus fixed between Europe and America on the one hand and China on the other.

5. In particular the conception of international relations as being inter- course between equal and independent states-a conception which was woven into the very texture of the political ideas of the nations of the West-was entirely alien to Chinese modes of thought When traders of the West first found their way to the coast of China, the Chinese Government found it diffi- cult to allow them freely to enter into their country and mingle with their people nor did they recognise that the nations to which they belonged were the equals of China. These traders were therefore confined to a small section of a single city in one corner of the Empire and while on the one hand they were subjected to many disabilities and to grave humiliations, on the other hand, by a species of amorphous and unregulated extraterritoriality, which was the natural outcome of these conditions, the responsibility of managing their own affairs and maintaining order amongst themselves was in some measure left to their own initiative.

6. Relations continued for many years upon this insecure and unsatisfac- tory footing. Friction was often dangerously intense and conflicts not infre- quently arose, generally out of demands that some innocent person should be surrendered for execution to expirate perhaps an accidental homicide or that foreign authority should assume the responsibility for enforcing the revenue laws of China.

7. The object of the first treaties was to secure recognition by China of Great Britain's equality with herself and to define and regulate the extrater- ritorial status of British subjects. Relations between the two countries having thus been placed on a footing of equality and mutual respect, Great Britain was content that her nationals should continue to bear those responsibilities and to labour under those disabilities which respect for the sovereignty of China entailed upon them. Conditions did not permit the general opening of the interior of China and the residence of foreigners has consequently continued down to the present day to be restricted to a limited number of cities known as Treaty Ports.

8. His Majesty's Government recognise the defects and inconveniences of the system of consular jurisdiction to which the Government of China have on various occasions drawn attention. In 1902 in Article 12 of the Treaty of Commerce between Great Britain and China signed in that year, His Majesty's Government stated their readiness to relinquish their extraterritorial rights when they were satisfied that the state of Chinese laws the arrangements for their administration and other considerations warranted them in so doing.

They have since watched with appreciation the progress which China has made in the assimilation of western legal principals to which reference is made

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