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BRITISH DIPLOMACY IN CHINA.
(9th June.)
The last French mail brought out the re- port of the debate in the House of Commons on the 29th April on affairs in China. It does not contain much that is new or start ling, but Mr. BALFOUR'S vindication of the policy pursued by the British Government is interesting as finally focussing the points of discussion. Yesterday we received a copy of the N. C. Daily News of the 4th June, in which the recent Blue Book is discussed from the point of view of our local Jingoes, and some interest attaches to an examination of the arguments therein advanced in the light of the governmental declaration, which of course had not reached our contemporary at the time its article appeared. There are three points which our contemporary at- tempts to make, namely,
(1.)-Great Britain ought to have pre- vented the exercise of sovereign rights by Germany at Kiaochau, | Our contemporary's words are:- Thus it is that Lord 'SALISBURY begins, that no exclusive conces- "sions will be allowed at Kinochou or in the Province of Shantung and so publishes it to the world, and "ends by submitting to the exercise of sovereign rights over the Bay and "Province by Germany. When Lord "SALISBURY retreats so ingloriously "in the very beginning of the diplo
"matic battle there need he no
IL
"astonishment at his subsequent
flights. (2).-That Great Britain should have compelled China to accept the loan
she offered to her.
(3).-That Great Britain should have prevented the Russian occupation of
Port Arthur.
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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
(June 11, 1898. substitution of German sovereign rights for | haiwei, a contention that in our view is Chinese rule is an excellent exchange alike unassailable. from a commercial and a humanitarian point of view,
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Next comes the last and most knotty point, that of Port Arthur. We have no wish to offer an apology for the methods of Russian diplomacy, on the contrary, we are as ready to condemn them as any one, but looking at the substance of the dispute, and setting aside as immaterial a tara- diddle more or less in the course of the
negotiations, the question is, was Port Arthur worth fighting for? Most decidedly,
110.
Great Britain in the recent crisis has lost nothing whatever; in no single point is she in a worse position than she was in before; but on the other hand she has gained im- mensely. It has been settled once and for all that the successor of Sir ROBERT HART in the Inspectorate-General of Customs is to be a Britisher, a point on which con- siderable uneasiness formerly prevailed; the opening of new ports and of the inland waterways has been secured; and the prin ciple of the open door throughout the Em- pire, including Manchuria, has been suc- No doubt there are cesssfully vindicated. side issues on which the Government's policy
may
individual strokes of the best player may be be attacked, just as in a game of skill
open to criticism, but a glance at the total score of the recent game of diplomacy shows that Great Britain has won with a large margin.
With reference to the loan, it was offered and was, after consideration, declined, mainly at the instance of Russia. On the other hand, the proposed Russian loan was rejected at the instance of Great Britain, We objected to certain of the terms that Russia wished to impose, Russia objected to certain of the terins that we wished to impose, and both loans fell through. But, as Mr. BALFOUR pointed out, "as a matter of history and fact, we "have without the loan almost everything we desired in connection with it, and the "loan has fully been negotiated-not, "indeed, by England, but still less by "Russia-by the great corporation the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, who have "obtained the money
from English and "German financiers.' We think it would tax the ingenuity of the cleverest to find a casus belli in that position, which is one that THE KOWLOON EXTENSION. is not likely to be complained of, at all events, by the shareholders of the Hong- In another column will be found an in- kong and Shanghai Bank, who are living interesting article by a correspondent on the a well founded hope of receiving next month Kowloon extension and the general policy a quite unprecedented report of the results of the British Government in the Far East. of the half-year's working.
Our correspondent has heard that we are to have no extension of territory, but merely permission to erect fortifications and control the passes. If that be so keen disappointment will be experienced in the colony. The acquisition of additonal territory was urged primarily for mili tary reasons, but it was also repre. sented that incidentally the enlarge- ment of the colony's boundaries would prove of great value from an industrial We have on former occasions, and long and commercial point of view. If we have before the dispute reached an acute stage, obtained all that is necessary for the expressed our views on that point, and on
effective defence of the colony the main the present occasion we cannot do better than point has been gained, for which we must Of these points the most remarkable is quote the words of Mr. BALFOUR:"A be thankful, but it is impossible to repress a the first. When Germany took possession great many of my hon. friends think feeling of chagrin that the subsidiary point of Kiaochau her action met with general "that we ought at all hazards to have of a definite enlargement of the area of the approval, and, if our memory serves us, 'prevented the Russians coming to Port colony should not have been insisted upon with that of our contemporary itself. It Arthur. It would, of course, have been also. Circumstances, we regret to say, was from the first understood that she" perfectly possible for us to do so.
point to the correctness of our correspond- intended to claim sovereign rights, in fact, "What would our situation have been then?ent's information on this point, for had any to establish a second Hongkong. Repre- "We should have been in occupation of sentations were made to Germany as to Port Arthur, and Russia would have gone maintaining the principle of the open door, on making her railway, and the tension and in her final agreement with China "between the two countries would have as published by a Shanghai paper the.
"been extreme. I assume it would not other day, and which we presume may have been at the breaking point, but be taken as authentic, it is provided that 'it would have been almost at the break- "Chinese ships-of-war and merchant ships, ing point, and, of course, the very first "and ships-of-war and merchant ships of object of Russia would have been to "involve us in war with somebody else, countries having treaties and in a state of amity with China, shall receive equal" or, at all events, to obtain such an "treatment with German ships-of-war and opportunity, or to choose such a moment merchant ships in Kiaochau Bay during of difficulty that she could pursue "the continuance of the lease. Germany her own objects at Port Arthur and "is at liberty to enact any régulations she get over difficulties which we had tem- "desires for the government of the territory porarily placed in her way. And every "and harbour, provided such regulations"year that difficulty would of necessity have
apply impartially to the ships of all nations, Germany and China included." Such being the spirit in which Germany takes over her new territory it would have been the height of madness for Great Britain to have attempted to thwart her. So long as she allows freedom of trade Germany is welcome to her sovereign rights; indeed, it is difficult to see how she could satisfactorily carry on the govern- ment of the place without them. Her acquisition of Kisochau promises to be one of the best things for foreign trade in China that has happened in resent times, and it strikes us as extraordinary to find our Northern contemporary cavilling at this time of day at the granting of "sovereign "rights." Given equal facilities for trade the.
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become greater, for every year the railway "would have crept down-the railway, which "nobody desires to resist, which we all admit ‘isa civilizing and beneficial influence, would have crept down from the Siberian railway, "and would have come closer and closer to the port which we had occupied, by what right I am not sure. I do not know "whether we should have taken a lease of it for not. The end of that would have been "that as long as we occupied Port Arthur we "should have had to lock up there a very large garrison to answer to this railway in "connexion with the main land force of Russia in Siberia aud in Russia itself." Mr. BALFOUR went on to argue that the best reply to the Russian occupation of Port Arthur was the British occupation of Wei-
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acquisition of territory been decided upon some definite pronouncement on the subject would almost certainly have been made ere this.
with our
his
While regretting the decision arrived at by Her Majesty's Government ou the Kowloon question assuming it to be the fact that our boundaries are not to be moved forward-we cannot wholly
correspondent in join aminadversions on Lord SALISBURY and his policy. From the very beginning of the recent crisis in the affairs of China Lord SALISBURY has unmistakeably declared himself as opposed to territorial acquisitions. This might be an error of judgment-as we have from the beginning maintained it to be-but it cannot be ascribed to pasil- It would have lanimity or vacillation. been easier for Lord SALISBURY to have. taken a haud in the carving up of China than to have entered on the stupendous task of preserving the integrity of the de- caying empire, and he would have had bet- ter opportunities of earning popular ap- plause thereby. The noble lord, has however, consistently and with almost complete suc- cess adhered to his policy. He is now being hounded because he did not rush his coun- try into a war that would have been more barren of profitable result than even the Crimean war!
The injustice of the criticism to which Lord SALISBURY is subjected is exemplified in our correspondent's contribution. It is
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