793.003/128: Telegram
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes) to the Secretary of State
[Received 6:55 p.m.]
195. Reference the Embassy’s 192, July 16, 11 a.m.,93 and 191, July 15, 6 p.m. This morning the Foreign Office confirmed the fact that the Shanghai negotiations had begun July 5 and added that the Ministers of Great Britain, Japan, and the United States in Peking also were discussing extraterritoriality.
[Page 592]The Counselor of Embassy this morning saw Wellesley of the Foreign Office and was told definitely that the present British Government is so concerned with various important questions that it has no time for consideration of China policy; Wellesley is personally satisfied that there will not be any deviation from the Baldwin Government’s general policy. He said he had conversed recently with the Japanese Ambassador Matsudaira regarding what appears to be a difference in Anglo-Japanese proposals on extraterritoriality; and Atherton gathered that the immediate policies of Great Britain and Japan in China are based actually on trade extension possibilities. Japanese policy on extraterritoriality, as outlined by Wellesley, envisages shortly a soothing statement to the Chinese, intimating that, if there is even an “academic” fulfillment of the recommendations made in 1926 by the Extraterritoriality Commission, Japan will be willing to contemplate taking steps to waive its extraterritorial rights. The British, he said, felt, on the other hand, that any mention of the Commission on Extraterritoriality was anathema to the Chinese, and instead favored stating to the Chinese Government that, if China advances any confirmed evidence of improved conditions warranting a gradual abolition of extraterritoriality, the British would be sympathetic. He stated that both the British and the Japanese envisage the resumption by their nationals of life and trade in the interior of China, but the Japanese can exist there under conditions which are impossible for Europeans. Consequently, the British cannot contemplate surrendering extraterritoriality so soon as do the Japanese. Wellesley is anxious lest a situation develop in which foreigners might penetrate China in competition for trade privileges, and, without any proper administration of justice, outrages might occur, and this might lead to hostile gestures by certain governments toward the Chinese Government in order to obtain satisfaction for the insults to their nationals.
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