793.003/195: Telegram
The Chargé in China (Perkins) to the Secretary of State
1044. 1. At meeting yesterday of the interested Heads of Legation French Minister and Dutch Chargé distributed memoranda giving the views of their respective Governments concerning the outline of the basis upon which the British Government considers negotiations might be held with a view to the gradual relinquishment of extraterritoriality (Legation’s 977, November 9, 4 p.m.). Both representatives said that they would request their home Governments to telegraph these views to the other interested capitals. I am therefore refraining from telegraphing the text of the memorandum.
2. British Minister stated that his Government had already given a warning to the Chinese Minister in London against the unilateral denunciation of extraterritoriality. At a meeting of the Anglo American Association in Peiping November 22, Lord Hailsham, chief British delegate to the Kyoto conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations and former Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, stated that he had heard a “rumor” that the Chinese Government intended unilaterally to abolish “extraterritoriality” by the end of the present year but that he declined to believe it. He stated that China was trying quite rightly to impress upon the powers its fitness to take its place among them as a sovereign state but that he was convinced that Chinese would not regard treaties as scraps of paper. China was not going to give its detractors an excuse to say that it was capable of tearing up its obligations. He does not think that the Chinese Government would be so careless of their country’s honesty. I have reason to believe that Hailsham was prompted by Lampson to make the foregoing remarks.
3. British Minister stated that his Government had refused a request from the Chinese Government to hold negotiations in London with regard to extraterritoriality. He also said that if the Chinese Government were to make a unilateral denunciation there would seem to be no advantage in his proceeding to Nanking to undertake negotiations upon this subject. Lampson also raised the question whether, in the event of unilateral denunciation, the interested powers might not be able to unite upon some common action in the matter. In this regard he expressed the belief that as a result of the general foreign reaction to the present Sino-Soviet controversy China was at the moment much more sensitive to world opinion than in the recent past.
- Telegram in three sections.↩