File No. 893.114/174
The Ambassador in Great Britain ( Page) to the Secretary of State
1616. In reply to your telegraph 1056, August 28, 10 p.m. Foreign Office have been informed that an agreement between the Chinese Government and the combine of opium importers at Shanghai has been concluded by which the former will take over 1,700 chests of opium in bond at a price of 6,000 taels per chest payable in 6 per cent national bonds maturing in ten years and the drug will be resold to a syndicate.
The manner in which these stocks of opium will be disposed of has not been communicated officially to the Foreign Office. But according to a statement reported to have been made by the combine when announcing the signatures to the agreement, the syndicate to which the Chinese Government will resell the opium is to comprise certain leading Chinese officials and former Canton opium monopolists with headquarters at Nanking. Will work under a Government monopoly and will sell their own stocks as well as other foreign opium.
British Government have neither participated in nor given their official countenance to the negotiations between the Chinese Government and the opium combine for the requisition by the former of the stocks of Indian opium remaining in bond in Shanghai and Canton on the expiration of the opium agreement of 1911. On the contrary the British Government highly disapproves of the transaction which they hope the Chinese Government may yet be persuaded to abandon.