893.74/255: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in China (Schurman)
299. With reference to the Legation’s telegram number 475, dated December 4, you are authorized to send a note to the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs taking as a basis the Department’s telegram dated February 23, 1 p.m., 1921, no. 75, which Tokyo repeated to you.24
In addition you may state that the American Government is of the opinion that the Mitsui Company’s claim to exclusive rights is not in harmony with the general principles which inspired the deliberations of the Conference nor with the spirit of the Washington Treaty [Page 859] regarding the policies and principles to be followed in matters relating to China.
The Department will, in the near future, convey this view to the Japanese Government through the Japanese Chargé d’Affaires at Washington.
With regard to your telegram of December 6, 12 noon, 1922, no. 479, I shall also inform the Chargé d’Affaires of Japan in the following sense:
The American Government insists, setting aside any question of the validity of any individual definite concessions which may through contracts have been vested in non-Chinese companies by the Chinese Government, that no such express provisions made by the Government of China can be sufficient, for the benefit of these other companies, to dispossess Americans of their existing rights by treaty, viz., not to be “impeded in their business by monopolies or other injurious restrictions”; and, in regard to any purported cable or telegraph monopoly, that this Government reserves all its rights.
- See Foreign Relations, 1921, vol. i, p. 417 (footnote 21).↩