793.003/68
Memorandum by the Secretary of State46
The Japanese Ambassador called at my request and I gave him the Aide Memoire inquiring of his Government their attitude on negotiating with China on the subject of extraterritorial rights. I informed the Japanese Ambassador that some time in December 1926, as I recollect, Mr. Porter, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, had passed [introduced?] a Joint Resolution calling on the United States to negotiate new treaties to take the place of the unequal treaties (as he called them) with China;47 that the Bill passed the House with very little objection and went to the Senate. I felt as though it would be better for the State Department to carry on the negotiations than to have the Bill pass and become a law. Thereupon on January 27, 1927, I made a statement which was published in China and delivered to the heads of the various military authorities as well as the officers of the Nationalist Government stating in substance that whenever China had a government prepared to negotiate or would appoint delegates fairly representative of China, the United States was prepared to negotiate new treaties, either alone or in cooperation with the other governments; that at that time China was not prepared to negotiate but when the Nationalist Government got possession of Peking and fairly consolidated their authority over China, I was notified that they were prepared now to negotiate and asked the United States to do so. I [Page 438] thereupon sent a note to each of the governments that we were going to negotiate with China on the subject of the tariff. About that same time, T. V. Soong, representing C. C. [T.] Wang, Minister of Foreign Affairs, notified Mr. MacMurray that he was prepared to negotiate right at that time in Peking. We gave Mr. MacMurray authority to proceed with the negotiations whereupon the Chinese immediately accepted the form of treaty we had suggested to Mac-Murray on his last visit to Washington; in fact, the treaty was signed only a day or two after I sent out my notice. I informed him further that Mr. Alfred Sze, the Minister, and C. C. Wu had likewise given us written notice of their desire to negotiate on the subject of extraterritoriality and commercial treaties; that we had been holding preliminary informal conferences with them on the subject and I had made up my mind to inquire of the other governments; that I had already inquired of the British Government; that this morning I had delivered this memorandum and at the same time the British Ambassador had read me a memorandum which he is going to send me48 stating in substance that the British Government did not think it wise immediately to raise the legation to an embassy but to take up all the questions with China as rapidly as we could. He did not indicate just when the British Government was going to do it.
The Ambassador thanked me for the note and said his Government was already negotiating with China for the settlement of questions between the two governments; that he would cable the Aide Memoire and ask his Government’s attitude.
- A similar memorandum, mutatis mutandis, of the same date, relates to the handing of the aide-mémoire to the French Ambassador (793.003/67).↩
- i. e., H. Con. Res. 46, introduced Jan. 24, 1927. See Foreign Relations, 1927, vol. ii, p. 341, footnote 74.↩
- Infra.↩