711.933/62
The Minister in China (MacMurray) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 10.]
Sir: I have the honor to enclose the Chinese text and English translation of a note from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, dated April 27th, and received May 6th,55 requesting that the restrictions upon the jurisdictional sovereignty of China be removed at the earliest possible date. As stated in my telegram No. 360 of May 7, 7 p.m., it is my considered opinion that the request that we relinquish our extraterritorial rights is based upon a series of assumptions contrary to fact. Dr. Wang appears to have assumed as his major premise that, concurrently with the growth of the Nationalist Government and with the degree of political unity which that Government has now achieved, there has come about an improvement in the system and practice of jurisprudence in China which would fully warrant the relinquishment at the present time of extraterritorial rights by those Powers still in possession of such rights. This assumption, I believe, is wholly unwarranted. The primary desideratum—the creation of a judiciary which is in fact free from military and political interference—is as remote now as it was at the time of the conclusion of the Sino-American Treaty of 1903. …During the past two years, the Chinese have had a free and unrestricted opportunity in their administration of the Provisional Court in the International Settlement at Shanghai to demonstrate whether or not they are at the present time competent to administer justice in a manner which would in any degree approximate that kind of justice which the foreign Powers could rightfully expect for their nationals upon the relinquishment of their extraterritorial rights. Of this opportunity the Chinese have made a signal failure, and the result has been to create a distrust of Chinese justice more pronounced and more cynical than that existing hitherto. The particular cases and incidents from which this distrust has arisen have been fully reported to the Department in the numerous despatches on the subject from the Consulate General at Shanghai.
Progress has been made towards the completion of the new codes which are to comprise the principles of the modern Chinese jurisprudence. Whether or not there has been appreciable progress beyond the point recorded in the Report of the Commission on Extraterritoriality, 1926, I am not in a position definitely to state. As I need scarcely state, however, the essence of the problem is not a matter of codes and principles of law, but is purely a question whether in practice these codes and principles are respected and applied in a manner [Page 566] which will guarantee a reasonable degree of safety to persons and property of our nationals. I do not doubt that, within the next few years, the Chinese Government will have formulated and promulgated a complete set of legal codes to which little or no exception can be taken. This fact in itself, however, offers no guarantee whatsoever that foreign interests will in practice receive any sufficient degree of protection from Chinese courts. The situation with regard to German citizens remains, so far as I know, substantially the same as that reported in my telegram No. 620, of June 6, 1927.56 The indirect protection received by Germany from the possession of extraterritorial rights by other Powers is of course a difficult matter to determine. Our attitude, however, should, I believe, be based upon general conditions affecting the administration of Chinese jurisprudence rather than upon the question whether Germans in China find their condition tolerable at a time when China is seeking to induce a general relinquishment of extraterritorial rights.
I have [etc.]