711.933/225
Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the Chinese Minister (C. C. Wu)
The Minister brought up the question of extraterritoriality and expressed his dissatisfaction with the proposals being made to him by us. He said that the proposal to administer Chinese law through the foreign courts had been made three years ago by Great Britain and was thought unsatisfactory by the then Peking Government. He then produced the following proposal:
“Beginning on January 1, 1930, Americans in China, other than those in Shanghai, Canton, Tientsin, Hankow, and Harbin, are amenable to Chinese laws and regulations and to the jurisdiction of Chinese courts. [Page 355] Regarding jurisdiction over Americans in the five cities above enumerated, arrangements will be made after a definite short period from date of this agreement with a view to the final abolition of extraterritoriality.”
He told me he had talked it over with Mr. Johnson32 and Mr. Hornbeck.33 I told him that he must realize that we had also been placed in an unpleasant situation, not only by the two factors I had mentioned above, but by the situation with Russia;34 and that he must realize now that he would have made it much easier for us, in respect to all of these matters if, instead of waiting to restore the status quo under the war-like conditions of Russia, he had done it when I suggested it last summer. He told me he appreciated that now; that they had come out pretty badly from their Russian trouble.
- Nelson T. Johnson, then Assistant Secretary of State.↩
- Stanley K. Hornbeck, Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs.↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1929, vol. ii, pp. 186 ff.↩