893.6363 Manchuria/29
The American Embassy in Japan to the Japanese Ministry for Foreign Affairs
Informal Memorandum
According to information which has reached the Government of the United States, the authorities in Manchuria have enacted a law establishing the Manchuria Petroleum Company, a semi-official organization of which the shares, which are nominative, are held by the regime in Manchuria and by various Japanese companies, one of which is the South Manchuria Railway, a semi-official Japanese Company. The Manchuria Petroleum Company, it is understood by the Government of the United States, is to be entrusted with the execution of the policy in regard to petroleum producing and refining.
The Government of the United States has also been informed that further legislation is now under consideration, which, if enacted, would establish an official monopoly of the selling of refined petroleum products in Manchuria, obtaining for the present a part of its supplies of refined petroleum products from the Manchuria Petroleum Company. It is understood that the plan contemplates the eventual expansion of the capacity of the refinery or refineries of the Manchuria Petroleum Company to a point where the entire needs of the proposed petroleum monopoly can be supplied by the Manchuria Petroleum Company.
[Page 131]If the foregoing information is accurate, and if this project were carried into effect, it would apparently close the door in Manchuria to the sales by American oil companies of their products and consequently would violate the principles of the Open Door, a principle which Japan is committed to uphold and which it has declared that it will uphold.
The Government of the United States furthermore desires to invite the attention of the Japanese Government to the fact that participation by the South Manchuria Railway, a semi-governmental Japanese organization, in the monopolistic project in question, and the reported erection of the refinery of the Manchuria Petroleum Company in the Japanese leased territory in Kwantung, presupposes the approbation and cooperation of the Japanese Government in the project. Such concurrence and cooperation of the Japanese Government would contravene the provisions of Article 3 of the Nine Power Treaty signed at Washington in 1922,55 under which the Japanese Government agreed that it would not seek, nor support its nationals in seeking, any such monopoly or preference as would deprive the nationals of any other Power of the right of undertaking any legitimate trade or industry in the territory to which that Treaty applies.
Furthermore, the Government of the United States desires to point out that the establishment of a petroleum selling monopoly in Manchuria would contravene the explicit provisions [of the Sino-American Treaty of?] 184456 and Article 14 of the Sino-French Treaty of 1858,57 and would therefore constitute a violation of certain international obligations the fulfillment of which has been guaranteed by the authorities in Manchuria.
The Government of the United States therefore trusts that the Japanese Government will refuse its approval or support of this monopolistic project in Manchuria, and will endeavor to deter its nationals from participation therein, and that the Japanese Government will also use its influence to discourage the adoption by the Manchurian authorities of measures which tend to violate the principle of the Open Door and the provisions of various treaties which the authorities in Manchuria have agreed to respect.
- For text of treaty, see Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, p. 276.↩
- Malloy, Treaties, 1776–1909, vol. i, p. 196.↩
- British and Foreign State Papers, vol. li, pp. 636, 641.↩