793.003/5578/9
Memorandum by the Minister in China (Johnson)8
Dr. Frank Lee, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, called upon me this afternoon and stated that he had reported our conversation of yesterday to Dr. Wang who had expressed himself as being gratified to learn that we were prepared to go as far as the British in the matter of extraterritoriality. He said that this morning they had appeared before the Commission on Foreign Relations at which Dr. C. T. Wang Dr. Wang Chung-hui, Dr. H. H. Kung, Sun Fo and Chen Li-fu (the latter secretary general to the Central Committee of the Kuomintang) had been present. Dr. Lee referred to Mr. Chen as the Stalin of China.
Dr. Wang made his report to the Commission on the present state of extraterritorial negotiations and stated that the negotiations now hinged upon the insistence of the British on the exclusion of the four ports, Shanghai, Tientsin, Hankow and Canton. He said that in the discussion that followed the members of the Committee took the stand that insofar as Hankow was concerned the British had relinquished their concession, while the Americans had no concession there; that at Tientsin the British had promised to give up their concession, while the Americans had no concession. They pointed out also that at Canton during the great seamen’s strike the British promised to give up their concession on Shameen but had been deterred by the fact that the French had refused. Therefore, argued they, there could be no reason for a demand on the part of the British or ourselves that these three places be exempt from the scope of the agreement. In [Page 806] regard to Shanghai they could perceive some reason in the request for its exclusion and they were prepared to consider the question of that exclusion for a limited period of time.
I said that I wanted to make it very clear that the existence or nonexistence of concessions had nothing to do, so far as we were concerned, with the question of reserving these areas from the scope of the agreement. What we had in mind was the fact that the largest number of American business and other interests were congregated at these places and it was on this account and because we believed that these large and active interests should be given time to adjust themselves to the new conditions about to be imposed on them that we were asking the exclusion of these areas from the scope of the agreement.
Dr. Lee said that the members of the Committee could not, however, dismiss the idea that the two matters were related and Dr. Wang had been loath to press the matter for fear of precipitating a deadlock. Dr. Lee stated that Dr. Wang Chung-hui had expressed himself as being hopeful that the special chambers would be functioning within six months and that prominent and reputable lawyers in several countries had already been approached with a view to serving as legal counsellors. He said they expected to engage six such counsellors, one of them to be Chinese, and that the Chinese Minister in Washington had instructions to approach a well known American lawyer with an offer of one of the places. Dr. Lee said that Dr. Wang was instructed to report further to the Committee next Friday regarding the progress of negotiations.
- Copy transmitted to the Department by the Minister without covering despatch; received June 11. Substance reported to the Department by the Minister in par. 1 of his telegram of April 23, 1931, 9 a.m., from Nanking, infra.↩