Office of the Historian

893.801 Search/44: Telegram

The Minister in China (Johnson) to the Acting Secretary of State

Peiping, July 8, 1931—4 p.m.
[Received July 8—9:50 a.m.]

397. In a note dated June 2, translation of which has been forwarded to the Department by mail,62 the Minister for Foreign Affairs notifies [Page 971] me that the Chinese Government “has now formally fixed 12 nautical miles as a limit for the customs preventive service” referred to in “instructions for the guidance of officers in charge of revenue launches or cruisers when stopping and searching vessels, foreign and Chinese, in Chinese waters”, transmitted with Foreign Office note of October 31, 1930, transmitted to Department with despatch No. 607 of November 20, 1930.63 I assume Department will wish me to notify Chinese Foreign Office that the American Government cannot accept a unilateral claim of sovereignty beyond customary 3-mile limit in view of the fact that in our smuggling prevention treaties64 we have upheld 3-mile limit.

Johnson
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Despatch No. 607 not printed; for Foreign Office note of October 31, 1930, see Foreign Relations, 1930, vol. ii, p. 209.↩
  3. For texts of conventions for the prevention of liquor smuggling into the United States, see ibid., 1924, vol. i, pp. 157 ff.↩