393.1163 Property/112

The American Consul at Tsinan ( Stevens ) to the Mayor of Tsinan ( Wen Ch’eng-lieh )39

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of March 14, 1935, requesting the surrender of title deeds to land held by the Shantung Mission of Seventh Day Adventists, an American missionary society.

The record of correspondence which has passed between the Tsinan municipal authorities and this consulate during the last twelve or thirteen years on the subject of the reregistration of land titles and the application of certain confiscatory provisions of the Shangpu Regulation40 to American property at Tsinan, should have made it [Page 807] clear to the Finance Officer of the Tsinan Municipal Government that this consulate is not disposed to advise American owners to surrender their title deeds for purposes of revenue and possible expropriation.

The Shantung Mission of Seventh Day Adventists, in the proper exercise of a treaty right, acquired a perpetual lease to land which at the time (1917) was situated outside of the Shangpu area. In 1918, the Shangpu area was extended so as to include the land owned by this mission. It now appears to be the intention of the Finance Officer of this municipality to deprive the mission of its perpetual lease and to force the mission to pay a heavy fee and accept in lieu of its perpetual lease a Shangpu lease which limits the period of ownership in the property to thirty years.

In this connection, your attention is respectfully invited to the stipulations of Article XIV of the Sino-American Treaty of 1903,41 which authorize American missionary societies to lease in perpetuity land in all parts of China; and it behooves me to point out that provisions of the Shangpu Regulation which disregard or have the effect of annulling Sino-American treaty stipulations have never been recognized by the American Government as binding upon American citizens or institutions.

In view of the foregoing explanation of the case, it is requested that you be so kind as to call the Finance Officer’s attention to the treaty stipulations mentioned above and instruct him to discontinue his efforts to upset the American mission’s established right to possess in perpetuity land in this part of China.

I have [etc.]

H. E. Stevens
  1. Copy transmitted to the Department by the Consul at Tsinan in his despatch No. 98, March 20; received April 15.
  2. “Shangpu” signified a mart or settlement open to foreign residence and trade. For the regulations, see subenclosure to despatch No. 1831, March 9, 1905, from the Chargé in China, Foreign Relations, 1905, p. 161.
  3. Foreign Relations, 1903, p. 91.