393.1163 Property/116
The Mayor of Tsinan (Wen Ch’eng-lieh) to the American Consul at Tsinan (Stevens)42
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of March 19, 1935, regarding the procrastination in the surrender of deed for examination by the Shantung Mission of the Seventh Day Adventists, an American mission society. You stated in the letter that inasmuch as the Mission, in the proper exercise of a treaty right, acquired a perpetual lease to the land, you are not disposed to advise them to surrender their deed for examination. You also called my attention to the Sino-American treaty stipulations and requested me to instruct the Financial Officer of the Tsinan Municipal Government to discontinue his efforts to interfere with the Mission.
[Page 808]In reply, I have the honor to inform you that, since the prescription of the Shangpu Regulation following the establishment of the Shangpu area, both Chinese and foreigners have unanimously complied with the regulation. Heretofore, in accordance with the provisions of the Shangpu Regulation and in view of the requirement of both Chinese and foreigners, the Shangpu area was extended so as to include the places north to Kan Shih Ch’iao, east and west to the First Cross Road, and outside of the Lin Hsiang Gate. The landowners in this area have, complying with the regulation, exchanged their title deeds for leases and started to pay the rent. The Shantung Mission of the Seventh Day Adventists, however, have never submitted their deed for examination. Whether or not the land leased by the Mission is of a perpetual lease is another question, but since the land is Chinese territory and has been included in the Shangpu area, it behooves this office, with a view to exercising Chinese sovereignty and administering municipal government, to advise the Mission to submit their deed for examination in accordance with the regulation.
With reference to the Sino-American treaty mentioned in your letter, your attention is respectfully invited to the fact that the international situation is not the same as heretofore. During the eleventh year of the Chinese Republic (1922), the United States convoked the Washington Conference, at which the Nine Power Pact43 was contracted on the principle that Chinese sovereignty and administrative integrity should be respected. Consequently, any treaty which may be contradictory to the principle should, considering all things, be changed so as to meet with the situation.
Furthermore, according to the Shangpu Regulation, the term of lease is thirty years, on the expiration of which it is permitted to renew the lease. As soon as the term expires the second time, the land will be revoked according to a price justly estimated by an independent party, in case the Government is in need of the land; otherwise, it is still permitted to renew the lease. In view of the foregoing procedure, the Government has apparently had regard to the property right of landowners.
As in duty bound, I have the honor to send you this reply with the request that, for the sake of facilitating municipal administration and consolidating our cordial relations, you be so good as to instruct the Shantung Mission of the Seventh Day Adventists to submit their deed for examination at their earliest convenience to the Financial Office of the Tsinan Municipal Government, so that the office may take appropriate action in accordance with the regulation.
It is requested that this office be favored with a reply.
- Copy transmitted to the Department by the Minister in China in his despatch No. 3614, June 12, p. 813.↩
- Treaty signed at Washington, February 6, 1922, Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, p. 276.↩