793.943 Manchuria/33: Telegram
The Counselor of Embassy in China (Lockhart) to the Secretary of State
[Received 2:15 p.m.]
783. Following from Mukden:
“11, November 24, 4 p.m. The British Consul General at Mukden informs me that acting under instructions from his Government he called on November 23rd on the Director of the Foreign Office and protested along the following lines concerning Manchukuo’s proposed abolition of the extraterritorial rights of non-Japanese aliens in Manchuria:
- 1.
- The British Government cannot assent to any unilateral action on the part of the Manchurian authorities impairing the extraterritorial rights of British subjects;
- 2.
- The attention of the Government was invited to its statement of March 12, 1932 assuming in Manchuria treaty obligations incurred by the Chinese Government.
The Director replied: firstly, that such statements under international law assume obligation to only property and not personal rights under the pre-war regime; secondly, that the British Government failed to respond to the statement of March 12th and therefore Manchukuo is not bound by it; and thirdly, that to allow British [Page 939] extraterritorial rights to continue would be to discriminate against Japanese subjects.
In connection with the discriminatory features of the exchange control law, the Director stated that he is endeavoring to remedy those features by striking out ‘Japan’ in the discriminatory clauses and substituting therefor ‘those countries which recognize Manchukuo’. Tokyo informed.[”]