THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1929 CONSULS IN CHINA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20333, 14 August 1929, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1929 CONSULS IN CHINA.

The disturbed waters of the Orient, stirred into yet another eddy by the interchange of Notes between China and the United States on the abolition of foreign consuls in Chinese territory, have thrown up an interesting bit of international history. It relates to that faraway day, in the end of the eighteenth century, when China came out of agelong seclusion, and yet it has intimate bearing on her present endeavour to stand unfettered among the nations. For many centuries before that emergence there had been diplomatic dealings with other peoples—the Arabs, the Persians, and even the Romans; caravans carrying silk, as Gibbon tells, traversed the long miles of Asia between the China Sea and the coast of Syria, and many a venturesome traveller from the West, explorer, trader, missionarv, found his wav to the Far East: but substantially China lived slumbrously apart.

Aloofness suffered a shock when the East India Company established a trading centre at Canton, but this and subsequent entries were majestically treated by China as the tolerated visits, no more, of vassal States. To George 111. the Emperor Chien-Lung voiced the prevalent Chinese notion that China was the only civilised Power in the world. That "mandate," as it was called, may have appeared ridiculous to others, but it had some sort of justification in the fact that then iiie traders of the West had nothing to offer Chiua of which she felt in need. It was not until the coming of the next century that any demand for Western goods began to grow. Thereafter it increased apace, and with its development came, accompanied by misunderstanding and sharp bursts of quarrel, the new phase of competitive trade, an "open door," and a succession of treaties in which the doctrine of extraterritorial rights of foreigners took legal and practical shape. So consular jurisdiction, a device asserting the superiority of Western law over the Chinese courts in many a treaty port, came to protect the alien nationals and to remain a cause of offence to the Chinese mind until this day of more vocal and organised national aspirations. r It is a phase destined to pass, but how and when are questions not yet capable of clear answer. The old order, when missionaries and traders were equally dependent for a precarious foothold on a Chinese goodwill that was apt to be suddenly and frequently broken by assaults on them as "foreign devils," has not altogether yielded place to the new, in spite of much Chinese enlightenment and the arrival of a palpably friendly spirit in the policies of almost all the treaty Powers. The enlightenment has been associated with a revived interest in the old learning current in the China of far yesterdays, and the foreigners' friendliness has been suspect as a subtle menace of the nationalism that seeks, so far with but partial success, to unify and strengthen the China of to-day. There is a sincere wish on the part of most of the interested foreign Powers to come to China's financial and political assistance. Nothing could more clearly have represented and impressed this wish than the British memorandums of 1926 and Sir Austen Chamberlain's deliverance in the following year. Explicitly and in detail, Britain has led the way toward a future in which China's tariff autonomy and equality of status in all respects with other Powers will be realised without qualification. Others have followed, and in the reply of the United States to the Nationalist Government's demand for the abolition of foreign consular jurisdiction there is significantly evident a desire to discuss this, and necessarily related questions, without prejudice. Yet still it is true that the greatest and most stubborn obstacle to China's enjoyment of equality of status is China. With perfect sincerity and wisdom, it was made plain in the British memorandums of three years ago that the political disintegration of China stood in the way of treaty revision. There was no established Chinese Government with which to negotiate. Sympathy was helpless in the face of ruthless and reckless strife among ambitious war-lords. Even the promising growth of the Nationalist cause was disastrously associated with an anti-foreign bias. The Chinese delegation to the \\ ashington Conference of 1021-22, in the "ten points" then submitted as covering China's desires, implicitly acknowledged this weakness in their case, and it is a matter of history that the resultant Tariff Conference, called to promote fiscal autonomy, was futile because of their country's inability and even unwillingness to put its own house in order.

A new regime, it is true, has come with the triumph of the Nationalists, but it is bv no means complete, to say nothing of its being secure. At Mukden, a remnant of the old Peking Government still exercises a measure of control over a considerable northern region, and the internecine struggle among rival warlords is abated rather than abandoned. The American belief that many of the Chinese courts are subject to military influence, exercised by these far from law-abiding leaders, is too well founded to be dispelled by any Note from the Nanking Government. The old order has gone so far as Chinese seclusion is concerned. Chien Lung's words about (Jeorge lll.'s "humble desire to partake of the benefits of our civilisation," and about His Celestial Excellency's "swaying the whole world," belong to a bygone time, but. the spirit of foreign exclusion has taken a new lease of life, making reasonable negotiation as difficult almost as ever it was. Especially docs the perpetuation of military disorder vender perilous the leaving

of foreign nationals to the tender mercies of the Chinese courts. When these conditions pass, the new ordpr can come safely in. Japan, it is instructive to remember, had also her "unequal treaties" and the same experience of foreign consular jurisdiction; but she got quickly rid of them long ago by proving that foreign life and property could dispense with safeguards exceptionally and externally imposed. China will merit and enjoy the same liberty when she presents a claim backed by like guarantees. Until she can, there may be offers of treaty revision by the Foreign Powers concerned, and there should be sympathy with her in her plight, but there must be continued caution.