893.05/154: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in China (MacMurray)
[Paraphrase]
Washington, August 20, 1929—6
p.m.
277. Reference the Department’s 251, July 27, noon. The Department at this time desires to make certain observations and to invite your comments in regard to methods of procedure and subject matter of the negotiations which it is assumed, in accordance with article 7 of the 1926 rendition agreement, will take place between the Chinese Government and the foreign diplomatic representatives interested.
- (1)
- Discussions might be facilitated, in the opinion of the Department, if officers of the Legations were to have a preliminary meeting with the Chinese Foreign Office representatives in order to prepare an outline of matters for discussion, in which there might be included such specific proposals as the diplomatic representatives and the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs had agreed upon as appropriate for discussion. Should you consider this preliminary action as desirable, you are authorized to consult your interested colleagues concerning the matter, with a view to carrying it into effect.
- (2)
- Copies of the recommendations which the Senior Consul’s deputies at Shanghai made, in their letters dated April 30 and May 28 to the Senior Consul, regarding revising the Mixed Court rendition agreement of 1926, have been received by the Department.80 If carried out, certain of these recommendations would in effect increase foreign authority in the Provisional Court, as, for instance, the provision for a Senior Consul’s deputy to sit with the Chinese judge in watching proceedings in all criminal cases, with the Chinese judge’s decision in no case to be regarded as a binding judgment without concurrence of the consular official or Senior Consul’s deputy concerned. The Department does not believe that it will be possible to obtain the Chinese Government’s assent to changes of this kind and, consequently, does not wish to force an issue thereon. A deadlock in the negotiations, with attendant consequences, should, the Department believes, be avoided if it is possible to do so without abandonment of [Page 690] certain features of the court that may be regarded as essential in the period of international control of the International Settlement.
- (3)
- American citizens in China who are outside of Shanghai have been encouraged for more than two years to take to the modern Chinese courts their litigation as plaintiffs and not to ask American officials to be present to watch the proceedings (see the Legation’s telegram 212, March 12, 1927, 5 p.m., to the Department81). You are invited to comment on the question as to whether initiation of the same policy in Shanghai would now, all things considered, be advisable.
- (4)
- Your comment is desired by the Department on the question as to whether, during the course of negotiations concerning the court, it might be advisable to treat other unsettled questions affecting the International Settlement and the Port of Shanghai, to include the extra-Settlement roads, the Whangpu conservancy, and even the Settlement’s administration, should this subject come up. At present these questions either are drifting or are active irritants. It is obviously advisable to come to definite conclusions and to formulate a plan of procedure. The two questions are: (a) Whether it is likely that any satisfactory solution can be reached; (b) what would be the best method, or methods, of approach. Reference is made in this connection to the statement on February 4, 1927, by the Secretary of State to various Chinese leaders,82 namely, that “The American Government will be ready for its part to become a party to friendly and orderly negotiations properly instituted and conducted regarding the future status of the Settlement.”83
Stimson
- Neither printed.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1927, vol. ii, p. 468.↩
- See ibid., pp. 59–75, passim.↩
- Quotation not paraphrased.↩