Forging New Links: A Survey of Eighteen Months of Unified China's Foreign Relations

Abstract

IN all the decades of China's efforts to secure a fundamental readjustment of her treaty with the foreign Powers, there has never been a period more fruitful of results than the past eighteen months. Prior to 1928, attempts in this direction had failed to elicit much response. The International Protocol of September 7, 1901, apparently entitled the foreign governments alone to the benefit of the doubt as to what amendments to treaties of commerce and navigation and other subjects concerning commercial relations were necessary. Between.1902 and 1908, Great Britain, the United States, Japan and Sweden undertook to surrender their extraterritorial privileges upon the fulfilment of certain precedent conditions, but no time-limit was imposed and there the pious intention ended. In the midst of the Great War more fair promises were made and China joined the Allies; nevertheless, the Questions for Readjustment submitted by her delegates were denied a hearing at the Paris Peace Conference. Three years later, the Washington Conference essayed to meet the wishes of the Chinese people half way; and still three years later (1925-6), representatives of the signatories of the aforesaid Conference assembled in Peking and attempted to execute the Washington Treaties and Resolutions in respect of the customs tariff and extraterritorial jurisdiction in China. The coup de grace, however, was withheld until 1928 and 1929. Between 1918 and 1928 there was one Foreign Office in Peking (now re-named Peiping) with whom the foreign diplomatic representatives continued negotiations, and another respectively in Canton, Hankow and Nanking, for the conduct of between the rising Nationalist China and the Powers, who were represented by their senior consular or junior diplomatic officers on the spot. Early in June, 1928, the Nationalist troops and their sympathizers entered Peiping,