June 26.
11 soon will be three years since the Committee of Consulting Engineers, composed of seven of the foremost and most experienced experts.on port development and conservancy in the world, foregathered at Shanghai, ut the instance of the Whangpoo Conservancy Board, to - investigate and report on the best means: to be adopted to render the approach ¢s to this port suitable for the entry, and the harbour adequate to the reception, accommodation and despatch, of the largest class of vessel which was likely to come to Shanghai for many years. The Committee laboured on the question from October 15 till November 30, 1921, and during that period went thoroughly into the whole matter. Supplied with immense amount of data and information which had painstakingly been collected, compiled collated during a long period prior to their advent, the members of the Committee went carefully into-every possible scheme for the improvement of the har-dour and its approaches, and at the conclusion of their' labours submitted a report which left relevant aspect of the matter untouched, and which embodied in its recommendations provision for every reasonable eventuality in the development of Shanghai, not' as one of the greatest ports of the East alone, but one of the greatest and most efficient in the world.
An outstanding feature of the Report was that the Committee devised an admirable, reasonable and workable scheme whereby no call at, all would be made on the troubled finances at Peking for any of the works. The whole of the work recoramended would be entirely self-supporting. and "the position of the Government safeguarded throughout the Committee's proposed scheme of development and administration and no burden placed on. the national exchequer." The Committee further pointed. out that its technical proposals for immediate execution represented a very conservative project, the estimated cost of which was (and presumably still is). well within the capacity of the-trade, and-had the further arid very great advantage: of readily lending' itself tovfuture extensions: if and when the: requirements of that trade demanded more accommodation. If the recommendations were adopted, a new board in absorbing the" present Whangpoo Conservancy Board would succeed {in ownership to-works and. assets of considerable: value. The improvement and: deepening: which have been carried out and maintained with so much success, the dredging plant and appliances, the workshops and in fact all the belongings of the Conservancy Board, representing an outlay during the period 1906-1921 fourteen million taels, of which ten million could be said to be capital expenditure, would become the absolute property of the new j Shanghai Harbour Board without any capital liability. Te is unnecessary here again to go into the details of either the technical or financial schemes propounded, in regard to which the Committee pertinently pointed out that the raising of capital and general financial success were absolutely dependent on the constitution of the new Board being such that there were ample guarantees to the policy and efficiency of that Board's operations, In this connexion, itis interesting to. note that the Committee did not recommend any definite number to constitute the Board, or the proportion of Chinese "Government officials to trade representatives, but recommended only that the Board* should consist of Chinese officials (one of whom should be Chairman), representatives of shipping and trade in Shanghai, and also to a limited extent representatives of the municipalities.
The Report was, we understand, forwarded to Peking at the end of 1921 and that appears to be the last that has been heard of the matter by the public. In any' country but China such a thing would be unbelievable, but even in.
China, with its penchant for procrastination, it is: coming: seem more than strange. Allowing for the fact that China is one of the most conservative nations on earth and one which refuses ever to be hurried, and that a scheme of such magnitude cannot be cut and dried, passed, ratified and brought into operation in five minutes, it is amazing that a matter of such vital importance, affecting not only Shanghai but China as a whole, and concerning the Chinese as much as the foreigner, should apparently have been shelved indefinitely, with no indication or prospect of its being accorded attention. We hesitate at any opinion that a matter such as this has been merged in the mire of polities; we are loth to imagine that the scheme has definitely been quashed at Peking; and we are equally disinclined to foster the belief which is held by some that one of the main reasons for the delay is jealousy of the part that the foreigner already has played in the development of Shanghai and the equally important part they conceive he would play if the scheme were adopted in its entirety. It cannot too strongly be emphasized that the scheme of the Consulting Committee calls for no abrogation of any Chinese sovereign or provincial, maritime or terrestrial rights. The Harbour Board that was recommended would be main-a Chinese controlled body and under Chinese jurisdiction, and the only respect in which the authorities at Peking (or anywhere else) would be debarred from'free influence would be in relation to the financial aspect of the undertaking. The scheme concerns Shanghai directly and the money would be found: in Shanghai, though the benefits that would: accrue would be felt not in Shanghai alone' but throughout the whole of China. It is: obvious that foreign trade and.enterprise;
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.