Unparalleled Concession to Foreign Power: What the Soviet]
Would Gain Under the Sino-Russian Agreement: China's Sacrifice of Sovereign Rights Frost Our Owx Peking, June 14.
Li Hung-chang has been dead many years, but the mention of his name instantly brings to mind the most inglorious chapter of concession-grabbing that ever besmirched the relations between nation and nation. But even China's illu rious statesman, accustomed a3 he was to the bartering of Chinese ter-Titory, balked at the idea of grant ing a foreign Power the privilege of constructing or partly owning a railway line in China, In recounting the genesis of the Chinese Enstern Railway, Count Witte in his memoirs says Li Hung-chang absolutely refused to consider the construction or the owning of the proposed line by the Russian Treasury. Hence, the concession was passed on to the Russo-Chinese, now the Russo-Asiatic, Bank, and it was with the bank' that the Chinese signed the agreement out of which grew the Chinese Enstern Railway. It never dawned on this statesman that the day would come when China would replace that agreement with tone which passed on the concession to the Russian Government itsd and he would surely turn in hi Brave at the turn of events, Russo-Asiatic Bank.
Whatever may be said of the extent of its governmental backing, the Russo-Asiatic Bank was never the creature of the Governmen As the Russo-Chinese Bank it was in existence before it signed the Chinese Eastern contract with the Chinese Government. Its existence as an entity in itself was acknow-Jedged in the minutes of the Portsmouth Conference, as a result of which the southern part of the Chinese Eastern, now the South Manchuria Railway, was coded to Japan pending negotiations between the Russian Government and the Russo-Asiatic Bank. The terms with the Bank involved to indem-unification by the Russian Treasury for this filching of its rights in the interests of reparations. In 191 its independence was further ex-amplified in amalgamation with the Banque clu Nord, which had over a 100 branches in Russia, and which strengthened considerably the financial foundation of the enter-
Treasu lo duty in the conprise. From that—time
cern was the approving of the board of management, and even this was a mere matter of form. The share holders carefully guarded their pri vileges from official encroachment and the Chinese Government on its part saw to it that there was no deviation from the letter and the spirit of the original compact, Letter and Spirit Broken, Now, however, both the letter and the spirit have been broken. China contracts with the Russian Government about a railway in its own territory, naked and unashamed. It is true the Koo-Karakhan document it merely an agreement on general principles which have still to be worked into a treaty; but these principles are premises which one can build the main lines of the future agreement. It is the principle involved in the Chinese Eastern Railway "principle" which attention is drawn, namely, that "the future of the Chinese Eastern Railway shall be determined by the Union of Soviet Sodalist Republics axd the Republic of China to the excl of any third party or parties."
Here we have a direct railway concession to another Power, without any camouflage, without any circumlocution. Is' there another railway agreement on record China which yields a principle so subversive of C sovereignty? And there was no extortion about it; it was a free gift from China, 8 part and parcel of a reciprocal It would not have been tolerated by Li Hung-chang, hardened as he was to the sphere of influence, but to-day after China has won the legiance of all the "imperialistic" Powers to the renunciation of that imperialistic policy, the' Peking Government. gives away its birthright to the government whose principal tenet of faith is supposedly the territorial integrity of sovereign nations,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.