The various foreign banks of the two cities, such as the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation, the Chartered Bank of India, China Australasia, the Yokohama Specie Bank, the Banque Belge Pour WEtranger, the Banque" Franco Chinoise, ete,, are in the same pre-dicement as the Chinece banks, says the report. Owing to the failure of business by a number of native Danks in Peking and Tientsin, the foreign banks have failed to secure repayment of lonns which they had made to these people and the value of the securities given for such Joana have decreased to such an extent that the foreign banks have found it difficult to dispose of them. Formerly, more than $10,000,090 was remitted from Peking and Tientsin annually to the Peking-Suiyuan Railway for the purchase of furs but. this year most of the Chinese fur merchants have not daved to travel over this line and only a small number of British and German merchants have travelled for the purchase of furs. The amount remitted, therefore, is far ese than in previous years, The Foreign Point of View When this report was shown to a well-known foreign banker he described it as gloomy and exaggerated and said that it carried a more pessimistic note than there was justified. Tt was probably quite true that the Chinese banks were tied up with Treasury Bonds and that they had failed to collect the overdrafts made, but it was nonsense to say that the foreign banks were in the same predicament as there was no suggestion of any sort in this respect and several of the banks had done better this year than last. The business of the foreign Lanks generally perhaps, was not quite so ood as it had been but this was Jargely on account of the difficulty of shipping facilities in Tientsin, due to the silting the Haiho, which had since been cleaved out by Dame ature. The transfer of the capital from Peking to Nanking like wi had had its effect on the Chinese barks ae it was believed that large fume had been lent to officials who had now disappeared.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.