FOREIGN SUBJECTS IN CHINA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 438, 1 October 1908, Page 4

FOREIGN SUBJECTS IN CHINA.

The assumption by Germany of the protection of Turkish interests in China has directed the attention of the Chinese Government to the whole question of foreign passports and protection. To the German notifications China replied that, while Willing to receive communications from Turkey through the German Legation, she cannot relinquish to Germany the rights of protection in China over the subjects of a Power which has no treaty with China. Especially will China in future decline to issue passports or to grant ex-territorial rights to the subjects of a Power like Turkey, within whose borders the subjects of other nations retain, as in China, ex-territorial privileges. China is also considering the questions of passports of those Roman Catholic missionaries, who, being subjects of Powers represented in Pekin by Ministers Plenipotentiary, claim passports for the interior, not from their own Ministers, but from a Legation exercising a Roman Catholic protectorate. A passport so issued speaks for the holder, even when of a different nationality from that of the Legation granting it, as “ our fellow countryman.” China is becoming more strict about foreigners travelling in the interior. She was alarmed recently by the arrival of a body of 60 Japanese in Mongolia, who divided into parties and proceeded to make a survey of the country. She now forbids survey work in the interior except under special permission. During recent years practically the whole of the 18 provinces of China proper and Manchuria have been surveyed by British intelligence officers, Germans, French, and others, and maps have been published to the great advantage of the Chinese and of the world, but the Japanese action in Mongolia, the scale on which the surveys were conducted, and the conviction that the results will never be published, especially in view of the Japanese veto upon railway construction northwards from Hsiu-min-tuu, cause China misgiving, and have led to the issue of the new regulations.