FRANCE AND CHINA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1182, 4 December 1883, Page 3

FRANCE AND CHINA.

The Paris correspondent of the Times declares the following to be substantially the reply of China to the demands of France :—" We cannot agree to have you as immediate neighbours. Our safety and tranquility would both be threatened. We shall never agrea to it unless we are forced. If you make war on us you might possibly bend us to your will, but the question is whether in case of war it would be against us alone you would make it. Therefore, if you wish it to be you who, under the cloak of Anam, occupy the neutral zone, ws sball not agree to a neutral zone, and it is only after a war with us that you will keep Anam and Tonquin. The neutral zone at marked out topographically is almost all Tonquin. It were better to divide Anam in two, Anam on the one side and Tonquin on the other. They naturally form two provinces; keep Anam, which admirably completes Cochin China. We do not ask you to leave Hanoi or Haiphong. You are there by virtue of the treaty of 1874, as you are at Shanghai by virtue of the treaty of 1858. If you wish it, you can establish yourselves elsewhere on the same conditions. You can ask ns every concession in favor of freedom of trade ; we will grant them to you, not only in Tonquin, but even beyond it—even in China. You would extend your Cochin China colony, you would open up to the trade of the world the Red River, the Yunnan, and the banks of the river in China itself. We should disturb each other no further, and all without striking a blow. But we Bhall not without a fight give up the delta of the Red River, our short practical route to the sea, to a kingdom of Anam, which will be another name for France. Ask Europe whether she advises us to do so."