ABSTRACT
The Customs Agreement Six months before the outbreak of hostilities in North China, a Foreign Office memorandum stated that in the priorities of British commercial policy, China should occupy ‘a high place’.1 It also asserted that although it was difficult to define the political grounds on which China should be singled out for special treatment, it was the British Government’s policy, in conformity with the recommendations made by Sir Frederick Leith-Ross,2 to make every endeavour to meet China’s financial, economic and industrial requirements. ‘The potential riches of a vast country like China need no emphasis’, the memorandum pointed out.3 Thus it was China’s potential as a market and an area of investment that greatly excited the British imagination. At the same time it was also stressed that in the political sphere China should take a second place to foreign countries with which Britain was allied. This was indeed a fundamental truth.
