China as a ‘constant source of anxiety'

At the beginning of 1927 it seemed as if the Foreign Office’s policy towards China was pre-eminent and unassailable. Towards the end of 1926, Chamberlain, in a letter to his sister Ida, had expressed his relief at having hammered out a new China policy. Six months previously, he had confessed to her that ‘China is a constant source of anxiety to me. I see no way through its troubles or the troubles it causes me’, ¹ and in November he called China one of the ‘flies in my ointment’. ² However, by December, after a ‘huge labour’, ³ Chamberlain had worked out the basis of a new policy toward China and received Cabinet approval for it. The premise of this policy, embodied in the December memorandum, was that Britain was willing to accede to Chinese demands for treaty revision in a spirit of friendship and conciliation and to negotiate with the Chinese about taking gradual steps towards Chinese tariff autonomy and the eventual relinquishment of Britain’s extraterritorial rights. Chamberlain had left London in a ‘happier frame of mind’ in early December, but any euphoria that accompanied this liberal and optimistic policy was destined to be short-lived. Less than one month after the proclamation of its new policy, in a sharp turnaround, the government ordered 13,000 troops to depart for China in response to the outbreak of trouble and violence in the British concession of Hankou.