CHAPTER 4 Hybrid Chinese Shipping: Foreign-Flagged Chinese Junks and Chinese Steam Tugs

The lekin office is side by side with the custom-house, and as soon as the duties have been paid at the latter the merchant has to settle the lekin next door. To make sure that nothing escapes, a guard boat is anchored close to the Hong Kong steamer wharf, and it actually happens that export cargo, after having been cleared at the customs shed, is intercept- ed on its way to the steamer and made to pay a second tax. In the case of imports, if the importer is a Chinaman, as in nine cases out of ten he is, he pay his lekin and other taxes before even landing his good; if a foreign- er, the lekin spies very soon find out on whose account the goods have been imported, or to who the foreigner sells them, and the Chinaman is called upon to pay his tax often before the merchandise has passed into his possession.1 BYRON BRENAN, “Report on the Trade of Canton for the Year 1894,” 4 June 1895. ∵ Due to Hong Kong’s colonial status from 1842, and its geographical proximity to province, which shared a water border with Hong Kong, the porous water boundary became a breeding ground for smuggling in the Canton River Delta. Following the establishment of the foreign-controlled Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs (CIMC) in Shanghai and Canton in 1854 and 1859 respec- tively, and other treaty ports as well afterwards, all foreign-registered vessels were required to pay tariffs to the Foreign Customs (Yangguan 洋關) managed by the CIMC in treaty ports. However, Chinese junks needed to pay tariffs to the Native Customs (Changguan 常關) and Likin stations, controlled by the Chinese government at all non-treaty ports in . Because a varied taxa- tion rate was levied on different commodities in the above-mentioned foreign and native customs administration, the latter especially always had a lower duty rate on both imports and the exports in many cases. However, the rates of Likin tax could be very different, given the numerous Likin barriers within

1 “China: Report for the Year 1894 on the Trade of Canton” (London: Foreign Office, 1895): 7–8.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004341166_005 138 CHAPTER 4 one province or the others, the real rate of Likin amounted to 15 to 20 percent of the value of the goods, which was well beyond the theoretical rate, which should not have exceeded 5 percent.2 As a result, despite the existence of both foreign customs house and Likin stations along the Hong Kong-Guangdong water borderline, as suggested by Brenan’s statement in 1895, Chinese traders would use their ways to break the constraint upheld by any single authority. They did this by using flexibility in choosing either Chinese or foreign status of their commodities, that is adopting circumventing routes between Hong Kong and ports on the West River as discussed in Chapter 3, or their vessels, including Chinese junks, Chinese steamers, steam launches (dan xing xiaolun 單行小輪) and steam tugs (luntuo 輪拖), which had a steam launch in the front to tow a Chinese junk behind. The ways of adopting the foreign status for Chinese vessels, namely by obtaining the right of hoisting foreign national flags or double registration for the ships within this dual customs system in China, as this study argues, will be analyzed at a full detail in this chapter.

4.1 The Establishment of the Kowloon Customs and the Regulation of Chinese Junks from 1887

In November 1867, the Guangdong Customs of the Guangdong provincial government for the first time confiscated a vessel smuggling opium as it was approaching Hong Kong. The colony’s Governor, Richard Graves MacDonnell, made a complaint to the British Consul in Canton and requested the Chinese authorities to return the vessel to Hong Kong. However, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Duke of Buckingham, told MacDonnell that it was rea- sonable for the Chinese Native Customs to regulate its subjects’ activities in Chinese waters. In order to protect maritime customs revenue, Rui Lin 瑞麟, the Viceroy of Liangguang (Guangdong and provinces) opened Tungkun (東莞 Dongguan), Shuntak (順德 Shunde), Heungshan (香山 Xiangshan, today 中山 Zhongshan) and Kaiping (開平) in Guangdong province as treaty ports.

2 Stanley F. Wright, China’s Struggle for Tariff Autonomy: 1843–1938 (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh Ltd., 1938; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-Wen Publishing Company, 1966), 20–21; Liao Shengfeng 廖聲豐, Qing dai changguan yu quyu jingji yanjiu 清代常關與區域經濟研究 (The research of Native Customs and regional economy in Qing period) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2010), 254; Joseph Earle Jacobs, Investigation of Likin and Other Forms of Internal Taxation in China (Washington: Government Printers Office, 1922), 12.