Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/58

 still hankering after proper relations, sent a commodore on board of an American gunboat escorted by three Chinese men-of-war; and precisely as Commodore Perry had done a generation before in Tokio [sic] Bay, finally signed the first Western treaty.

Immediately after this event we get an important clue. The American treaty had been signed in May: in September Chinese and Korean officials, meeting at Tientsin, come to a written agreement and disclose in a single sentence the real nature of the relationship existing between China and Korea. The preamble to "the Regulations for maritime and overland trade between Chinese and Korean subjects of 1882" begins in this way:—

. . . All that pertains to the relations of Korea as a boundary state of China has been long ago regulated by fixed rules, and no change is required in this respect. But as now foreign countries entertain trade with Korea by water, it becomes necessary to remove at once the prohibition of sea trade hitherto enforced between China and Korea, and let the merchants of both countries participate in all the advantages of commercial relations; the regulations affecting the exchange of produce on the frontier will also, as time may require, be modified; but the new regulations for the maritime and overland trade now decided upon are understood to apply to the relations between China