Granville
No. 20
Tientsin
12 May 1882

My Lord,

The Article to which I have alluded at the close of my dispatch No. 19 of this date stands thus.
“Corea is a dependency of China, but autonomic in both domestic and foreign relations. Corea and the United States agree that while the King of Corea engages faithfully to observe as an independent sovereign the different provisions (articles) of this treaty, the Ruler of the United States engages positively to recognize the dependence of Corea upon China, and never to interfere with it.”
When I was here in December last, the Grand Secretary Li, in the course of a conversation upon possible future intercourse with Corea, informed me with some explicitness that in any treaty between Corea and a foreign power, China would look for a clause admitting her suzerainty; and he gave reasons for the tenacity of his government on this point. The prestige of China, he said, was suffering by the extinction of some dependencies, and the withdrawal of others from their historical relation with her. Of the last incident, if I remember rightly, he mentioned Siam as an instance. Of the first, one instance was Anam, or Cochin China, which the French were by degrees annexing; Lewchew, which the Japanese had abruptly sent away, was another. He did not at the time allude to Burma, but, a few days since, when speaking of the most recent action of the French in Tonquin, he did make a slight allusion to the possible absorption of Burma by ourselves. But, to return, with reference to Corea, he made a good deal of the condition I have mentioned, and when Mr. Holcombe took me into his confidence, it was nearly the first point on which he also consulted me.
I suggested a separate article much in the sense of that above translated, and which is so phrased in Chinese as to avoid a particular stumbling block. If the Chinese Empire were spoken of as the Ta Tsing, the dynastic designation by which the Empire is described in all our Treaties, the words representing Kingdom of Corea would have to take a lower place. To this Corea, as the vassal of China, could not object; but America, treating with Corea as an equal could not, as the equal also of China, accept such a position.
In the text of the Article to be adopted, if any be adopted, China will stand simply as Chung Kuo, the central State, the familiar equivalent of China; a term capable of being used officially, but not necessarily requiring a superior place in the column. Thus, while, in substance, the inferiority of Corea to China is asserted, there is nothing either in form or substance to put in doubt the equality of China and the United States.
The provision being something new in a diplomatic instrument, Mr. Holcombe has telegraphed to Washington for instructions, and as Commodore Shufeldt started from Chefoo for Corea on the 9th instant, it may be presumed that his Government has accepted the Article; or he must, I think, have returned hither to reopen the discussion with the Grand Secretary Li.
In the following dispatch, I shall report my interview with the Grand Secretary.
I have, &c.

Thomas Francis Wade