Customs Conference

In Chinese eyes the Customs Conference at Peking became some-what more than an academic forum when U. S. Minister John Van Antwerp MacMurray arose and recited specific proposals favored by Washington for granting to China the tariff autonomy which she requested at the opening of the Conference (TIME, Nov. 2).

The U. S. Proposals:

1) China to be allowed to raise her present tariff schedules by levying a surtax of 2 1/2% after Feb. 1, 1926, and a 5% tax on luxuries after July 1, 1926. This first proposal simply echoes the concessions contemplated in the Washington Treaty, under which the present customs Conference is being called. What follows enlarges and exceeds the concessions then planned.

2) China to be allowed to write her own tariff schedules after Jan. 1, 1929, and to agree in return to abolish the internal "likin" (transit duties) and other trade taxes; this arrangement to be embodied in a new treaty, supplanting the present customs treaties between China and the Powers; the actual collection of the customs money to remain in the hands of the Powers as at present.

3) Three months after the signing of this new treaty China to be allowed to levy uniform duties of between 5% and 12 1/2% on imports and 7 1/2% on exports.

The Powers represented at the Customs Conference signified "on principle" their willingness to grant China customs autonomy in return for the abolition of "likin."

Dr. Cheng Ting Wang, Yale graduate who presented the Chinese demands a fortnight ago (TIME, Nov. 9), declared: "The American proposals offer a most promising basis for the settlement of the tariff question."

Surprise was expressed by the delegates when reports were read in which it appeared that the Tuchuns (War Lords) in the interior of China have been levying "special taxes" of their own which are double or triple the "likin." The fact that the Tuchuns are strong and do as they like, despite the feeble reproofs of the Peking Government, is of course the great argument advanced by Britain in contending that tariff autonomy cannot be proximately granted to China.

Last week, however, the War Lords were well behaved. General Feng, the Peking Dictator, bothered the Conference not at all. 'And in the interior the great Super-Tuchuns, Wu and Chang, stalked one another, out of harm's way, without any decisive or even notable results.