CHINA: A. D. 1909 (February). Meeting of the International Opium Commission at Shanghai. See (in this Volume) OPIUM PROBLEM. CHINA: A. D. 1909 (May). New Russo-Chinese Agreement concerning the Chinese Eastern Railway. Municipalities on the Line. The Kharbin question. The Chinese Eastern Railway, so named, is the line which Russia, by Convention with China in August, 1896, obtained permission to construct, from a point on her Trans-Siberian Railway, through Northern Manchuria, to Vladivostok. {101} Under that agreement the Russian authorities claimed a right to institute certain organizations of municipal administration at Kharbin and other towns of rising importance on the line. This right was challenged in 1908 by the American Consul at Kharbin (sometimes written Harbin), Mr. Fisher, who refused to recognize some ordinances of the Russian administration, on the ground that he was accredited to China, only, and could know no other sovereignty in Manchuria than the Chinese. This led to a new Russo-Chinese Agreement, signed at Peking on the 10th of May, 1909, distinctly authorizing the "organization of municipalities on the lands" of the Chinese Eastern Railway. The "sovereign rights of China" are "not to be prejudiced in any way," says the new Agreement; but "municipal bodies are to be established in the commercial centres of a certain importance situated on the lands of the railway. The inhabitants of these commercial centres, according to the importance of the localities and the number of the residents, shall elect delegates by vote, who shall choose an Executive Committee; or else the residents themselves shall take part in the business of the municipality and a representative shall be elected from amongst them who will take upon himself to carry out the resolutions decided upon by meeting of all the residents. "No difference shall be made on the lands of the railway between the Chinese population and that of other nationalities; all residents shall enjoy the same rights and be subject to the same obligations. "The right to vote shall belong to every member of the community who owns real estate of a fixed value or who pays a fixed annual rental and taxes." Reading no farther in the Agreement than this, imperial Russia and China would seem to have jointly planted a seed of democratic municipalities in Manchuria; but that impression is destroyed by qualifying provisions, such as this: