JAPAN AND CHINA

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume LIX, Issue 6252, 23 October 1936, Page 2

JAPAN AND CHINA

The Murders in Chengtu Recently four Japanese were attacked by Chinese in Chengtu, the capital of Szechwan, and two of them are reported to have succumbed to their injuries. This unfortunate occurrence immediately became an "incident," and an incident which Tokyo apparently means shall have a capital I. On the Friday the Emperor's sanction was obtained for the demands to be presented to the Chinese Government. The Army and Navy have seen to it that the demands, though imprecisely formulated, are stiff and sweeping. The phrase "relations with China must be such that the repetition of such outrages will be avoided" might be, and probably will be, interpreted, in a number of ways. There are few signs that Japan is prepared to be conciliatory. The affray is attributed in Tokyo to anti-Japanese feeling, deliberately fomented by Kuomintang organs in Chengtu; and at a cabinet meeting recently the Minister for War and the Minister of Marine went so far as to demand the dissolution of the Kuohintang, which is the Nationalist Party from which the Nanking Government derives its consitutional authority. Their colleagues, it would seem, declined to follow them to this ludicrously logical length, but the demands to Nanking are ominously phrased. Japanese investigators have been sent to the spot, the Japanese China Squadron has postponed its departure from the Yangtze, and national feeling on the subject runs dangerously high. The Japanese are adepts at turning a molehill into a volcano; but on this occasion the machinery of the transformation scene creaks and there are lacunae in the illusion. To charge the Nanking Government with complicity in a pointless act of violence is to I underrate the acumen of the 'Chinese. Two of the ringleaders among the assailants have been executed with unoriental pvompitude, and official regrets for the incident have been fully expressed. There—after monetary compensation had been arranged—the matter might well be allowed to rest. That it will be allowed to rest is unlikely, Japan's disproportionate show of indignation has in this context two motives. One is her usual desire to embarrass the Nanking* Government as much as possible at every turn. The other is to get some kind of foothold in Chengtu. The murders occurred in the middle of somewhat stormy negotiations for the opening of a Japanese Consulate at Chengtu. The idea aroused opposition locally, for Chengtu is not a treaty port; but the Japanese maintained a Consulate there until 1032, when it had to be dosed owing to anti-Japanese feeling during the Manchurian invasion. Now they are anxious to reopen it. For some time past it has been an open secret that General Chiang Kia-shek, whose anti-Communist campaigns have kept him a good deal in Szechwan, has contemplated making Chengtu the ultimate refuge for the Nanking Government from Japanese pressure on the coast. The capital of China is traditionally movable, and this rich remote province-larger than any other m China, and more than twice :" : U ' 8 '. e * s most —'would make, both and economically, a good nome for j os t causes in the event of vf*'? 53 eV ' the la3 * two or three yo.u. a civil war ihere has been Kju.-dated, the administration has been reformed with some measure of succes.s, roads and air-fields, have been constructed. The Japans, who are the most inquisitive of races, would circumstances wish to be well nuormed about developments in Szechwn. A Consulate makes a listening post, and the need to protect may, m time of crisis, come in h *ndy-as a pretext,