THE NORTH CHINA RAILWAY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 15, 18 January 1901, Page 4

THE NORTH CHINA RAILWAY.

As far as can be judged from our fragmentary cables, Germany seems to be doing- all that is necessary for the present to protect British railway interests in Northern China. This way of putting the case may not be very flattering to our national pride, but the facts themselves are not exactly a subject for congratulation. The first railway lines in China were constructed with British capital, and directed by British enterprise. Jf England hail considered it worth her while, even ten years ago, she could have secured an absolute monopoly of the internal means of communication in China, and with this a position of unassailable supremacy in the Far East. To-day, Russia controls the Munch uriau lines; Russia, through a Belgian syndicate, has the great Lillian (Midland China) concession in her hands; Germany has established a claim over all the lines, present and future, in Shan-tung; France and America have received huge concessions in the South. England may consider herself fortunate if in the future she is able, to maintain her ascendancy in the Yang'-tse region unimpaired. Meantime many of her most valuable vested interests have

been left to look after themselves, and British claims on the North China line have been allowed, to a considerable extent, to go by default.

in July, 1898, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank received from the Chinese Government a concession for a northern extension of the Tientsin railway through Shanhaikwan to Niuchwang, the great free port of Manchuria. By the secret Cassini Convention of 189G, Russia, through the good offices of Li Hung Chang, had acquired from China complete, though conditional, control of all the. waterways and railways of Man ehuria. She accordingly protested, against the agreement with the Bank as an infringement of her "sphere of influence." The Tsung-li-Yamen, as usual, bowed to her remonstrance, and decided that the contract could be carried out only with the proviso that no Manehuriaii line should be mortgaged or alienated to any foreign power. The British Minister objected strongly to these condition.-, but Russian diplomacy overawed ihe Chinese and the terms of the concession were altered accordingly. This incident produced a remarkable impression upon the Oriental mind. When Lord Charles Beresford was in China in 1898, lie found that no single event had done so riiUfih 1o lower our prestige as the submission of England to Russia in tlie mutter of the Shanhaikwan railway; and this in a country where, as Count Cassini observed, "prestige is 50 per cent, of power." The British capitalists who were financing the line were left to make their own terms. The Hongkong and Shanghai ißank and Messrs .lardiue and Matheson concluded an arrangement with the Chinese Government stipulating that no lines financed by them should ever be alienated to any other power.- They then accepted as security an' Imperial guarantee and a charge on the line already opened from Peking to Shanhaikwan, and on this basis they advanced the sum of 2} million pounds at 5 per cent, for the completion of 260 miles of the northern line within three years. Work, was being actively pushed on along this line when the present Chinese crisis was evolved; and Russia from the first has regarded this Shanhaikwan line, in British hands, not only as a menace to her supremacy in Manchuria, but as a serious discount to the value of her trans-Siberian railway.

The attack upon the Legations and the trouble on the Amur gave Russia all the opportunity that she needed. She at once seized all the Manchurian rails and rolling stock, professedly as a temporary repressive measure. England, as before, played into her hands by tacitly admitting her claims to the Tientsin railway, and therefore, by implication, to its northern extension. After much diplomatic manoeuvring, we now hear that Russia proposes to hand over to Germany this railway constructed by a British syndicate, with British capital. .Meantime, she has pillaged the railway shops at Shanhaikwan, and carried off everything useful for her own Manchurian Jine. Happily, it seems that Germany is inclined to take the Anglo-German agreement in earnest, and Count Yon Waldersee has replied that he will not accept any arrangement that could prejudice British vested interests. It is likely that serious trouble will arise when damages are assessed and claims for compensation begin to come in. The whole story is an unfortunate illustration of the lack of consistency and thinness which has marked British policy in tlie Far East, and the success with wrhich Russia has traded upon our easy-going complacency.