The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. WHAT HOPE FOR CHINA?

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 225, 23 September 1925, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

WHAT HOPE FOR CHINA?

For the came ihai lacks assistance, For the xorong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we van do.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1025

• There is a strong probability that the Customs Conference which \e supposed to meet at Peking early next month may be postponed, if not rendered entirely impossible, by the threatened outbreak of civil war. In the meantime our Foreign Minister has been doing his best to draw public attention in Britain, as well aa in China, to the important problems which the Conference proposes to discuss. The intention is to draft a comprehensive plan for settling China's public finances on a firm basis. It is proposed to abolish tlie likin dues— the internal taxes which hamper trade {between the different districts and provinces—and to find security for the whole of China's external debt by arranging for a Customs surtax on imported goods. In this way it is believed that Chinese finance might be promptly and successfully stabilised. For the country possesses vast natural resources, and its industrial and commercial potentialities are virtually unlimited. But the consent of the Chinese themselves is necessary before any such schemes can be carried into effect; and here the Powers have to face the strong antipathy of the Chinese to foreigners and their fierce resentment at these constantly reiterated attempts to keep China under foreign control. Not unnaturally the responsible authorities at Peking—though they are rulers of China in name only—have resolved that they will not permit the hated foreigner to readjust and control the country's finances unconditionally. More especially they demand the abolition of those extra-territorial rights by which foreigners living or trading in China have hitherto been protected against the cupidity of corrupt officials and the hostility of the masses, who are inspired just now by bitter hatred of the "foreign devil." And.' Mr. Chamberlain has already given the obvious answer that unless and until those who claim to speak for China can give positive proof of their ability to maintain law and order, and to protect life and property, the foreign Powers must refuse to surrender the special privileges that their I nationals now enjoy. Now it happens ! that at this present juncture the Peking Government is absolutely unable to give anj' such guarantee. For the struggle between the military governors which was interrupted temporarily by the death of Sun Vat Sen in the south, and the defeat of Wβ Pei-fu in the centre, is now being renewed in the north, and a cable message from Tokyo informs us that civil war is once more imminent in the vicinity of Peking itself. Twelve months ago Wu Pei-fu, who then held control of the central provinces, [ and was regarded by competent observers as an enlightened and patriotic Governor, was expected to emerge from the chaotic struggle then in progress as the dominating force in China. But the Governor of Manchuria, Chang-tso-lin, less disinterested and public-spirited than Wu Pei-fu, but apparently endowed with greater force of character and more military ekill, defeated his adversary so decisively that since then he has held the balance of power in his own hands and practically dictated terms to Peking. Just now he is faced by a rival leader, Feng-yu-hsiang, who only a few months ago was being held up before Western eyes a? a splendid type of the Christianised intellectuals of the Far East. There seems to be no doubt that Feng-yu-hsiang for the time being took his religion seriously; and it was confidently asserted that his army—so per cent Christian, with 99 per cent of the officers Christian, maintaining a rigid and puritanical discipline—was far superior as a fighting force to any other body of troops in China. But it now seems that Marshal Feng, disgusted by the kind of treatment to which China has been subjected by the Powers, has lost faith in Christianity and Western civilisation. At all events, he is credited with negotiating secretly for an alliance with Japan, which he now regards as China's only hope of escape from servitude. But to carry out his mission to emancipate his country and his people he must first break the power of the Manchurian rottber chief, and so Feng and Chang-tso-lin are now preparing for a duel to the death, which, if it does nothing else, must relegate the Customs Conference to the distant future.