GOOD GOVERNMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 162, 11 July 1934, Page 6

GOOD GOVERNMENT.

CHINA AND INDIA CONTRASTED. To see a country where government has so far collapsed is to be reminded sharply of what government gives those who live under it (writes Sir Arthur Salter ill the "Observer"). Contrast, for example, the position of China with that of India. The natural advantages of the former are incontestably greater. Its climate, its resources, its river system, the average physique of its people would, if other things were equal, promise a standard of living much higher than ludia. could hope for. But India has had the basic things which effective government can give—security against external attack and civil war, a system, of efficient transport, and of uniform justice, 'flic result is that the Indian standard of living, instead of 'being much lower, is very much higher. The l>est economists' estimates put the average national income in India at about £S a year, in China at about L'.i a year. Such monetary estimates are in some respects misleading, but all observation confirms the general conclusion which they suggest. Where the Chinese peasant uso.s a wheelbarrow, the Indian has an animal-drawn truck; you will not find in India, as you do in China, men, and even women, harnessed to the plough like oxen, 'fhe contrast in -the economic position is striking; and it would be even more striking if the greater part of India's increased production had not been absorbed by a. rapid increase in population, whereas starvation, disease and conflict have prevented any correspondingly rapid increase in China. The conclusion suggested is not, of course, that the political evolution now in progress in India, should be reversed; still less that China would benefit by the intrusion of' an alien political control, which would be resented hy national feeling, precarious in tenure and provocative of new conflict and disorder. But as regards Both India, and Europe, China is a useful reminder of the enormous advantage it is that political transformations, even political revolutions, should take place within an ultimate framework of order, which preserves the national unity and the functioning of the economic system, as they may do if that framework of order hae' not first been shattered. To create anarchy that a new order may bo created, to spread devastation that a new peace may succeed it, is desperate folly.