TIDE IN CHINA

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 216, 12 September 1944, Page 4

TIDE IN CHINA

AN EARLY TURNING

CONFIDENT PREDICTION

CALIFORNIA. American and Chinese residents I of this coast of the Pacific have a broader, better view of the interrelated problems of the two transPacific neighbour nationsasa result of the recent first visit hei e ~ Wei Tao-ming since he became China's Ambassador to the United The former Mayor of Nanking, fnvmpr Secretary-Genei si or L/iiina s Executive Yuan (Cabinet) who directed the modernisation ot Chinese judicial hrought to his many countrymen on the coast and to many Caucasian residents as well, a lucid interpretation of current affairs and future prospects relating to the two countries. Di. Wei made several public appearances in San Francisco and Los Al Dr le Wei's outlook on me longrange future is based on an optimistic view of the present and immediate future. Though at the moment the war m my country ( is taking a serious turn, he said l have reason to believe that befoie the year is out the tide will turn, and the end of the conflict will not be far distant. With the elimination of Japan, a major obstacle to our political development will be removed." , , , The Chinese Ambassador addressed university groups, trade and commerce organisations, ana public mass meetings, one in particular addressed to his countrymen and their American sons and daughters being delivered in the Chinese language. Address at Berkeley In his talk at the University of Califonia, at Berkeley, he dealt in some detail with the question of democracy as applied to China, a question frequently posed, on basis of the fact that China's war-time Government is not a democratic one. "China has now entered upon her eighth year of war against Japan," he said. "This war is fought to I decide two things. The first is whether a new world order will come into being, a new world order in which international brigandage will come to an end once and for all, and in which democracy will prevail. From this point of view, our war is essentially a part of the world-wide struggle for the survival of democracy. "Secondly, this war will decide whether the aims of the Chinese National Revolution will be achieved. In this sense the present war is .a part of our Revolutionary War which has been fought to build up a modern and democratic China. It was to frustrate this aim and to bring China under her hegemony, as part of her plan for world ,conquest, that Japan struck in 1931 and again in 1937. The key to contemporary developments in the Far East thus lies in the Chinese Revolution." Turned to Invention Dr. Wei sketched I,he Chinese revolutionary movement against a background of China's long history. He said that four wars between IS4O and 1860 convinced China's leading statesmen that it was necessary for the nation to adapt itself to new world trends. "First, they saw the necessity of adopting mechanical inventions," he said, "for such inventions were easily the most impressive instruments of Western penetration into China. Then, they saw that in order to utilise them, it was necessary to learn Western natural science and mathematics. What they failed to see was that nothing short of a complete change of the Chinese political and economic system would be sufficient for China to catch up with the Western world. "It was not until the end of the last century that this fact dawned upon a few Chinese leaders, among whom Dr. Sun Yat-sen was the first to see the necessity of a political revolution and to labour for its fruition. The Revolution, that he began had three basic aims—national independence, progressive realisation of democracy, and a rising level of living conditions for the masses. They have remained our aims up to the present day." Dr. Wei pointed out that democracy was not foreign to the Chinese people; that the Chinese way of living has always been individualistic and democratic, although China did not possess the modern political machinery to bring democracy into full play. The Revolution is a striving to combine the old Chinese tradition with Western ideas and methods, he said. Three Stages Needed "It may seem to you that since the Chinese people have had a long democratic tradition (despite the monarchial form of their Government until the Revolution), it should not be a very difficult matter to introduce the new democratic system in China. This is, however, not wholly true, for the modernistic system presupposes a number of conditions on the part of the people without which a satisfactory funcitioning of the system is impossible. "Such conditions do not as yet exist in China, and it is to their creation that the National Kuomintang party has dedicated itself. It believes that in order to bring about the complete realisation of the revolutionary programme it must direct the Revolution through three stages." —Rodney L. Brink, in the Christian Science Monitor.