Industrial Development of China

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLIII, Issue 2338, 3 February 1913, Page 3

Industrial Development of China

I The extraordinary and apparency rapid political changes in China duo ing the last two or three years have created such a sensation throughout the Western world that the average obstrver has failed to note the fact that the industrial evolution of China has been equally extraordinary and significant. For thirty centuries Chia has been one of the great agricultural countries of the globe. An immense population has been main* tained by the products of the soil, j raised by the most careful and intensj ive process of cultivation. An article in the " National Geographic Maga--zine " (U.S.A.) gives in a striking and pictorial form an account of the scientific way in which the Chinese employ irrigation and soil enrichment to preserve the fertility of their denselypopulated area. The author of the article in question,} the late Professor F* H. King, an agricultural scientist, says that forty canals across the United States from east to west and sixty from north to south would probably not equal in number the miles of canals employed in Chiua to-day both for transportation and irrigation, Whan the Chinese begin to devote to manufacturing the s-una care and precision which hive characterise J their agriculture for thirty centuries there is no reason to suppose that they will not achieve au equal success. That there is a i marked development of moicrn manufacturing in China is indicated by the following list made by the " Shanghai Times " of recent enterprises in China : —A new cotton factory with 20,092 spindles opened at Shanghai ; electric lighting install* ations at Cbangsba, Ilangchow, and Foochow ; a brick,factory at Canton, with up-to-date British machinery capable of turning out 10,030 bricks per day ; a cement plant at Tonshan, equipped with motor plant and new machinery, having a capacity of •300,000 barrels per year; two now Hour mills at Chungking and Yunan-i fii ; aloither factory and tannery at Cmton; a match factory at Hangchow ; a, large private printing establishment, with foreign machinery, started at Changsha i a new paper mill at Hankow ; a rice-bulling mill at Changsha.. This list, of courso, is not a catalogue of Chinese manufactures, nor even a complete list of all the new factories established in recent mouths, but it is an important and concrete indication of what id going on in China.