CHINA’S INSECURITY

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 69, 15 December 1931, Page 11

CHINA’S INSECURITY

Former Resident Pays Return Visit THORBURN’S MURDER Dominion Special Service. Auckland, December 14. “There Is, no security anywhere in China to-day,” said Mr. E. S. Little, of Kerikeri, who returned oy the Niagara from Sydney after a return visit to China, where for 45 years he was resident, formerly in charge of the Chinese activities of the Imperial Chemical Industries, Limited, and for three years Australian Trade Commissioner in China. Mr. Little has very wide experience of Chinese affairs, and had travelled throughout the length and breadth of China, Manchuria, and Mongolia. He related that the young Englishman, John Thorburn, who was killed. by Chinese troops on June 8, was a visitor to his house in Shanghai three days before he was spirited away, and discussed with him the possibility of visiting New Zealand and settling at Kerikeri, The murdered man was 19 years of age, and was employed as a clerk in a firm operating in China. Cruelly Put to Death. “Young Thorburn was captured by the Chinese military police, tortured, mutilated, and very cruelly put to death at the hands of Colonel Huang Chen-Wu,” said Mr. Little. “The British Government was unable to obtain any kind of satisfaction from the Chinese Government with regard to the affair, the Chinese authorities contending that they knew nothing about the young man, but when the trouble with Japan commenced to show up on the horizon the Chinese suddenly found that they knew all about him, and the British Government was informed that Colonel Huang Chen-Wu, who was iu charge of the troops which put the boy to death, had been cashiered and sentenced to imprisonment for 14 years. The Chinese Government expressed the hope that the British Government would regard the incident as of local importance and not make a national case of it. Not wishing to make difficulties the British Government agreed to accept the Chinese explanation. No British subject in China, however, will accept it.” Unrealised Hopes. Mr. Little said that the hopes placed by the British people in the Chinese National government had not been realised. It had failed to do what it had set out to do, and the country was being taxed to death for no good purpose. A great deal of the money so raised was scandalously misspent. “Chinese students are becoming extremely belligerent, and drilling is going on in all the schools,” said Mr. Little. “They are demanding to be supplied with arms, and ask to be led against the Japanese.” No fewer than 80,000.000 people in China -were starving or semi-starving as a result of the depression, wars, floods, and banditry. Conditions had .become so serious in fact that the Chinese Government had been forced to purchase 15,000.000 bushels of wheat from America, the United States Government allowing them three years in which to pay, at a low rate of interest.