CHINESE IN RUSSIA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1914, Page 12

CHINESE IN RUSSIA.

Hitherto the immigration of Chinese itHo the Husskn Empire has been dis* couraged only by a moderate fee of five roubles on passports authorising \ their entrance over tho Asiatic frontier, and by such regrettable incidents "as tin* massacre, born of panic, ' at Blfigovestchenk in 1900. But it is now unomcially announced that tho Minister of fihe ln« terior is about to introduce a Bill raising the passport fees to ten roubles , (£1), and requiring the immigrants to , prove that they possess means of subsistence. Russians, moreover, are to be liable to a fine if they are found to be employing Chinese servants who would have been unable to pay the fees themselves. The reason assigned U that the Chinese element is rapidly increasing, not only in Siberia, but in most of the great towns in Russia in Europe,, whore XShincsc pedlars are said to have become numerous. There was room for them (says the Westminster Gazette), for t the whok< number of Chinese subjects in European Russia recorded in tho census of 1012 was fifty-three, and even in Siberia, out of a population of five millions and threequarters, there were less than seventy thousand. But no doubt the competition of Chinese cheap labour in Siberia might become very serious in the event of another revolution in China, and the Russian authorities, ignoring the attractions it offers of a rapid development m the region, are anxious to protect their own people from its competition.