COMITY AND COMMERCE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 143, 14 December 1933, Page 8

COMITY AND COMMERCE

Support to the proposal to invite a delegation of Chinese merchants to visit New Zealand has been given by the Council of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce. Ever since Chinese ports were forcibly opened to trade, it seems to have been assumed that the western world goes to China to trade, not that China comes to the western world. But the modern Chinese merchant throughout the East, not merely in China, is a power for whom increasing respect is being felt; and it may be that the initiative of the Chinese merchant has not been invited as much as it might be. Australia, in a much stronger shipping position than New Zealand, yet feels that she mu6t "cultivate" the East, and that good-will missions thereto—including Ministerial missions—are appropriate means of bringing East and West closer together. It is ft strange thing, said Mr. LyfinS at Canberra on Ueoember £, that no official visit; haM-fiyfit jbe«a paid hjj

Australia to the countries of any of hot near neighbours. I have had in mind some time the question of the practicability of a Minister from Australia visiting the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Japan, and China upon a mission of friendship and good will as distinct from a trade mission. The Prime Minister also said that since the War "trade channels have become restricted and have, altered their direction," and "international relations generally are more important than ever before."