A MACHINE-MINDED CHINA

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 9, 10 July 1935, Page 10

A MACHINE-MINDED CHINA

Statements made yesterday concerning China by the secretary-gen-eral of the Institute of Pacific Relations (Mr. E. C. Carter) are of basic importance. If sound, they might point to a completely new era in Asia and the Pacific; for one cannot contemplate the mechanisation of China without also glimpsing outer as well as inner expansion. Though, as yet, "the tempo is slower than in Japan," China, too, is "on the: march towards the use of the machine," and Mr. Carter holds out the possibility that what has been done in Japan with machine-manu-facture can be clone in China, a country of vastly greater raw material resources. On the one hand; Mr. Carter implies discipline and effective government in China, a profound development in itself. On the other hand, the implication logically arises that the Chinese will rival and possibly outdo the Japanese in penetrating the markets of the world, insisting on exchange of products with foreign countries, and building up sea power and air power, because these latter go with modern industrialisation—go either naturally or. by subsidy. Speculation of the effect upon each other of a modernised China and the very modern Japan might overtax the powers of any novelist. It has been said that the Japanese do not migrate. No one will say that of their neighbours.