JAPANESE MOVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 115, 16 May 1936, Page 9

JAPANESE MOVE

TROOPS TO NORTH CHINA

PROTECTION OF NATIONALS

OTHER MOTIVES SUGGESTED

United Press Association—By Electee Telegraph—Copyright. (Received May 16, 10.15 a.m.) V LONDON, May 15. The "Sun-Herald" news agency says Japan has notified Britain that Japanese reinforcements are immediately moving into North China, some going, to Tientsin and" some to Peking. Additional troops will be dispatched next week. The Japanese assert that the moyement is necessary to protect the increased numbers of Japanese nationals in North China and to check the growing activities of Communists. However, • states the agency, there is a strong possibility of the troop movements being associated with the sweeping demands with which Japan contemplates confronting the Chinese Government. The Japanese smuggling activities are believed to be part of a plan to torpedo the Chinese currency reform and generally so to embarrass Chinese administration that the Nanking Government . will be unable to. . resist Japan's demands, which cloak her ambition to control all China, as she now controls Manchukuo. Currency manipulation and the development of the. Japanese autonomy ' movement are undermining China's economic and financial strength and threaten to prevent the projected currency reform, in connection with which Sir Leith Ross is at present in China. The "Sun-Herald" news agency reported on May 12 that Sir • Robert Clive,-British Ambassador at Tokio, had made representations to the Japanese Government in connection with smuggling along y . the entire North China coastline from Tientsin to Canton. Smuggling threatening British interests was stated to have assumed enormous proportions,, andl to have caused a Customs crisis, the whole system being disorganised, and revenues on which British loans were guaranteed dwindling precariously. Japanese were considered to be behind the movement. Chinese officials declared that smuggling would be controllable within a week if the Japanese militarists did not prevent; Customs launches operating .within the. threemile limit on the North China coast on a pretext of breach of the Tangku truce, which prevents armed Chinese action against offenders. It was stated ;h'at the belief is widely held that this is part of; a, Japanese attempt to undermine the whole of the Chinese financial structure.