JAPANESE PLANS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 19, 24 January 1938, Page 8

JAPANESE PLANS

CHINA DEVELOPMENT

Anglo-American position

INFLUENCE OF PEACE

One of the largest reconstruction programmes ever undertaken anywhere in the world is planned by Japan for the exploitation of China as soon as peace is established therp, it is learned authoritatively, says a writer in the "Christian Science Monitor." It includes political stabilisation and sweeping industrial development. The Industrial programme is aimed at making China pay for her own rehabilitation, political and economic, since Japan is not financially able to bear so vast a burden costing many billions of yen. Tho undertaking is divided into two phases, both completely correlated and indivisibly linked for simultaneous furtherance. The only fly in the ointment is where the money will come i'rom to. start- There are conceivably only two places in the world today where it could be obtained —the United States and Great Britain—and popular sentiment strongly influencing the Governments of both natipns is admitted even by authorised Japanese spok.esmeu to be hostile to extending any helpful hand to Nippon in her .conquest of the Chinese Republic. One of the foremost international bankers in the world told the. writer that no foreign loan could be floated either in this country or in England without the approval of Washington and Downing Street. It 'was made clear 'that Japan must do more than force China to sign a peace treaty. Tokio \vi\\ have to make that treaty satisfactory to the British. Government an,d the Roosevelt Administratipn. In the vernacular of the day, the Japanese ''cannot have their cake and eat it, too," POLITICAL FLANS. "" The political programme which. Japan wjH' follow in China will, it was said in quarters known to be informed, provide, first, for the setting up oi a friendly Government in Peking and thereafter a,n equally friendly Government \n each of the twenty-one proYin.ces of China proper, arid, second, lo mobijise wider these provincial overlords native forces which would, enable them to, keep the peace in the territory assigned to them to govern. Th central power ir. Peking would be upheld by <v similar force, augmented by Japanese military raits. , The reasons for- this, it was explained, alfso are twofold; first, the recognised impossibility of Japan policing so great a territory as China, and, secondly, because of the expense involved in maintaining large Japanese armies there. Here again the Japanese Government comes face to face with bankruptcy if it places reliance exclusively on its Army and Navy to, carry out its China programme. It' must have other help, and sees no, more logical sourceplace than China itself. The almost hereditary rivalries among the Chinese and the peculiar psychology of ,the Chinese fighting man, With his impassivity either as endurer or inflictor of suffering, make fo^ Japanese optimism regarding this aspect of the problem. The industrial up-building programme appears naively simple for an enterprise so important that the success of the conquest hinges upon it. Failure would mean the doom of Japan in China, since out of the proposed development must come the Wherewithal to maintain Japanese hold on the continent across the Yellow Sea from the Island Empire. SOUTH OF PEKING. The first step following the peace is to develop industrially those regions of China most easily cultivated. These are not in the windswept north, but in the ricH loess-covered reaches south of Peking, with the Yellow River region, now practically in Japanese control, a natural starting point. Here centre the fabulous Shlinshj and Shantung provinces, leading to the ocean outlet of Tsing-tao, which waswrested from the Germans by the Japanese Navy during the World War and returned to China thrqugh the efforts of President Wilson and Wellington Kao at the Paris Peace Conference. Along this 2700-mUe artery the Japanese propose to start the economic development they envisage will eventually embra.ee all China and enable them to pay their way out of their costly conquest with ,vast riches left over from the resulting intensive exploitation of Chinese resources. The Yellow River plans, drawn by Japanese Army engineers, call for nothing less than the harnessing of the great stream called "China's Sorrow" because of the devastation caused by its recurrent floods. • The estimated cost of this piece of work was placed at 1,000,000,000 yen, for which Japan would have to float a foreign loanIt was here that American and British bankers, cam.c into the picture with the statement by a maa competent to speak for them that no money could be had here for this, programme without the approval of Washington. RECLAMATION PLAN. Discussing the high lights of the Yellow River Valley project, one of : the best-known engineers in the world characterised it as the biggest reclamation plan ever undertaken. He recalled the disastrous chronicle ,the Yellow River floods have written and how this river's propensity for changing it's course "has baffled every engineer who has studied 1 it. That it could be harnessed, he did not doubt, hut he felt it , was impossible to estimate the cost of such a. project, at the sanie time admitting that the human henefits from making the Yellow River safe would, be incalculable and the wealth whjeh would pour into the Hwang-hd provinces would more than pay the reclamation cost over a reasonable length of timeTo carry out even this initial prajject, the Japanese face another twoHold problem that emphasises both | world interrelation today and the equally indivisible character of the financial-economic set-up. While Japan must go into the world money mar£e.ts for the funds to effect her post-war China aims, she must also "go into Western markets, for materials and engineering skill.' This, it wa,s made plain here, would be the jipost attractive feature of the undertaking to Occidental eyes; but no matter how alluring this angle of the gigantic promotion scheme might be, no responsible' group would touch it without State Department sanction, and the terms of the Sino-Japanese peace treaty indubitably would be the governing influence in that connection,. OPEN TO CRITICISM. The programme, it was he'd, was susceptible to strong criticism by friends of the Open Door policy in China. The charges against Japanese price-cutting were recalled and such complete Japanese control of Chinese production as the programme indicates was viewed unfavourably in industrial quarters and in circles where industry and finance interlock. That the State Department would hold similarly was believed, and the thought was yoiced that Federal consent to a Japanese loan at this time and under

these"circumstances was. not to be had; that the only way Japan could get financial assistance in the United States would be through recognition of the complete sovereigntyl and independence of China, and the widest application of the maintenance of this traditional position. The thought here was that H« agreement was tq be expected from Washington with any Sine, Japanese treaty clauses that would impair China's rights irt her own house. On, the Other- hand, it was not believed that either the United States or Qreat Britain would take any active measures against Japan's China programme, hut that in giving this free rein, the passive resistance ot the Washington Administration and. the British Government would constitute a tremendous drag on her progress there, leading inevitably to Japan s downfall in China oy the assimilation by the Chinese of the invader's police and colonising forces. ' Press dispatches from Berlin that Reich.sfu.hrer Hitler was sympathetic to the flotation of a Japanese loan w Germany were not taken seriously m Wall Street, where it was said that neither Germany nor Italy today had the funds ior their- own needs and that nothing in the way of real money might be expected to come out of this talk. The Rome-Berliri-Tokio axis was not hig enough nor strong enough to take in China, it was added. '•Unless Japan's demands on China are more modest than anything we have been led to expect from her tactics of aggression and the military control of the Tokio-China. policy," an informed spokesman said, "Japan has bitten out of China more than she can chew."