CONDITIONS IN CANTON

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 99, 24 October 1938, Page 9

CONDITIONS IN CANTON

MERE SHELL OF CITY

HALF THE PEOPLE GONE

Outwardly, Canton still appears to be fundamentally intact after many months of intensive Japanese air raids, wrote Guenther Stein to the "Christian Science Monitor." Although there is hardly a district in the vast city which was not hit by bombs, the hundreds of places of destruction do not seem to show very muchj

There is not a single street in which some houses have not been hit, and most of them are poor dwellings, while almost all major buildings, such as Government quarters and key positions in the city's economic life that were the targets of the Japanese aeroplanes escaped unscathed. The only exceptions seem to be the few modern factories which had been constructed in recent years. On them the Japanese had concentrated their attacks with especial vigour.

The big cement plant, a small chemical factory, a big textile mill, and a new power plant have been virtually destroyed. So have the railway stations. But trains are running just the same, and the main function of Canton in the present war—that of a junction between the short railway from Hong Kong's mainland port, Kowloon, and the big trunk line to Hankow, is unimpaired. As. soon as part of the tracks is hit by a Japanese bomb, efficient gangs of coolies get working, and within a few hours the damage is repaired. Nor have the Japanese succeeded, so far, in cutting off entirely the water and power supplies of the city.

Yet Canton, today, is completely paralysed. Business is at a standstill. Out of a population of 1,250,000, no more than roughly 500,000 have remained, and the exodus continues in all directions. It is difficult to assess the actual cause of this flight from a city

which still looks so surprisingly sound in spite of its afflictions. SEEMS TO BE ECONOMIC. ! Fear does not seem to be the main reason, as far as the masses of the people are concerned. Their famous t stoicism, coupled with stubborn perseverance, can still be noticed whercever one goes, and even during actual air raids at night as well as in daytime I have not noticed anything like panic. Those hundreds of thousands of poor people who fled the city, or who are now preparing to do so, seem to be motivated primarily by economic reasons. For there is almost no work for them to do; savings they do not have, prices are rising, and the natural reaction to all this is ah attempt to get back to the villages from which their families came, in order to survive. It' cannot be denied that responsibility for the paralysis of all economic activities which have not directly to do with carrying on the war lies mainly with the well-to-do classes. They were the first to leave. For weeks on end, even before the recent intensification of the Japanese air raids, they packed up their valuables, closed and bolted their shops and houses, exchanged their money against Hong Kong dollars on the black market, driving down the value of the Chinese currency in the process, and took the river boats for the haven of the nearby British colony. FAMILIES SENT AWAY. Even most of those men who had to stay behind because they are officials of some kind do not seem to have been able to withstand the temptation _ of sending away their families, not into the interior, but to Hong Kong, and thus to intensify the drain on the national currency and on Canton's economic position in particular. -1 All this seems not only to have robbed the majority of the people of their precarious means of livelihood,! but also to have somewhat dampened their spirit, of patriotism and their will of resistance against the Japanese. The old Chinese tendency of putting the welfare of the family before that of the State has been enhanced in the masses by those very circles whose superior education and whose much professed enthusiasm for the cause of Chinas-national independence ought to have made them the active supporters of the city's morale. The patriotic letters these "better-class refugees write to the Hong Kong newspapers, while they, fill the expensive hotels, apartments, restaurants, and places of recreation in the Colony, are being sneered at in Canton. ' ' ,

Nor does it seem that the Government authorities are ijuite free from blame. Those of the, Province of Kwangtung and of the Canton Municipality have obviously failed in many regards. They allowed,, and still allow, not only women and children but ablebodied men to ga wherever they like. NO SHELTERS PROVIDED. They have not controlled the black exchange market so as to prevent the exodus of people and capital to comfortable HongrKong in preference to the interior. During the eleven months, of war and "continual threat from Japanese bombers, they have done nothing to provide shelters and dugouts for anybody but officials ("the city is too crowded to allow for such constructions"), and they have taken very few measures indeed to keep up the spirit of the man in the street in bis futile search for1 safety and livelihood. Another failure which has much to do with the growing tendency of indifference and apathy -tin a city which riot by chance but by ! temperament had been the cradle of China's national revolution, is that of effectively suppressing espionage and treason within its gates. Martial law is only superficially enforced. . As everybody is free to go to, and to come back from, Hong Kong, almost without any control, it is not surprising that the enemy should be so well informed about the Shifting of local government quarters from one place to another and about, other locations of i interest to their raiders as well as developments in <£anton generally. Treason is a more or less- open activity in Canton which tends to dfiscourage the hopes of those j wto stick to the guns. j