FEELING IN CHINA

Evening Star, Issue 18999, 22 July 1925, Page 5

FEELING IN CHINA

BOYCOTT OF FOREIGNERS BRITISHERS ToTeAVE WUCHDW Press Association— By Telegraph—Copyright, PEKING, July 21. (Received July 22, at 11.50 a.m.)

.Foreign telegrams from Canton state that all Britishers have been instructed to leave Wuchow, including the Customs officials, owing to tho strict boycott. Food supplies have been cut off from an American gunboat as well as from the British residents. Numbers of strikers nro still returning to work at Shanghai, despite violent intimidation.

The Chinese Chamber of Commerce decided to confiscate Anglo-Japanese goods in possession of Chinese, and to lino tho merchants not participating in the Anglo-Japanese boycott. The campaign will commence on July JO. and will bo carried on for a year. A friendly gesture from the British Chamber was discussed, but was considered insincere, and was left over.— Beater,

CAUSES OF THE DISCONTENT, Fn an article in the Melbourne ‘ Argus 1 of July II on tho situation in Chinn, “An Old China Hand” writes: The Chinese people want to trade with us. Tho trouble is that there is no ordered government in China, and the persons temporarily at tho head of affairs in any locality may wish to encourage this anti-foreign cry for their own ends. In addition, there is a growing discontented class in China, educated in foreign schools (lay and mission) full of Western ideas, but with no work in which they can employ their learning. This is the student class. No Chinese firm wants to use such men, and Micro is no civil sendee to absorb them. So those idle hands are a dangerous field for revolutionary propaganda. Tho Bolshevists have not been slow in taking advantage of this state of a flairs. During my last months of life in China I was particularly struck with the growing numbers of Russian hangers-on, fvfi.li Russian soldiers lighting as mercenaries in tho pay of Chinese generals. The new student class thinks, perhaps, not unnaturally, that it knows all about Western law and legal practice, and that therefore it is no longer necessary for British Consuls in China to try British subjects for offences committed in ’ China. They may know Western law, but they cannot hope to practise it. The power is still in the hands of general officers, largely illiterate, often ex-bandits, who control as much territory as they have soldiers to cover it, mulcting tho residents of the taxes they can gather. Western law and Western learning do not interest this class. These military governors are entirely selfish, with no national aims, no patriotism, if, in order to ensure their comfortable continuance in office, they must placate tho students and the Bolshevists, they will aid the students and tho Bolshevists to harrv and oust the foreigner—that is all

The Shanghai riots were first generally anti-foreign, and particularly antiJapanese. Now everywhere, there is a concerted attempt to concentrate, all tlio venom on tho British. And why? Because tho Bolshevists hate the British worse than all others, presumably bo n auso thdy provide a less fruitful field for their endeavors than any other nation. It is, however, to the rredit of the honor and tho good sense of the Americans and other foreign residents in China that they are not trying to make capital out of this attack on Britain ami British trade. All foreigners know they must stand back to back and support one another against the Bolshevist and his Chinese pupil. In China, all foreigners, except missionaries, are confined to certain open ports (called treaty ports), and in these only can they reside and carry on their business. At these ports they are subject to their own national laws, and not to Chinese law, under which a man may Jose, his head for an insignificant offence. Against this independence the student is now agitating. But it is not right to say that foreigners want to hold on to these privileges after they arc no longer really necessary. These same extra-territorial right were given to foreign residents in Japan in the old days, not to mention to foreign residents in 'Turkey and Egypt. As soon, however, as Japan produced the requisite machinery and brought its laws more or less up to ‘Western standards these rights were voluntarily given up. Now the foreigner in Japan is subject to Japanese law alone. Ko it would be in China. But in China, owing to the absence of that strong central government which Japan possesses, tho country is no nearer getting the necessary legal machinery than it was a century ago. Consequently for our protection we must hold on to extra-tcrritorialitv.

In the larger treaty ports, such as Shanghai, the police force is all foreign controlled, although the ordinary constables arc mostly Chinese. Against this control, again, the llotshe.vist is agitating, well knowing that if this supervision were withdrawn they would quickly have that general chaos and upheaval in which their heart delights. The foreigners cannot allow this. At the back of these foreign police forces there are the British and other foreign navies. So we come hack to the point where T began—that these naval patrols are still necessary, and are alone able to save our nationals from material loss and worse.