CHINA’S RIVAL PARTIES

Evening Star, Issue 19002, 25 July 1925, Page 22

CHINA’S RIVAL PARTIES

FEHG’S PROUD BOAST Feng-Yu-hsiang has been deriding the smallness or the British Army available for operations in China, though ho talks respectfully of our naval strength. But it is not at all likely that Great Britain would take any inadequate action in the interior of China. If it should be necessary to occupy Peking or Tientsin or Any otner centre she would almost certainly act in conjunction with the other Powers, as was done in the Boxer Rebellion. The joint note handed to the Chinese Foreign Office recently is proof of that. For the protection of her special interests in the Treaty ports, however, she may have to strike with her own arm, and her Navy is sufficient for the purpose. Therefore if Feng is proud of his army—and it is a considerable and well-armed force, probably trained by Russians —the result that he looks for from them must be at the cost of others as well as the British, it is known that he has been busy taking delivery of machine guns,, rifles, and ammunition, which have come through Russia and carried across the Gobi Desert. The secret was well kept for many months, because reports bad been circulated that the route taken bv the convoys was infested with, brigands, and therefore the majority of travellers avoided it. But it is very doubtful if Feng is strong enough to defy both Chang and Wu Pei-fu, who lias an old score to wipe off. Internally, therefore, China has three major'parties, each of which'is actuated by a different motive. Chang-Tso-lin is pro-Japanese, Feng-Yu-hsiang is pro-Bolsbevist, and Wu Pei-fu is pro-Chinese, therefore anti-Bolshevist and anti-Japanese. . The late Sun Yat-sen’s party, with its headquarters at Canton, seems to have been temporarily eclipsed by the defeat of the Yunnanese mercenaries on which it relied for its support. But whether that is a gain to the pro-Bol-shevists or t otbe pro-Japanese is not clear. The likelihood, however, is that it is a victory for the pro-Japanese party. Among the foreign Powers, America has yet to declare herself. She is the self-appointed guardian of the “ open-door ’’ policy which a former Secretary of State (Colonel Hay) imposed on China. Seeing that she is, in common with other western Powers, the enemy of Moscow, and that Japan has most to lose by the insistence of the “ open door ” in China (which really means that any concessions may he made to a nation which seeks it), she has been fortunate to have escaped for so long vilification by one or other of the rival fractions.