ASIA’S TEEMING MILLIONS

Evening Star, Issue 21054, 17 March 1932, Page 13

ASIA’S TEEMING MILLIONS

One of Asia’s great ailments is overpopulation. This means poverty, misery, civil wars, migrations, and new troubles for Europe. The Japanese are individually too deeply attached to their country to emigrate, though they resent the bar placed upon them by the white races. Hence Japan’s ambition to conquer new territories. China’s difficulty is economic. Her children are willing to emigrate. They stream in thousands northwards to Manchuria. In British Malaya they find complete liberty. But over all Asia revolutionaries and nationalists are harping on their numerical superiority over Europe. In 1924 Sun-Yat-Sen boasted of China’s 400,000,000, India’s 350,000,000, and of the Asiatic total of 1,200,000,000, against less than 400.000. in Europe and America. In the same spirit India compares her 350.000. with the few dozen millions of the race which rules them. With these facts before him M. Etienne Dennery, a lecturer on international studies at Paris, has published ‘ Asia’s Teeming Millions and Its Problems for the West ’ (says the ‘ Age’). The translation is by John Peile, M.A., and the foreword by Harold Cox. Within the limits of this handy volume the author sets forth a mass of striking facts, and shows the influence they exert on the present’position in Europe. For example, he points _ out that Western impact has not diminished the prolificness of the Asiatic races. It has rather tended to increase it. Japan’s modernisation was followed by an astonishing increase of population. Research in the coastal districts of China shows that the number of inhabitants has nearly doubled within half a century.

While population increases, the introduction of machinery diminishes the demand for manual labour. Sun-Yat-Sen puts it this way: “ Take the coolies of Canton. ... In former days

to transport a load of 10,000 piculs of goods from Canton to Shiukwan required 10,000 men working each for ten days; to-day for the same task only ten men are necessary driving a train for eight hours.” The next economic difficulty was that North America, Australia, and South Africa closed their doors against Asiatics. Can Asia absorb her surplus population? In two vivid chapters on over-popula-tion in Japan, M. Dennery provides a conspectus of the problem. _ In 1875 there were 34,000,000 people in Japan; in 1925 the numbers were 60,000,000. In the same period the birthrate rose from 25 per thousand to 34. ' This increase, added to the improved standard of living, has made demand on their production, and vast quantities of rice are imported. The growth of urban population increased in the seven years ending in 1925 from 13 per cent, of the total to 37 per cent. What about emigration ? The Japanese dislike it, and do not go to live even in their own colonies, but the Japanese Government encourages it. The department “ sends lecturers to the villages and displays films to encourage the destitute to set forth.” Japanese public opinion is opposed to birth restriction as unpatriotic, and irreligious. Ancestors are entitled to the good deeds of many descendants.

The only course is to increase production by adopting most scientific processes, selecting the best seeds, attending to rotation of crops and fertilisers. Then there are still vast undeveloped areas in central and northern Japan. Only 15 per cent, of the land is under cultivation, where as in England the proportion is 25 per cent. Industry in Japan is represented as still too unimportant to solve the problem of manual labour._ Besides, the Japanese worker’s skill is still inferior, raw materials, are scarce, and markets are uncertain. The number of workers required for a thousand spindles is 15| per cent, in Japan and only 6 per cent, in Lancashire. Nevertheless, Japan has established mills in Central China. Rapid increase of population may be a

source of weakness rather than strength. Meanwhile it has the effect of impelling the Japanese to try to expand at the expense of her ueigubours. While only 600,000 Japanese live outside of their own Empire, at least 8,000,000 Chinese live far from the Republic. Japan encourages emigration; China is completely indifferent. Quite close to Japan and the most densely thronged regions of China proper is Manchuria, a fertile land full of mineral wealth. “It seems to offer to China and Japan alike tho remedies with which to combat the evils of overpopulation.” Why, then, is this land of the soy bean so undeveloped? The nomadic tribes who conquered China in the middle of the seventeenth century settled in the three northern provinces. In a country almost as large as a quarter of China the population is nearly twenty times as small as in the Celestial What hapepned ? The Japanese treated the matter from the standpoint of economics, and did not settle in numbers in Manchuria. Politically and economically they are ' very powerful in Southern Manchuia. Alter the war with Russia Japan took over Russian rights, yet in 1927 less than one-third of the population was Japanese. New markets are what Japan is seeking to counteract the appalling trade balance due to imported foodstuffs. Japan’s trade with Manchuria is as great as of all the other countries combined. Nearly 40 per cent, of the soya beans grown in Manchuria are exported to Japan. Iron deposits and coal are among the Japanese possessions in Manchuria, and cheap Chinese labour makes the cost of minerals very low. And what has China being doing in Manchuria? Pouring in hundreds of thousands of her destitute, starving, unemployed to people desert lands and unfilled fields. Chinese colonisation in Northern Manchuria is almost unparalleled in history. The three provinces are still, however, overrun by nomad tribes and itinerant robbers. By road, rail, and steamer Chinese immigrants pour into Manchuria, many of them seeking salvation from famine and death. “Hordes struggling onwards on the great roads looking like refugees in an unending war.” ; They steal, and at other times struggle on for days without food. Some die by the wayside. The difference between the Japanese method and the Chinese is significant.' Can they be made complementary, or must they ever remain rivals? The Chinese have enhanced the value of Southern Manchuria for Japan, while Japan has provided employment for destitute people from China. Every newcomer is both a consumer and a producer. This mutual advantage began to be impaired by political ambitions. China claims that Manchuria always belonged to her, and Japan asserts that China recognised Japan’s rights after the Russo-Japanese War. The Chinese supply men; the Japanese supply resources, capital, and experience.

Russia complicated the situation by seeking the friendship of the Chinese Nationalists against the Japanese and bv acquiring certain rights on tho East Chinese Railway. The result is that it has united Chinese and Japanese in the attempt to expel Russia. America is blamed by M. Dennery for opposing Japan’s political expansion in Manchuria. In this way Manchuria, is the cockpit of East and West. This informing volume describes tha Chinese in Indo-China and in British Malay, and has some interesting comparisons between Japanese, Chinese, and Indian emigrants. It concludes by, asking whether these teeming millions constitute a real danger for Western nations. The author thinks not. Legislative action restricting’ immigration from the East makes it a political question of urgency. It seems to tha prohibited nation nothing less than an outrage. Racial hostility increases* Asiatics are coming to look upon tha struggle with the white man as a struggle for life itself. On the other hand, there are social divisions in the East, no administrative experience, no organisation. Asiatic conflicts insure Europe against danger. M. Dennery’s conclusion seems comfortably reassuring. ■