THE CHINESE INVASION OF AUSTRALIA.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 24 January 1901, Page 4

THE CHINESE INVASION OF AUSTRALIA.

What Dr Morrison says.

“The Catalans of China,”

“Under the Federal Constitution it is held that any Chinaman who is a British subject must obtain free admission to Australia.” Dr. Morrison, in his delightfully written and wonderfully informing book, “An Australian in China,” has a word ro say concerning the danger of the often talkedof “yellow peril.” “The Cantonese,” he writes, “using"the term in its broader sense at applied to the natives of the province of Kuangtung, are the Catalans of China. |They are as enterprising as the Scotch, adapt themselves readily to circumstances, are endaring, c»may, and successful; you meet them in the most distant parts of China. They make wonderful pilgrimages on foot. They have the reputation ot being the most quick-witted of all Chinese. Large numbers come to Tali during the Thibetan Fair, and in the opium season. They bring all kinds of foreign goods adapted for Chinese wants—cheap pistols and revolvers, mirrors, scales, fancy pictures, and a thousand gewgaws, useful as well is attractive —and they return with opium. They travel in bands, marching in single file, their carrying polos pointed with a steel spearhead two feet long, serving a double use—a carrying pole in peace, a formidable weapon in trouble. Everywhere they can be distinguished by their dress, by their enormous oiled sunshades, and by their habit of tricing their loads high up to the carrying poles. They are always clad in dark blue ; their heads are always cleanly shaved; their feet are well sandalled, and their calves neatly bandaged. They have a travelled mien about them, and carry themselves with an air of conscious superiority to the antravelled savages among whom they are trading. To me they were always polite and amiable ; they recognised that [ was like themselves, a stranger far from home.

i '‘This is the class of Chinese who, emimigrating from the thickly-peopled southIjaastera provinces of China, already Ipossess a predominant share of the wealth Hof Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Timor, the iCelebes, and tho Philippine Islands, aßurma, Siam, Annam, and Tonquin, the I Straits Settlements, Malay Peninsula, and SCochin China, I “ There is hardly a tiny islet visited by Sour naturalists in any part of these seas abut Chinamen are found.. And it is this Iclass of Chinese who have already driven Bus out of the northern territory of Aus-j Itralia, and whose unrestricted entry into! Bother colonies we must prevent at all! hazards. We cannot compete with! Chinese ; we cannot intermix or marry! with them, they are aliens in language,! •.bought and customs ; they are working! animals of low grade but great vitality.! The Chinese are temperate, frugal, hardworking. and law-evading, if not lawabiding—we all acknowledge that. He can outwork an Englishman, and starve j him out of the country—no one can deny that. To compete successfully with e Chinaman, the artisan or labourer of our own flesh and blood would require to be degraded into a mere mechanical beast of labour, unable to support wife or family, lasting seven days in the week, with no amusements, enjoyments, or comforts of any kind, no interest in the country, contributing no share towards the expense of government, living on food that he I would now reject with loathing, crowded | with his fellows ten or fifteen in a room! that he would not now live in alone, ex-1 cept with repugnance. Admitted freely I into Australia, the Chinese would starves lint tho Englishman, in accordance with I Stho law of currency—that of two curran-1 Scies in a country the baser will al-| Sways supplant the better. ‘ln Vic-1 jtoria,’says Professor Pearson, ‘a single! [trade— that of furniture making wasl [taken possession of and ruined fori [white men within the space of some! [thing like five years. In the small colony I [of Victoria there are 9377 Chinese in a I [population of 1,150,000; in all China, with! its population of 350,000,000, there are only 8081 foreigners (Dyer Ball), a large proportion of whom are working for China’s salvation. | “ There is not room for both in I Australia. Which is to be our colonist, I [che Asiatic or the Englishman?” I