JAPAN’S AMBITIONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 January 1928, Page 4

JAPAN’S AMBITIONS

CHINESE ARE RESENTFUL. The cables from China for the past few months have referred frequently to a growing anti-Japanese feeling throughout the Yellow Republic, says the “Christian Science Monitor” editorially. When, in August, the Mikado’s troops appeared in Shantung, a renewed boycott ran from Canton across all the Southern area. Yet more recently agitation against everything Japanese has been shown • in Manchuria in general and in. Mukden in particular. This is the more surprising as it was not many months ago that so well-informed an authority as the editoi* of the Shanghai “Far Eastern Review” declared that “for the first time in twenty years public opinion in China is friendly to Japan.” The reasons for this volte face are immediate and twofold. The advance of the Nationalist forces brought them into Shantung where close following the years of German occupation, considerable Japanese financial and conmercial interests have come to centre. Instructed by the looting of their Nationals’ properties in cities to the south, the Tokyo Government provided the ounce of prevention by landing troops to protect mercantile and manufacturing houses, at Tsinan, Tientsin, and Tsingtao. In the second place, against the background of the whole ultra-uneasy situation in the great province to the north-east, trouble arose as to the land lease laws, and in the mercurial state of thought of. local officialdom Nipponese rights were everywhere threatened and in some instances openly flouted. At once Baron Tanaka adopted that “positive policy” of which much has since been written, increasing the military police and broadening their duties even beyond the Kwantung Leased Territory. For the Premier insists on a “special position” for his country, in Mongolia as well as Manchuria, not yet formally admitted by the other Powers.

There is, however, nothing here which may not be seen as a probably inevitable concomitant of the essentially lawless —that is, authority-less—-condition into which years of civil warfare have brought the most populous state of the Orient.- It does not mean a swing back to or even toward the frankly anti-Chinese policy of Tokyo Cabinets prior to the day of Admiral Kato. It is the obvious fact that to-day’s Tanaka plays a stronger hand than ever was. shown by yesterday’s Wakatsuki, but that is by no means to say that he proposes any general reversal of this most important phase of the nation’s programme. To the contrary; soon after his assumption of the reins of government last spring, he stated categorically in the Lower House of the Diet that his Ministry would continue to follow the path of non-intervention on the Asian mainland —the policy which began to show about 1920, which was given clear manifestation at the Washington Arms Conference, and which Japan has since endorsed repeatedly. What is now taking place. is quite certainly no more .than such protection of her economic rights in the South and her acquired ones in the North, as other States in interest have in varying degrees been moved to take. It is to be remembered that there long has been in the Island Kingdom a powerful liberal element, favouring the maintenance of good relations with Japan’s neighbours. This school of thought has gained ground enormously through the few years just past, and, at this writing appears at its strongest. It sympathises genuinely with Chinese national aspirations and yet cannot be expected for that reason, to make a spoiled child of China. This section of political and economic Japan upholds with complete honesty the basic ideas of the open door and equal opportunity. Assuredly it intends that Tokyo shall play no hand in the civil Avar, which for so long a time has kept in turmoil the lands across.the Yellow Sea. It recognises that the ultimate gratitude of a strong and united China will prove far more important to Dai Nippon than the gaining of any monetary advantages. In this, these liberals are wholly right, of course. The mutuality of interest is gigantic; China needs the aid of Japanese “know-how” and westernised initiative, while Japan must draw heavily upon China’s immense reservoir of raw materials. There is every reason to believe, as well as hope, that this is fully appreciated by the Tanaka Ministry.