COMMERCIAL COMPETITION THE REAL YELLOW PERIL.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume L, Issue 8998, 22 January 1906, Page 6

COMMERCIAL COMPETITION THE REAL YELLOW PERIL.

IS THERE A REMEDY?

(Frederick Greenwood, in the Pall Mall

Gazette.)

In the Pall Mall Gazette and elsewhere some very good articles have been printed lately to this effect : As presented to a nervous Western world the Yellow Peril is a bogey. It is a bogey because it holds up to expectation a coming time, not far off, when the swarming yellow Taces of the East, sufficiently instructed, armed, and drilled, will pour over their frontiers in pitiless hordes, to the destruction of civilised Europe. Which is absurd. The true Yellow Peril is not at all of that sanguinary character. A great danger for Europe is rising in the Far East, no doubt (so runs the argument), But of an entirely different kind. The menace is commercial : competition in the various empleyments of industry and trade. For such rivalry the adept and la"borious people of China and Japan are eminently fitted. Already they are beginning to occupy the Eastern market, and will do so more and more; for, in Ihe first place, they are "on the spot" ; in the second place, they have an increasing command of Western capital; and in the third, the laboring population is able and content to work under conditions which ensure a cheapness of production that no European nation can hope to approach. This is the real Yellow Peril, and not the spectre called up by Charles Pearson's famous book, "National Life and Character,' ten or twelve years ago.

Justice for Charles Pearson's book!

Everybody read it — most readers turning over its pages fascinated but with a fork. Everybody talked of it, but upon an understanding that though they could savour they must nol be supposed* capable of swallowing Mr Pearson's extravagant yet positive predictions. Predictions he himself called them : his book was described as "a forecast" on- the title-page. But the Yellow Peril whicE he dwelt upon was not the bogey, not the portent which had begun to haunt the minds of students of the East before PeaTson wrote and the German Emperor took to designing admonitory pictures for distribution to his people. It is true that the English (Australian) professor admitted to his speculations a time when, China, for example,

would rise to self-assertion, adequate tutored and equipped for war; but while taking full account of it Ec put' it to a distance treating it, as a secondary consideration. "It seems certain," he said,

"that sooner or later China must become fl, formidable military power" j "fifty years Eence" (from 1893) China fliay Eave taken that "inevitable position." No one can doubt what would happen were China to be governed by a, man "with the vigorous

and aggressive genius of Peter the Great

or Frederick the Second. A leader of jjenius might perhaps arise "to combine The Mah.ommea'ans of China in a common organisation"; in which case "il would Be difficult to suppose that China would not become an aggressive military Power, sending out her armies in millions to cross the Himalayas," and so forth. Other passages, even stronger .than these but always with qualifications of the same or a similar kind, might be cited to show that the Yellow Spectre does stalk in the background of Pearson's visions. It does ; but only because it could not be banished, and not because the parade of it had any considerable place in his intention. After writing one of the sentences quoted above he says that the Chinese do not need

"the accident of a man of genuis to de-

velop their magnificent future. Ordinary statesmanship, adopting the improvements

of Europe without offending the prejudices of the people, may make them a State which no Power in Europe will dare to disregard."

Nor was Pearson's forecast specially concerned with the future of the- Yellow races; America North and South, Australia, Africa were included in it. The

black peoples, who are already bringing themselves under general observation, were as much considered *s the peoples of Eastern Asia; all that he has to 6ay of them drawing to the conclusion which he wished to impress upon his readers : "The lower races are increasing upon the higher, and will some day confine them to a portion of the Temperate Zone." And a startling conclusion it is ; but not so improbable in 1905 as in 1893, though the interval is but twelve years long. In those

years, however, the Yellow peoples have

initiated, have accomplished developments far more rapid and decisive then Pearson or any other white man dreamed of as possible within the time.

SQUEEZING THE ENGLISH OUT.

Meanwhile we have had — the Germans and ourselves — some moving experiences in Africa too; and how far they accord with Pearson's forecast may be partly seen from the following quotation: — British rule means order and peace, industry and trade, the enjoyment of property under fairly equal laws. To an African native the establishment of a colony like Natal i& like throwing open the gates of Paradise. He streams in, offering his cheap though not veTy regular labor, and supplying all his wants at the very smallest expenditure of toil. Where he multiplies, however, the British race begins to consider labor of all but the highest kind dishonorable; and from the moment that the population will not

work in the fields; on the roads, in

the mines, in the factories, its doom

is practically sealed. It is limited

to supplying employees, merchants,

contractors, shopmen, and foremen to the community; the end of which must be that "the white, race will gradually be , absorbed or disappear." ; and the more certainly where it is "surrounded by dense masses of an unfriendly population." As to that, how-

ever, Pearson had vary little dread of sucu hostility as the Germans are exepriencing in South Africa. It is much to the purpose of these remarks that though, of course, he knew that many thousands of good black fightingmen were receiving an education in warfare and the use of ite deadlier appliances, he evokes no Black Bogey to heighten the dramatic and moral effect of his anticipations. What is now described as "tEe real Yellow Peril" .is precisely that which Pearson prophesied, with the additional warn-

A BLACK PERIL EQUALLY SUBDUING in a bloodless way. As I thought and said .at the time when his speculations came into print, he had a surprisingly small belief that war would determine or even hasten the changes he looked for. The future which he foresaw had no Bucb imminent, no such violent introduction as the Russo-Japanese conflict. Considering what that future is, it nveer seemed likely to come about without rebellion and resistance half the world over ; yet Pearson traced out a much smoother course of events — smoother, but irresistible as a rising tide. Climate, commerce, and the lessons of civilisation were to do the business, operating throughout the "yellow I zone" and the black zone alike. Although | when looking to the Chinese be could i fancy them repeating at some time or other the excursionary ravage of the Turks, he thought the md sfcrial competition of China much more to be feared. The immense resources of the country; the colonising enterprise of the people; their astonishing capacity for toil; their aptitude for organisation; and the thrift which, with all these other qualities, enables them to starve out every other race of whites with whom they come into competition — this was to him the more real and certain Yellow Peril; and though he gave little consideration to the Japanese, they and all the other yellow races were in his calculation. And so to the blacks and browns. Wherever, we colonise or market they are learning, and they ane swarming, and will gradually thrust back the European peoples by expansion of native energy and self-assertion where climate and population favor pressure. Thrown back within narrower limits, we .Europeans shall look about :.s "to see the world girdled with a continuous zone of the black and yellow races," monopolising the trade of their own regions, and '

STARVING EUROPEAN INDUSTRY.

This being Charles Pearson's forecast, it will be seen that, by allowance of the coolest opinion of the day, there is nothing of the "bogey" in it. If, like many other men, he believed that some very strenuous old-world fighting qualities slumbered in the yellow races, he has been justified; for in the no-time of ten yeans alter he wrote there came between East and West one of the most bloody and resounding wars that ever were waged, and the East won. That, however, may be regarded as a • fortuitous event, perhaps. Possibly so, as many of us think, it will never occur again. Leaving this branch of the subject, therefore, and looking to the other, we see that the real, the evolutionary, the commercial and industrial Yellow Peril has made a striking advance within the same brief period. Of course it does not compare at all with the naval and military development of affairs, but it is a sufficient advance to surpass the expectation of twelve years since, whether Pearson's or another's. No one supposes that Europe has suffered in the least, so far, from the industrial and commercial competition of Japan and China; unless for a few great firms like Crosse and Blackwell and Bryant and May, who find their goods superseded by

THE MOST PERFECT FRAUDS under cover of trade labels beautifully imitated. With such .exceptions — probably not more in number than three or four dozen — the industrial competition of the Far East has been more stimulating than repressive up to the present time, no doubt. But although there has been some argument to the contrary of late, Trade is a jade that will still follow after, the conqueror's drum. And just as German commerce took enormous strides immediately upon the conclusion of a glorious war, so (but with plainer reason) all expectation looks at an immense enhancement of the industrial rivalry of Japan. And indeed it is something to be, beyond challenge, the first maritime Power in these prolific seas; and something more to have at disposal, not only the ports and harbors of Korea, but its little-worked resources above-ground and under-ground, and even the population itself. So many factories have already been set up in Japan — cotton mills, iron works, and the like — that the look of the country in many places is said to be quite changed. Now the natural resources of Korea are to be opened up also; not. I believe, to foreign concessionaries, but to Japanese enterprise strictly denned, though open as day to the assistance of foreign capital. And who would hesitate to place his money with a people so astonishingly apt in all they undertake as th* Japanese?

"Apparently, therefore, now it is that "the real Yellow Perlt" is about to come on in earnest; the only question for us being whether we have anything to say in a matter which certainly concerns us. Charles Pearson evidently took a fatalist view of it. He was quite clear that it could only work out in one way by the operation of forces practically uncontrollable; and in the long run he may turn out to be right. Meanwhile, however — and no one will more readily admit this than our gallant allies themselves — we must needs do our best to keep our markets against all rivalry. We are quite agreed on that point; and yet, I wonder, to what extent? In all the discussions of [ the subject which I have yet seen, only one means of defence is mentioned ; extraordinary care and diligence in our workshops and counting-houses. Sound advice, of course, but

OF. WHAT AVAIL against the far cheaper work and the much more adept management o the

Japanese and Chinaman "on the spot?" In reply comes the counter question : "What other means is there, then?" None that can be thought very effectual. But I am sure of this, that these admirable Japanese, piercingly sensible, pattern patriots —above all, Bushido-taught — would think it madness and a crime to supply a rival nation with, the means of extending its rivalry.

Yes; X mean that that will be done if and when the expected millions are sent out of this country to establish competing mills, -mines., factories, and freight-ships where we know they must b& ruinous to British industry. It is not -even as if the works so established could be British property ; as I understand the matter, that is not at all the Japanese idea. Or if there were no other means of investing British capital, something might be said for British individuals who earned their four per cent, by cutting down trade and wages in England ; as it is, however, that something cannot be said.