TROUBLED CHINA.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXII, Issue 2409, 9 April 1927, Page 6

TROUBLED CHINA.

INJUSTICES' SHOULD BE! MOVEDTHK PROBLEM OF THE WORLD. “I liavo travelled China from east to west and from north to south,” said Mr J. H. Edgar, JF.R.G.S., F.R.A.L. the noted China and Tliihetan missionary to a Dominion, reporter, and can claim to have some knowledge of the country and its people. Last year I left D’T'atsienhi, in Thibet, and travelled 2000 miles across country to Shanghai, arriving there about the middle of April last year. The whole country from end to end was then in a turmoinl, and brigands were operating in every direction. CHINESE SENSE OF RESENTMENT. “What’s wrong with China? That is what most people want to know, and so few can give the correct- answer. And yet it is not difficult to say what is wrong with China, as far as the anti-foreign feeling is concerned. It is the awakening of China to a sense of resentment of the unfair and inequitable treaties the European Powers have imposed upon her; treaties of a character that have never been imposed upon any other nation in tbo history of the world. The breaking point has come—it is the time for readjustment of treaties on fair and equitable lines. » CHINA A WORLD PROBLEM. “China is the problem of the world, ft has been a nation for four and a half millenniums of time, a record no other nation, can boast, with a social organisation which has been able to control many millions of people in an effective way. There is another problem for the scientists. The strength of a nation’s social organisation is the index of its civilisation. As a comparison—admittedly an exreme one—the Australian aboriginals have no social organisation controlling more than 150 people. Do you see what I mean. Naturally a nation with such strength of social organisation and institutional power grows proud, and, perhaps, contemptuous towards other nations of lesser lineage, so. that when the nations of Europe entered China’s back door they were considered to be barbarians, and were treated as such. Anyone who reads Du H aid’s ‘China’ (the 1741 edition) may agree that China was right upon that point. Judging by the records of Europeans in Canton, foreign intruders were subjected to a good deal of insolent bullying for many years until England fell foul of China in 1840. There was an appeal to arms, and China was ignominiously defeated: The treaties that were drawn up subsequent to those events were not couched in any conciliatory spirit. As part of the demand England insisted upon certain lands being set apart as English or European colonies, of which territories China was to lose all sovereign rights. Then the treaties also provided that European Powers were, to be allowed to exploit the vast- resources of China in an untra.melled manner. Not only were these concessions demanded and given, but the system known as extraterritoriality was insisted upon. This system gave every European visiting .ov travelling: in China the right only held by ambassadors in other countries —namely, that they were to be free from molestation, free from taxation, etc. Such privileges England never dreamed of asking from other countries, not even Japan qr Siam. On top of this them was the mercantile Customs and the salt gabelle imposition that rankled deeply, though quietly, in the breasts of the- Chinese for many years.

PERPETUAL PUNISHMENT ? “Some thinking Chines© have asked even if China, were wrong and had to ho punished for her wrong-doing, does the punishment last for ever? Must these unfair treaties exist for ever? These questions have always been shelved—the issue has been dodged. “There is only one thing to do, and that is to remove the many injustices that have existed in China, against the owners of the soil. It may be that Russia is the organiser of this campaign of hatred. If that is the case, who can venture a prophecy as to the future? England lias been the first to foregpt concessions and express a willingness to give way to the new era in China. “T must confess at being amazed over the ignorance of the Chinese question that exists in Australia and New Zealand. They seem to bo only capable of judging the nation through the medium of the sprinkling oi Cantonese in the cities, and like to; joiko about the people who eat the nest instead of the bird. China lias been a great, nation over millenniums of time, and its fine minds have given tho world some of its greatest inventions. “Mind you, I’m not at all pessimistic about China,” said Mr Edgar. “But' it is clear that it has done with the old, and is endeavouring to absorb the new. So far it has. not made, a gocxl job of it—but give it time. Give it a hundred years. To my mind China is the great world problem of the future. With its millions and millions of patient, hard-working, frugalliving people., leavened by the new thought and ways, China will demand to lie treated with the same dignity and respect as other nations. What may happen ? Who can say? It may ho that China will split- up into a number of kingdoms like South America ; or, maybe, it will just bow its head until the, storm is past, and will make up a stronger and 'better nation than ever;. The d!a,ugor-—-and there is a danger—is that the year 5000 A.D. might see tho whole of the people of this world yellow physically, and Confucian theologically.” RUSSTAN INFLUENCE. Mr Edgar is inclined to think that a great deal too much is being made our of the Russian influence in China. The Russians are there, of course, but people forget' that there are as many white Russians fighting Avith the northern armies against the southerners.

“So far the trouble that lias occurred in Shanghai has taken place in the native city,” concluded Mr Edgar. “Only one outside nation has a territorial concession in Shanghai. That is France, the lands of her concession are just, as though they were French soil. Years ago the other nations turned their concessions into an international colony, which is governed by a municipal body elected by the votes of all the foreigner settlers, and to my own knoAvledge the head of affairs there on May 20, 1925, Avas an American citizen; so the police, aa - lio are said fo have fired upon the Chinese mobs were not English police, but police in the employ of the international settlement. So that the loss of territory in Shanghai, if it is lost, Avill affect France more than any other nation, as the French concession in Shanghai is to France Avliat Hongkong is to England in the Orient.”