FAR EASTERN POSITION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 99, 29 March 1937, Page 8

FAR EASTERN POSITION

(By Arthur Davies.) A scene worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan—just in time for the pantomime season too it was—took place at Nanking a few days before the Old Year ended. General Cliiang Kai-shek, the Chinese Premier, who had been taken prisoner by one of his own marshals, Chang Hsueh-liang, appeared with his captor hand in hand at the seat of Government, the latter to explain that he was a “naturally rustic, surly and unpolished” fellow whose act of rebellion was due to a “misunderstanding.” and the former with true Oriental politeness to reply in effect, ’fiP-ray don’t mention it, the fault was really mine.”

AVlien we have finished laughing, it is worth while turning our attention for a moment at least to the present situation in North China. Ever since Japan broke with the League of Nations she has been following a policy of imperial ambition, the purpose ol which lias been to make herself sole mistress of the Far Fast; Manchukuo was merely a beginning. Gradually the whole of China is to be brought within the orbit of Jnpaneee power. For three or four years every step towards this goal—whether by clirec.t aggression or by the subtler means of peaceful trade penetration—has been fairly successful, but last year’s campaign did not work out “according to plan.” The Governors of the provinces of North China proved on the whole too patriotic to yield to Japanese bribery and declare themselves independent of Nanking. Nanking lierself refused Japan’s offers of “co-operation” in developing trade and industry. The reasons for this check in Japan’s progress are:— (1) The China of 1936 is much stronger and more united than the China of 1931, thanks very largely, it may be added, to the technological help she has .received from the League of Nations.

(2) Japan herself is feeling increasingly the strain of her adventure, with its enormous military expenditure, and little or no sign of economic return. (3) Russia—a very different power in i 936 from the Czarist Russia of 1904—has her own views ns to the future of Eastern Asia, and these are by no means in harmony with those of Japan. It would be unwise to imagine that the failure of her attempts to move forward in 1936 marks the end of Japan’s present policy. That is not the stuff that the military cast who control her affairs is made of. She feels her isolation, but so far from this inducing any change of outlook or any thought of return to the League of Nations, she has thrown in her weight with Germany and Italy in the “anticommunist” campaign, even though her moves in this direction have still further alienated British and American sympathies.