THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, MAY 8, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9048, 8 May 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, MAY 8, 1888.

It was always the policy of the Chinese Government to discourage or prevent the emigration of their people. They held the idea that the empire suffered loss by the departure of a portion of its subjects, and although this historical policy has been necessarily modified since the opening of the Treaty Ports, and the new facilities for going abroad, yet the Government have of late years a more substantial motive than ever for enforcing as rigidly as possible their old rule. While China proper, and especially in the southern provinces, is densely peopled, some of the outside regions included in the empire are very thinly inhabited, and there are immense frontier tracts even devoid of population. Russia encroached upon those vacant territories, and when China was convulsed by the Taeping rebellion laid hands upon the Amur country, with its vast grassy plains traversed by the great river that affords a highway between the Pacific and the interior of the continent ; and this was but one of the encroachments accomplished or attempted. The authorities in Pekin, according to the Marquis Tseng, contemplate the recovery by-and-by of the territories thus taken from them ; and meanwhile in the new strength they already exhibit, they have begun to plant colonies in their lonely border lands. By transferring their surplus hands to districts which are now unoccupied, or but sometimes roamed over by scattered pastoral tribes, a numerous frontier population will soon grow up, to constitute, with its roads and garrisons, a barrier

against further Muscovite advance, and a future base of operations for recovering that which has been lost. Very likely it is the fact that they now see a field for colonisation within their own bounds, the means of keeping their emigrants at home, which has induced the Chinese Government to acquiesce so readily in the proposal from Washington to prohibit Chinese emigration to the United States for a period of twenty years, and assuredly it ought not to be more difficult to arrive at a similar arrangement about Mongolian emigration to these colonies.

China lias every incitement to carry out on a great scale the colonising already commenced, of her immense northern frontier. Russia, at her side of the line, is working energetically for the same end, although the supply of settlers sho can call forth is far more restricted. Of course, the Cossack abounds. Devoted servant of the Czar, he is ready to go anywhere at his master's order, as soldier, settler, or both—to emigrate with his family, or ride to war on his shaggy courser. Colonies of Cossacks have been transferred to the valleys of the Caucasus; and, according to the Novoo Vremya, a party of them, under the Ataman Ashinoff, have made their way to the Court of King John, of Abyssinia, carrying presents and offering their services ; while on the Island of Saghalien, in the Pacific, along the Amur, and at other points of the Muscovite advance in Asia, they are colonists, and also act as military and police. But the great majority of the settlers are Muscovite families from Central Russia, and numbers of the prisoners that have been banished to Siberia. The Hon. W. Campbell, of the Victorian Legislative Council, in his journey last year from Vladivostok overland to St. Petersburg, constantly met caravans of emigrants from the European provinces. The sites of settlement are along the one line of high road, which ho described as, in most parts, bordered at each side by the farmhouses and allotments, behind which uninhabited country stretched away for hundreds of miles. When the Russian Government are taking such pains to colonise their recently-acquired

possessions in Southern Siberia and the neighbourhood of the Pacific, it is become plain to the Chinese that they must do the same thing in their own frontier provinces if they mean to permanently retain them. They have

accordingly begun to do so ; and it looks as if the willingness of the Government to suspend emigration to

America were due to the intention to utilise, in the way we say, the present emigrating tendencies of their people. If this be really the reason for the facile disposal of the question between Pekin and Washington, the Foreign Office in Westminster may soon be able to adjust matters.

• After awhile' China cannot but become an exceedingly powerful nation abroad as well as at home. ' Europe compelled her to put on the European armour, by compelling her to part, at least in degree, with her seclusion; and

cease to stand quite aside from the cosmopolitan family of nations. She is accordingly adopting the strong points of our civilisation without, however, throwing away her own. She is fast adopting all our military and naval improvements, our railway and telegraph systems, and other important matters; and a people of four hundred millions, with appropriate internal resources, when fully equipped in our modern style, is bound to figure as a very great Power indeed. With the suppression of the Taeping rebellion the principles of the great law-giver Confucius have been restored in full as the national system of management, and whatever may be their defects they create internal discipline and national consolidation. An article in the Asiatio Quarterly, from the pen of the Marquis Tseng, then returning from an embassy to the principal European courts, and now a leading statesman at home—to which article we referred at the time in these columnshad the importance of a State paper in foreshadowing certain features in the coming foreign policy of his country ; and the views therein expressed coincide with the prognostications of the Austrian traveller, Baron Hubner, after his visit to the Celestial Empire. In the next generation China will inevitably be a great Power in the Pacific as well as in Asia.