TO SECURE CHINA'S TRADE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1507, 17 January 1901, Page 58

TO SECURE CHINA'S TRADE.

IMPORTANT' ACTION BY THE GERMAN GOV ERN ME NT. BERLIN, November 19. The first official step in the eneigetic commercial policy which Germ/anv intends to prosecute in China is taken tonight by the publication in the - ‘N orcideutselie Allgemeine Zeitung ’ of an announcement that the Aaiser lias agreed to the surplus funds of the Association of German Naval Club —a patriotic institution —being employed in constructing river gunboats. The fleet will be placed on the Yangtse. I believe also that the Navy Department will ask for a vote for building some similar vessels. These will, of course, be used for the naval work of the German squadron in the Ear East, but also, and more especially for suppressing Chinese piracy and safeguarding the special trading steamers which, as scon as relative quiet is restored in China, German firms are likely to put on the main navigable rivers. The latter are practically certain to be subsidised, and the importance of the matter ties in the fact that the. British Government lias declined similar assistance to the English traders who have been the pioneers of this business in the Upper Yangtse. There is no- question that the Germans have determined to do all in their power to secure as much of the Yangtse trade as possible. The first boat built by Germans for trading on the Upper Yangtse has oeen temporarily chartered by the Russian Government for the conveyance oi troops and stores between Port Arthur and Taira. It is not so good a boat as the English, steamer formerly employed in trading up the Yangtse, and now chartered by the Government, but its skipper has had experience of the river, and it will doubtless return to the trade and. as our Berlin correspondent indicates, iirove the forerunner of a number of similar vessels. There arc English companies wifi' English capital ready to embark on this trade, to build steamers and open up

the Yangtse. but without at least tornominal support of the Government teyv can. do. but little against the official tysupported German traders.