TO SECURE CHINA’S TRADE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4259, 19 January 1901, Page 8 (Supplement)

TO SECURE CHINA’S TRADE.

IMPORTANT ACTION BY THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT. BERLIN, November 19. Tlie first official step in the energetic commercial policy which Germany intends to prosecute in China is taken tonight by the publication in the “Norddeutscho Allgemeine Zeitung” of an' announcement that the Raiser has agreed to the surplus funds or 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 ordinary naval work of the German squadron in the Far East, but also, and more especially for suppressing Chinese piracy and safeguarding the special trading 'steamers which, as soon 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 lies in the fact that the British Government has declined similar assistance to the English traders who have been the pioneers of this business in the Upper Yangtse. There" is no that the Germans have determiriod 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 of troops and stores between Port Arthur and Taku. 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, prove the forerunner of a number of similar vessels.

There are English companies wit' English capital ready to embark on this trade, to build steamers and open up the Yangtse, but without at least tue nominal support of the Government thev can do but little against the officiallysupported German traders.