WHAT DOES JAPAN MEAN?

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14704, 3 June 1920, Page 6

WHAT DOES JAPAN MEAN?

. (By F. A. McKenzie.)

Japan wants China. She is gradually taking it. She has already established more or less effective control over enormous areas in the north. She lias a strangle-hold on the remainder. Japan wants China! It sounds little to say, but surely this is the most ambitious scheme of imperial conquest ever imagined by man. Clive's dreams of Eastern Empire sink into comparative insignificance before it. The possession of China, would make Japan numerically the strongest Empire in the world.' And she will have China, actually, if not in name, within ten years, unless we take steps to guard our interests and our rights. The Japanese ambition to dominate China is no new thing. It goes back hundreds of years. Japanese agents for a long time systematically created unrest and civil war to keep China weak.

The Great War gave Japanese statesmen their great opportunity. They resolvejl to settle for all time the question whicli was the supreme nation in Asia. Twenty-one demands were secretly presented to the Chinese Government. It was warned that to communicate particulars of these demands to other Powers would be regarded as an unfriendly act ,and would he treated accordingly. It was asked to linnd Germany's Shantung rights to Japan and to make enormous concessions of mines, railways and territory elsewhere in China. It was to pledge itself to employ influential Japanese political, financial, and military advisers. It was to promise not to grant a lease of any harbor, bay, or island except to Japan. It was to place the police in important centres under the joint administration of Chinese and Japanese or was to employ numerous Japanese in them. If any foreign capital was wanted to work minos, build railways, or construct harbor works in large parts of the country, give Japan virtual control of its foreign relations. Had China accepted these terms, ner independence would have gone, absolutely. Her statesmen plucked up courage, and through covert channels let the other Powers know what the Japanese demands were. Japan presented an ultimatum. Such pressure was brought on her that she temporarily waived some of the most extreme demands, securing for herself, however, concessions which gave her a hold on the whole country. • The policy of force having failed to accomplish all, the Japanese Government now tried a. policy of bribery. Between the years 1915 and 1918 hundreds of millions of yen were spent, nominally for concessions, really for bribes for corrupting Chinese officials. A number of officials resisted Japanese bribes and Japanese threats until 1917, when Japanese diplomacy contrived to strike them a very hard blow. Viscount Jshii and Mr Lansing entered into an agreement about China, without consulting or informing the Chinese in advance. Under this agreement Japan's "special interests" in China, were recognised. The Japanese at once used every means of publicity to show that this meant tliafc America had recognised Japanese- supremacy there. Mr j Lansing, later on, in a statement to the Senate, denied this, declaring that Viscount Ishii had asked that Japan's "dominating" interest in China should be recognised, but that he had refused to do so. China wanted money • desperately; Europe would not help her. Japan offered it and pressed it on her on terms which more and more encroached on Chinese rights. Japan played, and still plays, the, part of subsidising and supporting the tuchuns. the military governors,' who, controlling independent, armies, have kept the country in a ferment for some years. What we can and should ask is that the terms of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1911 shall be fairly carried out. The basic principle of that alliance was its purpose to "insure the independence and integrity of the Chinese Empire and the principle of equal rights for the commerce and industry of all nations in China." That- purpose has not been fulfilled. Japan is out for monopoly, monopoly of territory, monopoly of trade, monopoly of natural resurces. To obtain these she is restrained by no scruple. Paper clauses and paper treaties are not enough. One fact can at any rate be taken as aji axiom—Chinese self-government and British trade in China, go together. f-et independence be taken away, and this great market will be wholly lost, to us.