ANARCHY IN CHINA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19013, 8 November 1923, Page 7

ANARCHY IN CHINA

TUCHUNS’ REIGN OF TERROR. INTERVENTION BY THE POWERS URGED. Proa Aaaociation —By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, November 6. The Peking correspondent of The Times paints an appalling picture of the brigandage, murders, and outrages which are proceeding at present in China. He says that if the foreign Powers wish to make an impression they must address themselves to the military governors, who alone are able to deal with the situation ; but if they merely warn or threaten the military governors they will not make good their words, and the position of the foreigners will surely become worse. Nor will it be possible to coerce the military governors to do their duty without the employment of substantial forces. Before such a policy is undertaken the Powers must be prepared for intervention on a serious scale, for it would not be practicable to operate in the interior of a difficult country without proper military precautions. Obviously the question is, first, whether positive intervention is necessary, and, secondly, whether the Powers are prepared to carry it through. The alternative is the reinforcement of the foreign garrison.—The Times. That the condition of China is a vital interest to Britain is too well known to be stressed (writes a student of the Far East in the Daily Mail). This wonderful country with its 400 millions of people has long been one of our great markets, and the British investor, who likes and trusts the Chinese, for whose honesty in the past ho has had a great regard, has never hesitated to invest his millions in loans to finance various Chinese undertakings, notably railways. The riches of China, both potential and realised, are almost incredible. Under a stable Government, able to organise and develop the national resources China would be in a most enviable position. As it is. the country is falling to pieces, anarchy is rampant, and the different provinces are at the mercy of warring Tuchuns, or military governors, who are nothing more than first-class bandits with keen noses for loot. These Tuchuns have been bleeding the country white. Preying upon 400 millions of people is a very paying game, for some of these military governors have fortunes which even in America would be regarded with respect. Civil war has been raging in China more or less since 1917, but there was never a time when the impudent bandit Tuchuns were more active or when Chinese elm os was more pronounced than at the present time. One result of this anarchy is a diminishing regard for foreigners expressed in constant outrages and in a general state of lawlessness. The Tuchuns required very little teaching in the matter of squeezing the people, but if they needed any they have received it from lieutenants in the person of impecunious ex-Czarist officers who have thrown in their lot with them and helped to train the uniformed rabble. The feeling among British merchants in China is that the trouble will not be overcome until the Powers step in and insist upon a strong Central Government being sot up, determined and able to suppress the warring Tuchuns, and able and willing to consolidate Chinese finance!, thus protecting the investments of foreigners. Before the war the Powers worked well together in China and their word carried weight, but latterly there has not been the same co-operation. Foreign control in China seems a tall order, but in default of some kind of united action by the Powers it is difficult to conceive what can prevent China from falling into a state as bad as Bolshevism.