JAPANESE GOODS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22066, 23 September 1933, Page 18

JAPANESE GOODS

FLOODING JAVA AND MALAYA Conditions in the East, according to passengers who arrived at Auckland by the eteamer Narbada on September 9 from Calcutta, are still very bad from the European point of view, though there are some signs of improvement. The Jute industry, which means so much to Calcutta, is reviving, though increased demand and better prices, and the tea market also is brighter, and there has been a recent rise of 3d per lb in good export qualities grown in Assam. The iron trade, however, which once employed over 1,000,000 natives in Bengal, remains much depressed, and Indian coal has fallen considerably in price, EUROPEANS’ PROSPECT POOR.

The high duties imposed upon Japanese cotton goods have checked their importation into India, hut even duties up to GO per cent, cannot terminate Japanese competition. It has much greater scope in Malaya and Java, where Japanese goods of all types are flooding the markets. Even a motor car from Japan is making its appearance in large numbers in the streets of towns in Java. A three-wheeled motor vehicle, capable of carrying four persons, and sold very cheaply, is steadily ousting the Java pony and the gharry as a means of native transport. This is only one example of the way in which the enterprise of the Japanese is carrying him into a market which has big possibilities, and where exchange rates, with Holland on the gold standard, are particularly favourable to the Japanese. There is expressed by people who have lived long in British possessions in the East the opinion that the outlook for white enterprise and employment, particularly employment, will not return to the level of a few years ago. Many Englishmen formerly in good positions in India and Malaya have been retrenched. Numbers have returned to Britain and Australia, but others, more optimistic, have hung on in the special unemployment camps or accommodation provided by the authorities, in the hope that conditions would soon improve, and they would be able to take up again the posts they were forced to vacate. The sickness of hope deferred is now affecting some of these, and they, too, are drifting away from the East, helped with passage money by organisations specially interested in the welfare of their fellows. A sign of the times is observed in the passing of an old custom among white residents in the East. When a visitor called upon, a white resident who happened to be out, the native servant always produced the customary whisky and soda of conventional hospitality. Now the bottle and glass custom, so astonishing to travellers, lias almost disappeared. INDIAN COTTON PROBLEM. Mr W. D. Lunan, an engineer, who has lived for 20 years in India, informed a representative of the Auckland Star that six. electric light globes could be purchased for the price of one English globe, and that was about the comparison throughout India of the relative prices of Japanese and British goods. The importation of Japanese cotton piece goods was causing grave concern. The quality was not to be compared witli the Manchester article. The fact that Japanese merchants were able to undersell both the Indian and British mills was proof, in Mr Lunan’s opinion, that the cotton industry was being subsidised by the Japanese Government as the undercutting proceeded, despite a duty of 50 per cent. Japan purchased large quantities of raw cotton from India, and the growers were against a high duty, as it affected their prospects of a successful sale of their crops. It was a commentary on Indian trade that while India sold raw cotton to Japan, she purchased for her own mills quantities of cotton from Egypt and East Africa. This was a stronger stapled cotton than that produced in India. The short staple was the cheapest, and was invariably purchased by Japan.