IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA.

Otago Witness, Issue 3861, 13 March 1928, Page 14

IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA.

IV.—THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. By Professor J. B. Qondliffk. The poverty of China is tied up with questions of government and especially of security; it depends a great deal also upon foreign trade and investment, but in the last resort it is a problem of numbers compared with productivity. There are many among the foreign community who believe sincerely, though their own interests are involved, that the extension of foreign trade and foreign investment is necessary for China’s political and economic prosperity. That this i s true no one in his economic senses can deny ; but if it is deduced therefrom that the revolution should be suspended or slowed up, Chinese Nationalists demur. They are set upon carrying their political revolution through, even at the risk of further economic loss, and are optimistic enough to believe that they can unify their country and assert its international status before beiim faced with economic disintegration. In the meantime the facts are only too clear that, even where foreign trade and native industry have raised the poverty line somewhat, the condition of the common people is desperately poor. •In the fertile Yangtse Valley there is a certain minimum standard of living but further west and north the small towns are much worse off. Loathsome beggars, hardly seeming to be human, ply their appeals in extraordinary numbers A bad harvest in Shantung ha s put 4,000,000 people into a state of famine. Moods, wars, famines, and pestilences—all Malthus s positive checks to population increase—are in full operation. It is the fashion among many Chinese to discount these factors and to assert that with a redistribution of the population to what are now sparsely-settled areas and an increase of productivity, China would nave not too many but too few people The chief instructor at the Kuomintang rarty Institute urged this view upon me and is teaching it and the unwisdom of “ lr . . control to the 300 organisers he is training. Dr Sun Yat-sen’s lectures take the same view and indeed show him to b 0 almost an alarmist on this point, conHasting the rapid increase in population in America with the slow increase in China.

The only statistics available vary so much as to be useless for historical comparisons. A competent agricultural survey conducted last year, however, coveriiig more than 3000 farms scattered over China, disclosed births and deaths in the lamilies studied which gave a birth rate among the highest in the world and a rate of natural increase of over 14 per ICOO annually. This evidence is supported by numerous other indications that a very rapid increase in population is kept back only by calamities such as famines, floods, and pestilences. Two lines of possible relief are worth noting. First and most important is the direct attack upon agricultural problems. Centuries of experience have mad e the Chinese farmer an expert in soil conservation, fertility, and cultivation, but he has almost everything to learn in the use of machine methods, in seed selection, the control of diseases, and still more in economic organisation. A first essential step is the consolidation of his scattered tiny holdings; he needs systems of rural credit, of co-operative marketing, of transport. At all these points the University of Nanking has already set its eager scientists to work. To be conducted by its Chinese staff over the various departments which are co-ordinating scientific research, university training and extern sion work in one concerted attack on this great problem, is the most encouraging experience I have had in China. The College of Agriculture attached to. this missionary university, now under joint Chinese and American control, works in collaboration with Cornell and the Rockefeller International Education Board. The missionary professors now act mainly as advisers specialising in research. Their Chinese colleagues go out into the field, collect information, and carry the new methods. They use bright-coloured posters, invent simple machines and scientific processes, and show the practical results of seed selection by object-lesson demonstrations. Through all the disturbances they carry on with an enthusiasm that is good to see. In a smaller town, Wusih, I went through a cotton mill which would be a credit to Lancashire. If is solidly built of brick, its workrooms are large and airy, the machineiy was made in Bolton ai 1922, and it is making money fast. Its owner and manager graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; but he lives with his young wife,, who is a graduate of an English university, tn Chinese style in an old Chinese house, wears Chinese dress, and conducts Ins own business. His employees are drawn from surrounding villages and live > at home. Remembering the condition in the country roundabout one could but agree when he cited statistics to prove that the cotton and silk and flourmills of i Wusih had raised the standard of living

of all its people considerably. Up to the present, no war lord has descended upon Wusih to take advantage of its prosperity. The other side of industrialisation geneally strikes the newcomer first, and often cough such newcomers never seem to sec the benefits which an increase of production alone can bring. The horrible condition of many of the smaller factories, especially if they are compared with conditions ui other lands, is only too evident , e n ]ost casual eye. The abuse of child labour, diseased little children accompanying their mothers, filthy iack of sanitation, unfortunate little appren tices (both boys and girls), who sleep on shelves m the workroom—all these and more, one can see even within the inter national Settlement in Shanghai. In the native sections of the city condition* are much worse.

A little investigation, however, makes two facts clear hirst of all, the worst conditions of labour are in the smaller struggling factories and home workshop* lhe larger factories, under foreign con trol, have conditions that, compared with the ordinary conditions of Chinese working life, are very good. It is not the much reviled foreign capitalist who has degraded the Chinese little children. When a band of Chinese women, with some foreign assistance, forced the ques non of child labour in Shanghai into world prominence a few years ago the a f? e s 7? 11<?Wn H rs gave ass >stance, without which the gallant effort would not have come as near success as it did. The mil,own< ; rs > though not unsympathetic were keenly apprehensive of competition from weaker and ill-organised that th'" S \° P t Tt is in snch places tb I tbe , w ° rst abuse of the factory system tion ' Ve ? xf develop and the promulgation and effective administration of faciI Jl a u t,On /* hich wiU contr ol them unnn th* ult m n - d lntncate task depending upon the efficiency of Chinese governsuch °4 eC ° nd faCt ?- S tbat social Problems fac itt- er SfO'Yding and bad housing facilities, sanitation, disposal of refuse and disposal of- the dead—all these and many ot h e r problems are alreadv taxing, vprvT l ,tey to tax still f nrther, the \ery slender powers of the rapidly-grow-ing industrial area. Shanghai alreadv has problems almost beyond its present powers to solve. J present

Neither of the facts invalidates the main argument of this article. Factory Iffprr? 0 "’ trade Union organisation, and ffective municipal government, all are q n Sv‘if a " USt V, be mS f R \ oncoming problems are to necessitv J b 7°” d tnem all lies th ® that Producing more wealth so £tLr L C, ”T e P ?°? le can be better fed, Snln b ? ns ® d - and better clothed. One capable business organiser is worth more Sncture h O China at this develop a ° D y gre , ater Production d generation ahead of the inevitable Population increase will it ever be possible to get that temporary respite r„ ct zr rty POSS ble an effective attack upon the reof P »K i^ 0 1 ! &T t s “ <1 the