IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA.

Otago Witness, Issue 3868, 1 May 1928, Page 6

IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA.

By Professor J. B. Condliffe, Besearch Director, Institute of Pacific Relations. VII.—EMIGRATION AND ECONOMIC DETERIORATION. The most oppressing fact about the present situation in China is the steady economic deterioration as a result of the prolonged civil warfare which is bleeding the. country to death. In a previous article something was said of the terrible pressure of poverty in the countryside and of the possibilities of improvement by bettering farm methods and by the introduction of industrial manufactures. Both of these possibilities, however, depend upon at least a minimum of security and good order. The example was cited of a progressive up-to-date factory situated inland a. hundred miles from Shanghai; but, while the effectiveness of that industrial experiment is obvious, it was not improved by .the fairly recent action of the Government in extorting a forced loan of some hundreds of thousands of dollars from its proprietor. J.he prospects of industrial development are very clear; but they depend primarily upon settled government and security for investment. An industrious peasantry working by Well-tried methods upon a I’ich soil and

living close to the margin of subsistence has an amazing power of recuperation, and can survive treatment which would reduce to chaos a wealthier and more artificial civilisation. But there is a limit beyond which it is impossible to oppress even the Chinese peasantry, and that limit has been brought appreciably closer in recent years. Famine and flood and pestilence have been by no means rare visitors in Chinese history, and long periods of civil warfare have accompanied every change of dynasty for thousands of years past. The philosophic student of Chinese history, therefore, is apt to expect a continuance and intensifying of the present misery. There are, however, new factors to be borne in mind. At this crisis of her fate, China will not be left alone to fight the traditional way out of her troubles. The prospects of armed intervention by the great Powers, still desired by many foreigners as the shortest way to trading security again, seem very remote. Even if intervention could be made effective, the jealousies and disunities of the Powers themselves negative any such possibility. Apart from armed intervention, however, there are more powerful factors at work from the outside, particularly the force of new ideas. One of the potent disintegrating factors at the present time, for example, is the almost universal but varied depreciation of the currency, rendered much easier by the western bank note system.

Not only bank notes, but the subsidiary coinages, down to the coppers in which th. common people live, have been depreciated in varying degree—a cruel infliction upon an ignorant farming community. This is true even in Manchuria which also affords an excellent example of paper depreciation. For years past Chang-tso-lin has supported his Government fm-m the proceeds of iniquitously neavy taxation supplemented by the purchase of soya beans by means of the fengpiao, or Manchurian, notes. I* is a simple process to turn out ever increasing quantities of this naper, sell the beans for specie, and use the specie for buying munitions. The fengpiao are now worth, at latest quotations, less than 50 to the dollar, and not even the summary execution of exchange dealers can prevent the cumulatively rapid depreciation into which the psychological fear of further falls has clearly - entered. This is a comparatively ,ew phenomenon in China. In other countries it would re suit either in a resort to barter or in the farmers reverting to self-sufficient production and abandoning production for sale, as they did in Russia. Both of these tendencies are evident,. and there is also widespread peasant discontent resulting in sporadic uprisings such as those staged recently by the Big Swords. The authorities suppress these movements as banditry; but they are really evidences of peasant discontent. It is an open question whether this economic development can go much further even in

Manchuria; buV it is masked by the really significant increase of produc tivity caused by bringing new lands into production.

The fertile plains of Manchuria have from time immemorial been inhabited only by nomadic tribes. The winter is severe and there are long dry spells. The rain also comes at a bad period for growing crops, so that climatic conditions impose limits to the production of wheat. But hardier crops, such as soya beans ana kaoliang (sorghum) thrive and the rapid influx of immigrants is now trai sforming these plains. The population is now betwen 20,C00,000 and 25,000,000. Last year the immigration was reckoned as nigh as 1,000,000, and for the coming spring the shipping companies are preparing as for a gold rush exodus. Hie immigrants land at Dairen and walk in their thousands up to the country round Harbin. Many die on the road, but more survive. Nothing like this movement of population has ever been witnessed in the history of Asia. The plains are well served by railway lines—Japanese, Chinese, and ex-Russian—-and new lines are being built on many areas. It is reckoned that there is room for 60,000,000 to 65,000,000 of people. The settlement of these newcomers and the exploitation of the rich mineral, as well as agricultural, resources of Manchuria are the problem par excellence of the Far East. It provides as prettv a tangle of diplomatic, economic, and sociological interests as could well be imagined and has within it the secret of future prosperity or conflict both for China and for Japan. The new immigrants come from many provinces in North China, but principally from Shantung and Chihli, where recent agricultural surveys showed that _e standard of living had been depressed below the point at which the peasants could afford to use fuel to boil the water J:o make tea. The possibilities of disease arising from such a condition can readily be imagined by those who know anything of the lack of sanitation in China.

In the south there has been for long past a similar exodus into the region of the Straits Settlements, where a new Chinese section of the British Empire has sprung up in the twentieth century, almost unnoticed. This trend is likely to be accentuated -. by the combination of falling trade, burdensome and irregular taxation, currency depreciation, and general insecurity which have become so evident in 1927.

No quantity of emigration, however, can much alleviate the conditions of the mass of the people in China itself. As.government disintegrates and their already low standard of livine is steadily depressed. they are likely to become desperate, and. in their desperation, to kill Already there are widespread evidences of peasant discontent issuing in crude, blind protests. The foreigner has suffered in recent years, but the weapons of revolution once handled can be turned against anyone who is apparently the oppressor. This is the real danger in China to-day. At the moment there is a lull, anti-foreign feeling has abated somewhat, and modern elements are striving hard to restore some semblance of government and order. Unless they reach some measure of co-operative unity and succeed in stemming the deterioration of economic standards, it seems certain that the destructive forces of revolution will break out again in peasant terrorism. Such a thing has happened often before in China s history • but it is a crtfel process which some can contemplate with equanimity.