NEW PUPPET STATE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19136, 3 October 1936, Page 15

NEW PUPPET STATE

ADVANCE IN NORTH CHINA

JAPANES E PREPAEATI ONE

LONDON, Sept. 23

Japan is rapidly making military preparations to enforce her demand to Nanking tliar (lie North China provinces shall ho gfaiifed indcpendenco of the Central Government, states the Peiping correspondent of the Daily telegraph. Although these provinces arc already financially independent of Nanking, retaining for their own use the salt taxes, the railway revenues and other public income, Japan intends to weld them politically and militarily into a puppet- State. The provinces affected are Shantung, Hopei, Shansi, Ohahar and Stuynan. Leaders tit the Japanese military headquarters at Tientsin are holding important conferences sit which the necessary military operations are, it is believed, being planned. Reinforcements at present stationed in Jehol are understood to he preparing to make a rapid descent towards Pciping through the Kupeikow Pass in the mountains north of Peiping.' Other troops are being held in readiness at Dairen. The Japanese garrison of 8000 men already in the northern provinces is now on the move, though its activities are described as “autumn manoeuvres.“ The first step is expected to be a demand for the withdrawal from the north of the Chinese 2!)th Army, which is more than 10,000 strong. Its presence is a potential menace to the Japanese and also a serious drain on the, resources of the district, because of the custom of Chinese armies of “living on the country.”

The Shanghai correspondent of the Japanese newspaper Nichi Nichi Shimbun assorts that the Chinese Foreign Minister at Changchun is working to obtain British mediation to ease SinoJapanese tension.