Li Hung Chang’s Complaints.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2764, 19 April 1900, Page 3

Li Hung Chang’s Complaints.

M. Jean Hess, who recently went to the Far East to study various political and commercial questions, gives an account in the Paris Journal of February 23rd, of an interview he had at Peking with Li Hung Chang. The latter uttered bitter complaints against European action in China. “You put the knife to our throat,” Li Hung Chang continued, “to plunder us. When we feel the point we give whatever is demanded, holding ourselves free to get it back if we think we can escape by a ruse. Is not that the diplomacy of all countries P What but sheer robbery is the partition of which you no longer make any mystery, confirming it by treaties in which the only party not consulted is the one to he pillaged ? The north for tho Russians, the centre for the British, the south and the rest for you and others. And for the Chinese nothing. But live hundred million souls do not let themselves he juggled with like that. It is "easy enough to fight us now ; it is not so easy to conquer us. For our defence have we not both your jealousies and your conflicting covetousness ? It is upon thenrthat we play. Take, for instance, the story of your Shanghai concession. We gave you all, but we so arrange that the British forbid you taking anything ; and you take nothing, for you are afraid of the English just as we are of you. International politics is made up of fear felt and fear inspired.”