CHAOTIC CHINA

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 9, 1 April 1927, Page 3

CHAOTIC CHINA

SHOULD BE NO WAR rival war lords eonfn«i^!l inese j question becomes more There T" 1 * 1 . ,? haotit every day. r ,. . no national government in to that bU n t s? re are many aspirants to that position, writes Lieut -Col Turkes°tan. H ’ M - C ° nSUl in Chinese The Koumintang, by virtue of its possession of the large cities along the Yangtse River, may, either singlehanded or in conjunction with the ivorth, assume power, but there can be no nationalist or representative government until the warring elements of whom more than a dozen are afoot, have been either brought together or eliminated. The civil war from which China is suffering is due to the greed of these numerous war lords, all hungering for wealth and power, each primarily concerned with his own material gain rather than with the stability and future progress of the country. Fight for Loot \\ hat of the position at Hankow and Shanghai? The internal troubles, the fight for loot and power, and the hopeless confusion of to-day, as well as the overrunning of the British Concessioi

at Hankow, are the result of the cruelty and oppression of warring leaders. It all springs from that, being fostered and financed by Moscow, which is mainly responsible for the trouble. The British and foreign community are confronted with many difficulties, trade has fallen, goods have been commandeered, and railways built by foreign c apital have been seized and in some cases destroyed by rival factions. What we are up against at the moment is the fact that the so-called Government under Chen wishes to clear out the foreign element from China; vast business interests are involved, British trade and subjects are suffering from mob violence, and there is a violent anti-Chinese movement in full blast. The a.dvance on Shanghai, situated 800 miles from Hankow, has not yet begun, and unless the pay of the troops is forthcoming it may be held up, but in the meantime every preparation is in hand to safeguard our interests. Small Pay List Within the past .12 years more than 30 governments have been set up and dismissed in Peking, nominally the capital of China, and occasionally the seat of such authority as exists, and taxation has varied with the different Cabinets. In some provinces the revenue has been anticipated for the next eight years, while another source of corrupt and inefficient government is the fact that officials are practically unpaid. They are expected to make their own arrangements in that respect. Li Hung l chang, the most astute statesman China has ever produced, once said that the value of any appointment was in proportion to what you could make out of it, and from that assertion we can gauge the fundamental principles of government. The chief claim of the present Cantonese Government is the revision of “unequal treaties,” and the abolition of extra-territoriality by which British subjects are not amenable to Chinese courts, but must be dealt with by their own authorities. It was agreed in 1902 that after 20 years we should, if so warranted, agree to this abolition, but by 1922 no progress whatever in prison reform and fair judicial procedure had been made, and the situation is practically the same to-day. Reform is still far off. Greed of Gold and Corruption As already remarked, greed of gold is a paramount consideration, and one of the generiils now operating in the Canton and Hankow area recently issued a manifesto setting forth the advantages to be gained by adherence to his side. Appended to it was a scale of payments for surrenders to his army, £IO,OOO being offered for a battalion complete with commander and all incidental staff and equipment, £4,000 for a battery of field guns, and so on down to the simple soldier, whose value was assessed at a ten pound note. Corruption takes other forms; for instance, a provincial governor, one of the many struggling for the supreme power, issued orders for the accumulation of firewood on a vast scale, with the result that the country was denuded of fuel, and still only half the requisite quantity had been amassed, while the price of wood had risen to three times its original rate. Bolshevism Not In Favour The people were aghast at the impending wood famine, wheieupon the governor displayed a fatherly benevolence. Nothing would induce him to cause unnecessary suffering, so lie would take the balance of fuel m cash at the then prevailing rate! The mentality of the Chinese, who are an eminently practical race, is not generally understood in Europe. It might be supposed that with the internal disruption Bolshevism would find favour, but the present crisis affects only a very small proportion of the Chinese people as a whole, and is no indication of what the masses actually U Bolshevism does not 1 find favour, for]

its principles interfere with private trade, a vital feature in Chinese social life, while it strikes at private liberty, another outstanding factor. For forty centuries the Chinese looked upon the Emperor—the Son of Heaven because he ruled over all beneath the sun—as the temporal and spiritual head of the nation. They argue that with a republic there must necessarily be a change of leader, which in itself invests the head of the nation with transitory power, and one without prestige, while it lacks the sheet anchor of solidity, as the Chinese envisage it. that of concentrating authority and focussing the loyalty of the masses. With no responsible government in China, and no one with whom we can confidently deal, the attitude of the Powers is difficult to define. In any case, there should be no war; the Chinese people as a whole do not want it, and apart from the lack of a national government with which to treat, there is no reason why we should embark on any such enterprise. At the same time, the measures taken to safeguard Shanghai from being rushed are timely and efficient. for this industrial and international centre, through which a-quarter of China’s external commerce passes, must be made immune from mob attack. Beyond that the regeneration of China lies in the breaking up of the numerous military bodies, bringing the provinces under one Government, and the elimination of any form of foreign aggression.