MANY CHANGES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4054, 30 May 1938, Page 8

MANY CHANGES

THE LAST TEN YEARS IN CHINA. Dr. J. C. Ferguson, who has lived in Pekin for 50 years and has seen many changes, gives in the “Pekin Leader” his view of the effect of the changes during the last ten years:—“What do the last 10 years suggest as to the future of China? Of one thing I am certain, and this is that I am neither more optimistic nor pessimistic than in 1927. The real entity that is China remains unchanged. “There is a united solidarity in the race that no military defeats can destroy . The Chinese of ‘Manchukuo’ remain Chinese as do those of Formosa, of Hong-Kong, of the Phillipines, of Java, of Honolulu, of San Francisco, of Mauritius. They may be Russian citizens or Japanese, British, or American, French, Dutch or Portuguese, but there hearts are in China, ‘ the country of worth,’ as truly as Burns’s was in the Highlands.

“Whatever may be their choice among friends of other races the highest ambition and keenest hope of the myriad Chinese of the dispersion are to see their motherland freed from all foreign denomination, including the denomination of the country they like best. China may be cut into several slices, but it will require only a minimum of heat or ferment to cause them to coagulate. “The achievement of the last ten years have not chiefly been on military lines, even though most of her sons and daughters are inclined to be proud of what has been accomplished. There have been during this time several serious internal struggles between rival parties, but a new unity among military leaders has been evident, and in the life-and-death conflict with Japan now raging at its fiercest there are no longer any signs of dissension.

“There is a united front against what all have come to recognise as a common enemy. This is doubtless a great achievement but there have been greater. One need only to look over the Table of Contents of the 1936-37 “Chinese Year Book” to gain some idea of what has been done in education, publication of books, in development of railways and mines, in electrical communications, in aviation, in forestry, in agricultural economy. “Probably never in the history of

the world has any nation ever done more in a period of 10 years in wholehearted adoption of new methods. There has been feverish activity among all ranks of the promoters of a new life, resulting in general advance of the materia 1 , and intellectual standards of the people. “This is a movement which bombs and cannon can retard but not destroy. It has become too deep-seated for possible removal by such means. In the changing conditions which are now engulfing China in a maelstrom of unknown violence it is difficult to predict in what way this new life will assert itself, but I am certain —that, assert itself it will. It may find its maelstrom to a navigable channel when the capricious wind is not blowing too hard against it.”