ROUSING ASIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1920, Page 12

ROUSING ASIA.

HOW JAPAN SET AN ALARM BELL RINGING. The Struggle of the Immediate Moment in the Pacific is for the Domination of China's Future. Shall Britain Renew Its Alliance with Japan? London, June IS, "Amid the fierce storms breaking continuously upon Europe and Asia, the western peoples have hardly so much as glanced at the gathering clouds in the Far' East. But' they have gathered fast, and to-day the signs of trouble are plain for everybody to see." —The New Statesman. "Japan, with Teutonic thoroughness, but with a far more Teutonic brilliance, seized the essential'principles of our industrial system. She captured the teclirical miracles of Western science and made these in turn the tools of a vaulting ambition, which, \vhen it had buffeted and conquered Russia, set an alarm bell ringing which roused all Asia, including China." '-Basil Mathews. "As an immediate result of the rise 6f Japan and her leap into the arena as protagonist in the wrestle for mastery, the pivot of the world's politics is shifting rapidly, and has indeed already shifted —if only the blear-eyed Rip-Van-Winkles of European diplomacy could see it —from the Atlantic to the Pacific," writes Mr. Basil Mathews in the Venturer. THE BELGIUM OF ASIA. "What are the stark essential features of this new era in world-politics? "The main strategic elements of the situation are extarordinarily simple. The fixed central strategic point of Pacific politics is Korea, which is the Belgium cf Asia. Korea commands the seaoutlet from Pekin, the capital of China; Korea lies like a breakwater between North America (that is between the United States and the British Empire there on the one side) and China; Korea controls from the sea the outlet of Russia into the Pacific; and Japan controls Korea. "But Korea is not only the Belgium of Asia: she is the Ireland of Japan. The Korean people—agricultural, emotional —find themselves under the regime of a bureaucracy that holds them in its hands for Japan's power in the Pacific and not for their freedom and fulness of life —just as Britain might be prepared for an Irish republic to-morrow if she hacl no fears for her power in the Atlantic. ASIA'S INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. "One other immense and growing feature which may soon transform the situation is the stupendous and rapid industrial revolution in Asia which has drawn millions of the agricultural population of Japan, and' is drawing millions of that population in China, into the whirlpool of mining and factory life. That industrial revolution is far more rapid, widespread and revolutionaVv than our industrial revolution in the early nineteenth century. "A Japan that exported four million pounds' worth of goods into the United Kingdom in 1015 and twenty-four million pounds' worth'in 1018, has definitely to be reckoned with in all thoughts of the industrial and commercial future of the world: and China's capacities are indescribably greater. But more important is the new spirit springing up hi the proletariat drawn into the factories. Japan's labor is beginning to have a social conscience of its own for the first time. Labor publications wit{j a circulation of a quarter of a million are now produced in Japan. G. H. D. Cole's 'Self-Government in Industry" sells there like hot cakes. "This Labor unrest does not suit the I book of the Japanese profiteer who has made millions out of the war. nor of the Imperial Bureaucracy which desires above everything else a populace malleable to its will. FOR THE DOMINATION OF CHINA. ''The strugg'■> of the immediate moment in the Pacific is for the domination of China's future. Japan (which is the only country except America that has come out of the war overwhelmingly richer than it went in) is putting an immense amount of capital into China. Its diplomatic stiffness in the Shantung d : spute was an indication that it had taken up in China the role that Germany had, perforce, dropped- America, while she is putting capital into China, is even more seeking to win its goodwill by a peaceful and able development of medical and' other forms of educat'on. Britain pursues a similar policy in a way that is less vigorous because of our imperial commitments, our postwar impoverishment, and our smaller human resources." Ovl ALLIANCE WITH JAPAN. The New Statesman also discusses "The Danger in the Far East." It points out that "the renewal of our alliance with Japan falls due within the next few weeks. In ordinary circum- | stances, we suppose, the affair would I have been arranged in the quiet fashion of Foreign OMices, without diverting our minds for an instant from Bolshevism or the latest murder or the price of food. But the circumstances are not ordinary, and China has insisted on startling the world. The Chinese Minister lias presented a memorandum to the British Government, pointing out that China takes strong exception to the renewal of the Anglo-Japanewc Alliance.She objects to being 'treated merely as a territorial entity.' "What lies behind this pathetic protest? Everybody knows the answer. Behind it lies the relentless aggression of Japan, the desperate anaer and hatred of China, and the growing fear I that we are prepared to abet the Japanese designs. J' CHINA'S CONDITION. "China is not simly a weak nation which is being bullied by a stronger. She lis a huge State, without .any real unity, the prey of warring factions. An incredibly feeble and corrupt Government sits in Pekin, where it lives largely by and for foreign loans. Its writ does not run in the provinces'; the masters there are military governors, maintaining thern- | selves as practically independent despots by arms and robbery. All the better elements in China, the peasant, the honest trader, the educated students, the Socialists and Liberals, are overwhelmed, and China is helpless to save herself- V. "Great 'Britain is the hope of China," adds the New Statesman. "We can, iS we choose, -keep the peace in the Far East. We have no interest in seeing China broken up. On the contrary, OHf of th" «>»•>•> objects of our

Tvith Japan was the integrity of China and. the 'open door' for trade. And another main object was obviously that ive should, for our own advantage, keep tho military power of . Japan within bounds. "We see no possible good in quarrelling with Japan. The Japanese are a discontented nation —economically discontented; they will not become more contented by our desertion, or any less a danger to the peace of the yorld. Nor do we see how our breaking with Japan would help China. China must be reconstructed with the aid of ourselves and of Japan, paradoxical as flint may sound. If we honestly intend to assist China, we can surely do it best by exercising a moderating influence over Japan from within; that is to say, as an ally of Japan, encouraging Japanese democracy against Japanese militarism. . . A renewal with Japan on honorable conditions is the only sensible policy."