CHINA.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13920, 3 June 1909, Page 3

CHINA.

GROWTH OF POWER. The " Tageblatt fur Nord China" publishes an interesting article .mi the growth of Chinese power in Mongolia. ID says that important Chinese .colonial questions are being solved... unostentatiously, and that Tibet, Mongolia and Manchuria are becoming more Chinese than ever they have been. .. As the means of strengthening her national position in the Dependencies, China is sending to those places enormous numbers of emigrants. To send coolies and peasants in as large numbers as it desires to these countries, thinly peopled by native tribes, costs the Peking Government only the si:-iall labour of edicts to the Governors of provincesisuitable for such emigration, and small financial aid in specij cases. An army of about 40,000 -neii, dulled by Japanese instructors, and Mined with modern weapons, has been [laced during the past two years in the i.gion of Urumtchi, and the old frontier posts of Kuldja and Bulun-tochoi have been strengthened. In the so-called further Mongolia, to the north of the Gobi desert, the sudden activity of the Chinese Governors Kobdo and TJliasutai is filling, the Consuls charged with the maintenance of Russian interests in Urga and Uliasutai with anxiety. Even in these places, which arc only reached after a tedious desert journey from Peking, the military, as well as the economic power of the Chinese, is making slow but steady progress. Since 1907 in East Mongolia there have been camps of regular Chinese troops. The endeavours of China in Mongolia are not only directed agahi'.t the attempts of Russia to obtain foot in that country, but also against the independent Mongolian princes. The interest of independence and the danger threatening them from Peking makes tlie Mongolian princes the natural allies of the Russians, who are more sympathetic to them than the Chinese. The author asks of what avail that is agains the irresistible forward march of Chinese settlers and traders, witii whom Russian traders cannot compete. The overland trade of the tea eara-' vans through the Gobi desert via Kiakhta, which brought occupation to thousands of Mongols, and made the people dependent on Russian gold, has found'other ways. Kiakhta is a town of the past, and a house of eight rooms can be obtained for 25 roubles a year. Instead of that, the Chinese are planning the first automobile communication through the Gobi desert between Urga and Kalgan, which will shortly be'connected with Pekin by rail.