The Future of the Chinese.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XIV, Issue 64, 21 October 1911, Page 4

The Future of the Chinese.

A SPECULATION,

Writing in 18S3, in his book “National Life and Character,” Mr.C. H. Pear so i) says:—China is generally regarded as a stationary power which can fairly held its own, though it has lost Anram to France, and the suzerainty of Upper Burraah to England, and Amcor Valley to Russia,but which is not a serious competitor in the race (or empire. There is a certain plausibility in this view. On the other hand, China has recovered Eastern Turkestan frem Mabommedan role and from a Russian protectorate, is dominating the Cere?,and has stamped out a dangerous rebellion in Yunnan. No one can doubt that if Gbit a were to get for severiegn a man with the organising and aggressive genius of Peter the Great or Frederick the Second it would be a very formidable neighbour to either Biitish India or Russia, Neither is it easy tj suppose thbt the improvements, now tentatively introduced into China, will not soon be taken up and pushed on a large scale so that railways will be carried into the heart of Asia and large armies drilled and furnished with arms of precision or the European models. In any such case the rights which China has reluctantly conceded or still claiirs over Annam and Tonquin, over Siam, over Upper Burmah, and over Nepaul, may become matters of very serious discussion. At present the French settlements arrest the expansion of China in the direction most dangerous to the world. Unfortunately the climate x of Saigon is such as no European cares to settle in, and the war to secure Tonquin was so unpopular that it cost a French premier his tenure of office. Whatever, however, be the fortune of China in this direction, it is scarcely doubtful that she will not only people up to the furthest boundary of her recognised territory, but gradually acquire new dominions. The history of our Straits Settlements will afford a familiar instance how the Chinese are spreading. They already form half the population predominating in Singapore and Perak, and the best observers are agreed that the Malay cannot hold his own against them. They are beginning to settle in Borneo and Sumatra, and they are supplanting the natives in some of the small islands of the Pacific, such as Hawaii. The climate of all these countries suits them, and they commend themselves to governments and employers by their powers of steady industry; and they inter-marry up to a safe point with the women of the country, getting all the advantages of alliance, yet not sacrificing their nationality. Several causes have xetarded their spread hitherto; the regions enumerated have mostly been too insecure for an industrial people to flourish in until the British or the Dutch established order; the Government of China has 1 hitherto discouraged emigration; English administrations have been obliged to be rather wary in their dealings * with a people who showed at Sarawak and Penang that they were capable of combining for purposes of massacre; and the Chinese superstition about burial in the sacred soils of the Celestial Empire made the great majority of the emirgants birds of passage. All these causes are disappearing. . , , Europeans cannot

flourish under the tropica, and w

not work with the band where an inferior race works. What we have to consider, .therefore, is the probability that the natives who are giving way to the Chinese in the Malay Peninsular will be able to make head against them in Borneo or Sumatra. Borneo is nearly six times as big as Java, and if it were peopled like Java would support a population of 100,000,000. . . . In the long run the Chinese, who out-number the Malays as sixteen to one, who are more decidedly industrial and who organise where they can in a way that precludes competition, are tolerably certain to gain the upper hand. They may not destroy the early settlers, but they will reduce them to the position of the Hill tribes in India or Japan. Assume fifty years hence that China has its inevitable position as one of the great powers of the world, and that Borneo has a population of 10,000,000 predominantly Chinese, is it hasty to suppose in such a case that the larger part of Borneo would still be a'dependency of the Netherlands? or that the whole island would not have passed,' by arms or diplomacy, into the possession of China? . . There are those who believe that the Chinaman is likely to supersede the Spaniard and Indian alike in parts of South America,”