THE NEW CHINV

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXIV, Issue 12750, 22 April 1909, Page 4

THE NEW CHINV

Fifteen hundred tons of pig iron from the iron and steel works of Hanyang, China, travelled. 600 miles down the Yangtse' River, and 14,000 miles by sea, and were laid down in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1907. Thus did commercial competition come knocking at America's doors to serve notice that the new China was no longer a surmise, but a fact. Under semi-official management 3500 workmen at Hanyang turn out daily 500 tons of pig iron and 250 tons of steel. They made the rails and much other constructive material for the 750 miles of Pekin-Hankow railroad, arid for most of the" other Chinese linps sine© then, best-dee exporting in 1907' 37,000 tons. They are putting up another plant for the manufacture of cars, steel bridges and other structural material. That is a partial expression of tho new China, and in such language there is no equivocation. Thirty years ago the Chinese Government purchased the first railroad constructed on Chinese tore it up and dumped it in the sea. It had, unfortunately, offended the Earth Dragon. Thirteen, years aeo the mammoth Empire was pitifully beaten by little Japan. She had not considered her army worth attending to. Ten years ago the late Emperor tried to deduce the logic of events and reform his people, but an anti-foreign court and a reactionary Dowager dethroned him, exiled his counsellors, and undid his work. Then they set about to defy the world. They incited the Boxers, murdered the foreigners, and besieged the Legations in Pekin, but they only succeeded in encompassing their own ruin. A wiser court came back to Pekin. in 1902. Perhaps they had not learned to love the foreigner any better for his instruction, but they had discovered that the only China that could resist his encroachments was a unified China, a China of railroads and telegraphs, a China of well-drilled soldiers and modern rifles, a China that exploited its mines and pushed its manufactures, and, above all, a China with a national spirit and a thorough-going education.