JAPAN'S CHANCE IN CHINA

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 59, 4 December 1918, Page 6

JAPAN'S CHANCE IN CHINA

PEOGKESS DURING THE WAK. It would be as well, writes "Engineering," to 'say something about the extraordinary progress made by Japan in China since the war began. The chronic state of financial shortage in China has been Japan's great opportunity, for no other Power has been in a position lo lend money since the war broke out. Naturally, Japan' has availed herself to the fullest extent of the chance, and hns lent money freely for a consideration, the consideration taking the form of controlling all the fiteel and iron ore supplies in the country, As yet she has not worried about railways outside Manchuria, but she controls the KuikiangNanchang railway, the llanyehping steel works, collieries and ore mines near Hankow, and ha.s recently acquired rights, which are still the subject of considerable discussion, over the iron mines in the neighbourhood of Nanking. All the above undertakings are in the Yangtse Valley, generally assumed to bo the British sphere of inlluence. hi addition, Japan controls Manchuria, dominates the province of Fnkieii, and lias recently taken over the German righto of exploitation in the province of Shantung, where she now manages all the German railway and mining concerns. .'lhn industrial development of China is therefore in Japanese hands, and is likely to remain so, as lons as she controls all the known iron supplies; this is not to China's advantage, for she only gets what is available after Japan has been supplied. Japan is daily increasing her hold on China' to the detriment, from a trade point of view, of the, other Powers, for a dominant Japan in China will mean the stilling of all competition and the shutting oE the open door, unless Japanese foreign policy undergoes a very radical change. The rise of Japanese power in China is sufficiently indicated when it is stated that she had lent the country previous to 1910 only ,£2-17,000; tfint this had increased to over £S,(!0.1,flOil in 1910, and in the past year a furl her .KUOO.OOO was added to the total, exclusive of the supposed loan of J:4,OOO,O0O for the purchase of arms in Japan, a rather doubtful transaction when it is considered that half the nations of Europe will in a year or two be able to supply. China with (he very latest engines of war at a vury much lower price.