ECONOMIC POWER

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 285, 1 September 1942, Page 5

ECONOMIC POWER

Japanese Policies Assessed POPULATION EFFORT (British Oflicial Wireless.) (Received August 31, 7 p.m.) LOURENCO MARQUES, Aug. 30. Japan can be beaten only by driving her out of Manchuria, China, Malaya, and the East Indies, says Mr. George Gorman, a journalist who has spent 10 years in the Ear East. He said that Japan's determined bid for mastery in the Pacific is based on a more far-seeing policy than immediate military subjugation. The keynote of the Japanese programme is a population increase, carried forward by systematic reproduction of their own kind. Japanese births are expected to reach 2,000,000 annually within five years. The Japanese in the occupied territories are waging,a continuous campaign against the white races.

Japan is powerfully organized financially. There are fixed low prices for every commodity, rationing is faithfully performed and the people are not spending their surplus money because very little can be purchased for entertainment. Voluntary savings are, therefore, buttressing the obligatory investment in Government bonds. There is full exploitation |of the resources of industry, trade and commerce in' order to stave 'off the internal economic pressure. Japan cannot be beaten by a blockade or by internal disruption, Mr. Gorman said.' 'The Japanese themselves believe that only defeat at sea can beat them. The Japanese contend that they will hold the territory they have won not only because their manpower is always increasing, but also because they propose to give the native peoples better terms than they had received from the whites.

ACUTE SLUMP In Occupied Territory

(Received August 31, 10.30 p.m.) LONDON, August 30. Information reaching India, from south-east Asia, says the Delhi correspondent of the London “Times,” indicates that the Japanese “co-prosperity regime,” far from being the promised economic millennium, is synonymous with a most acute depression. This is not merely the aftermath of the hostilities on the soil of the south-east Asian countries, but the result of the fact that they are cut off from the markets for their raw materials, and Japan is unable either to offer alternative markets or provide transport to such limited markets as are available. Accordingly, the products are piling up. The Philippines sugar industry is doomed, and the Burma rice industry is hard hit and millions of growers are facing ruin. (