A CURIOSITY IN COLONISATION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3241, 19 November 1881, Page 3

A CURIOSITY IN COLONISATION.

The deportation of 25,000 families, or over 100,000 souls, to the Pacific, to form a colony to compete with a rival of the same size on the other side of the Amoor frontier, is a curiosity in colonisation as interesting to most nations as to the two Powers concerned. The struggle for the possession of Kuldja has ended peacefully, and Russia and China are apparently on friendly terms again ; but, in spite of the ratification of the recent Treaty of St. Petersburg, they are embarking on a contest which may lead to very unrlpsirable voeultff. Briefly, the Chinese are establishin a a huge colony near the Amoor fortress in such a, m&nner as to menace the security of Yladivostoclc. Not to be caught napping, Russia has determined at any cost to deposit 25,000 families between the Chinese and the menaced frontier. Should the Chinese still further extend their colony Eussia will do the same, and so the contest will go on until one of the two Powers gives in, or the Czar, in a fit of impatience, settles the questiou by mating war upon Manchooria and consummating the long-threatened annexation of the Corea. It may be expected that if Government support can make a Bussian colony a success, ib will not be withheld in this instance. Eussia has a policy in the Pacific which is sufficiently indicated by the enormous sums spent on Vladivostok, the maintenance of a fleet in Chinese seas larger than that possessed by any European Power, and the extreme solicitude displayed in furthering such schemes of steamboat communication between Odessa and China as have been started by the Moscow Cruiser Committee, the Eusso-Chinese firm of Bhevelef£ and Co., and other associations. The advantage which the desired extension of the Eussian influence in the Pacific would derive from the presence of a thriving colony in the neighbourhood of Vladivostock is obvious. But it is plain that there is a limit both to the number of peasants Eussia can afford to send to the Amoor, and the funds she can disburse in their maintenance. On the other hand, the Chinese Beem willing to flood Manchooria and the Amoor without any Government assistance, and all that the Tsian Tsoun appears to have to do in the case of the San Sin colony is to regulate and facilitate the occupation and partition of unoccupied lands. With so many millions of coolies to spare, it should not be a matter of great difficulty for China to simply swamp the Russians in the Amoor regions by sheer excess of numbers.—European Mail.