JAPAN'S WOOL RESOURCES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 101, 15 May 1937, Page 11

JAPAN'S WOOL RESOURCES

Expansion Programme

./ ■ JAPAN'S TRADE WAR witE Australia has xesulted in a number of plans whereby she aspires to deQlare independence in the world of wool as soon as possible. The development of North China, Inner Mongolia, and MancHukuo into a huge wool-producing aroa to siipply . Japan 's needs iis the assumption" on whieh all these plans are based. Expansion and improvement of wool resources is invariably oue of the chief points mentioned along with cottongrowing when Sino-Japanese economic co-operation comes Up for discussion in Northern China. The China Development Company, subsidiary of the South Manchuria Eailway, has drawn up plans whereby the 20,000 tons of wool prodiiced annually in North China and Inner Mongolia \will be increased five-fold"within the next 30 years. . A 4,000,000 yen programme of crop experimentation ■ is under way near Tientsin, Where the China" Development Company flias established an experimentation project with wool as one ofi the principal items. . Grandiose schemes are also on the boards for Manchukuo, where the South Manchuria Railway itself has taken up the matter and plans to inerease the 3,000,000 sheep which now roam Manchurian plains to 15,000,000 within the next 35 years. Japan herself has only 60,000 sheep, She expeets them to number 5,000,000 by 1957. As far as North China and Inner Mongolia are concerned, however,. it Is fairly safe to predict that neither Australia nor |any other wool-exporting country need have any fears from this direction. Adverse physical and economic factors, and the fact that the present supply of wool from this territory is so small and of such poor quality as to be next to worthless for Japan 's purposes, all support the belief that Japanese "ambitions to develop an independent source of wool , constitute only a very faint threat. Eigorous elimate in Inner Mongolia, where the best grazing land is foun'd, will prevent any suceessful importation of foreign sheep, it is believed. Even the native broad-tailed sheep suecumb under the more severe winters, and in one Chahar distriet last year fully 90 per cent of the sheep perished when the coldest weather in living memory paralysed th'e desert for months on end.

Imported sheep fare disastrously in "sucli an environment. : . Bnt native strain* produce a quality • of wool far too coanse for the demanda of Japan 's textile trade, most of the wool from this region being fit only for rug-making. - ,e - / Tfie way out of this diffleulty seems in the minds of Japanese to be along the lines of hybfids between* the nativa broad-tail-and foreign strains. A ien tain amount of progress has been madej in tliis direction by Chinese experiment^ ers, and hybrid wool is said to.be at leasfc twice as good and the yield over twice as large as that from native sheep. Neverth'eless the hybfids- produced thus far are not hardy enor^h to survive under ordinary conditions, and a good deal of selective eross-breeding has yefc to be done- before an effieient type is evolved. ** / ' Here the Japanese programme of?imt provement is blocked by the ignorance, dire poverty, and general reluctance and inability of ihe native* ' to emjbark upon anything resembling progreesive measures. '• Chinese wool' dealers have for years been trying to eliminate the practice of weighting wool with waijer, - sand, and othef adulterants; yet Ihe large majority of wool Teaching the Tientsin market (where moct wool /from North* China and Inner Mongolia 2s ex- * ported) is ' still hcavily adulteratejcL and has to be thoroughly re-cleanecL Mougolian shepherds in particular live at such a low economic and euU tural level that even Japanese admit that to entrust them with a seleetive brecding programme would be frultless. With the wool from this regidBi suitable only for- rug-making and . certain types of mixed weaving, Japan used only 215 tons of the total yield of 22,000 tons from here in 1934,. the last year for which figures are available. But It suffices to ihdicate that in spite of .the nearnetss of the source to Japan, this wool has found no real place in Japan 's market. » Katsuji Debuchi, fowner Japanese' ambassador. to the TJnited States, recently criticised Japan 's ambitions to develop an independent supply of wool as followH; "Experts are laughing at. theso plans, for they ate far from realisation. Even if they do materialise in the time specified, our demand will have risen itt the meantime. Japanese who attach greafc significance to fhe acquisition of such raw materials are liable to ignore the problem. of selling the country'* finished products abroad. "What Japan mnst devise is a system of marketing woollen textiles abroad • similar to , the , one ehe has developed for cotton products* We .must still obtain our wool from 'Australia,, our natural supply."- $ .