The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. MONDAY, JULY 16, 1928. THE NEW CHINA.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 July 1928, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. MONDAY, JULY 16, 1928. THE NEW CHINA.

The Nationalist Party which now virtually controls China has taken a step which, whether it ultimately achieves its purpose or not, can hardly fail to produce momentous consequences. The worst permanent grievance of which the Chinese have had to complain, arising out .of their relations with the Western Powers, is the enforcement of treaties imposed- upon China against her will. The greater part of the treaties which China is supposed to observe have been thrust upon, her at the bayonet’s point, and the Nationalist have always maintained that there can be nothing even remotely resembling independence and liberty for the Chinese till these inequitable and much detested ngreemnts are abrogated. Accordingly, comments an exchange the Nationalists propose that existing treaties shall he revised, that new treaties shall be arranged “on a basis of absolute equality and reciprocity,” and that China shall thus become for the first time for nearly' a century free and independent. The victorious Nationalists have resolved that “foreigners residing in China are to be treated the same, as Chinese,” a decision which threatens to sweep away all the mixed tribunals and the special forms of law by which the Western Powers have protected their nationals in the past. But an even more difficult and dangerous question is raised by the reference to “the new Nationalist tariff schedule.” In the past the Powers have most unjustly compelled China to adjust her tariffs largely to suit their economic convenience and interest, and they have also forced China, to set aside certain definite portions of her tariff revenue as security against foreign loans. In pursuance of these objects, the Powers some seventy years ago set up a foreign Inspector-Gen-eral in control of Chinese fiscal arrangements, and Sir Austen Chamberlain has already noted that the Nationalist proposals for a reversion of the tariff appear to ignore this long-stand-ing arrangement altogether. No doubt Birtain is honestly desirous of according to China a larger measure of fifscal and political independence than she has hitherto enjoyed. But there is a danger that the Nationalists, in their patriotic zeal, may set a dangerous pace.