The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times Thursday, October 1, 1931. IN MANCHURIA.

Hokitika Guardian, 1 October 1931, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times Thursday, October 1, 1931. IN MANCHURIA.

Twe position in Manchuria, at the present appears to have temporarily lulled, but there is bound to be a conflict for supremacy between the three races involved. Manchuria is definitely Chinese territory, and a Chinese population has been pouring into it in increasing numbers—which reached over a million per year. The main artery of northern Manchuria, the Chinese Eastern railway, is also the outlet of the Russian Trans-Sib-erian system, and is controlled by a joint Russian and Chinese Board—an arrangement that gives endless opportunity for intrigue. From its central point, the great grain-centre of Harbin, there runs south to Changchun, Mukden, and the port of Dairen another line, of which all but the portion from Harbin to Chanchun forms the main artery of the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railway system, a vast semi-governmental organisation which controls the commerce of southern Manchuria. The vital needs of the rapidly increasing and already over-crowded population of Japan and her limited mineral , resources have made the maintenance of Japanese con. trol of Manchurian produce the chief concern of her statesmen. The situation is complicated by the increasing strength of nationalism in China, which naturally rebels against the limitation of her sovereignity in Manchuria, and by the necessity for the retention by Japan of Central and Northern China- as a market for her manufactures. Two schools of thought vie for the direction of Japanese policy. The “positive’ military school seeks, by the exercise of every legal power, and occasionally by strained interpretation of enforced treaties and by threats, to strengthen the position of Japan in Manchuria, and to restrict Chinese enterprise that would compete with Japanese. Against such action China, has made continuous resistance, and her restrictive regulations as to rights of domicile beyond the railway zones have produced many of the “300 outstanding matters of settlement” between the two nations, to which reference has been made in this week’s cable messages. The more liberal Japanese school, of which the present Foreign Minister is an exponent, prefers less uncompromising methods. It realms that, though a horse may be dragged to the wafer, it cannot He compelled to drink, and that the future of Japanese relations with China depends upon the free commercial exchange of raw materials and foodstuffs for Japanese manufactured goods, and that this is not possible without the continuance of more or less amicable relationships. Japan has already experienced the effects of one trade boy*

cott directed by China, against her. . The problem before this liberal school is to maintain all the present rights of Japan in Manchuria and also to maintain commercial relations, for it , knows, as a matter of economic fact, ' that twenty-five million Chinese subjects cannot be dragooned in submission to Japanese domination. At present it would appear that the Japj anese forces are- retreating to their own railway zone. Tt has been sug- , gested that the old agreement between Russia and Japan to respect each other’s spheres of influence in ManI chum,—nn agreement made in 1904, | and renewed in 1916, though no longer legally valid—has been revived. Probably, however, the pressure exercised hv other nations has much greater effect.