The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1912. CHINA'S FINANCE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 68, 13 November 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WE DNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1912. CHINA'S FINANCE.

It lias been generally understood for a considerable time, since details of her finances became known, that China needed something like £60,000,000 to reconstruct her internal administration and place her affairs on what may be considered a satisfactory basis. It is not, therefore, surprising to learn from recent cable messages that she has been driven to appeal to the Six Powers for financial aid once again. The “Six Power Croup” grew out of an informal agreement between England and‘France for the joint conduct of their financial operations in China, entered into some time before the great war which waged on China’s soil. For some time those two Powers were left very much to themselves in the apparently remunerative Chinese loan business, but a private agreement was made by the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank to share all Chinese business with the German-Asiatic Bank ,which, it is authoritatively stated is really an Imperial organisation, and Germany was admitted to this financial coalition. America soon afterwards demanded the right to participate in whatever financial advantages were to be secured by dealing with China, and on the conclusion of the war Russia and Japan were also' admitted to partnership. The grip of the Six Powers included above is a pretty powerful one from any point of view—and especially from that of finance Remembering past happenings, it is not surprising to find China ,so exasperated after long delays that she was driven to borrow outside the limit, and managed' to obta n some substantial accommodation, but nothing approaching the £60,000,000 loan which the Powers had practically promised and regarding which negotiations have so long continued. In response to her appeal to the open market finally the Anglo-Bussian Trust decided to float a £10,000,000 loan for China in London, and appl’cations for the new investment poured in faster than they could be filled. .Mr C. B.

Crisp, 11 1 e Trusts’s. Agent, in Jiis coyimuuications to the London papers points out that the statement of the Six Powers and of the British Foreign Office to the effect that the Chinese G.ihelie or Salt Tax is already mortgaged to secure the Boxer indemnity

is quite misleading The tax spoken of produces £7,250,000 a year; the yearly payment on the Boxer indemnity 'absorbs only £0,200,000, and if tins £10,000.000 loan extends over forty years, not only can all charges on it he met out of the. Salt Tax, but

there will, he says, he a surplus still available for other purposes of quite £2,000,000. The “Six Powers” objected very strongly at first to the loan being raised at all in this independent method, but despite these objections the loan, was proceeded with and quite easily subscribed it i,s quite freely stated in financial circles that China could obtain a good deal more money in London in the same way, but this will by no means suit the book of the great six who desire to make the most of China’s necessities, as they always have done in the past.