The Sun FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1927. A PARADISE OF PIRATES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 235, 23 December 1927, Page 8

The Sun FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1927. A PARADISE OF PIRATES

NOW, Barabbas was a Chinaman.” Such might very well he a new version of the Biblical story of a robber for approximate service in the Far East. Under divided rule and the demoralising effects of constant internecine war China has become a paradise of pirates and bandits. Bobbery is one of the main industries of the vast republic and now employs the greatest number of hands. The work undoubtedly is less arduous than turning a treadmill for the irrigation of a paddy held and obviously a great deal more thrilling and profitable. All this is inevitable in a land largely given over to civil war. Every man who is unemployed either takes service in some army or joins a successful bandit’s band. From the coastal cities the alternative to hard labour for a pittance is piracy, in which profits are high, though there is, of course, occasionally, a greater risk of the pirate losing his head. The Chinese national practice of robbery under arms, banditry, and piracy on a spectacular scale, has become so extensive and vicious as to compel the attention of other nations with vital interests in China. While angry members of the House of Commons bombard Sir Austen Chamberlain, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with questions about the thieving confiscation of British merchants’ goods in Shantung, Boyal Navy gunboats are bombarding the craft and villages of bold Chinese pirates on and along the Yangtse River. Is is not a burlesque of modern naval power that the two greatest navies in the world should be engaged in raids upon illicit traffic? Prohibition and rum-running in American waters, banditry and piracy in China and Chinese waters —a mad, but amusing world. And these are problems beyond the wit and will of the League of Nations. It has to he admitted that impressive naval reprisals on Chinese pirates have but little remedial effect xipon the serious business. The pirates, whose headquarters are in Bias Bay, not far from Canton, are daring. Moreover, according to a wellinformed correspondent of the “New Statesman, they adopt modern methods and exercise these with thorough efficiency. Their victims are not tortured or killed, but are given a cup of tea, after they have been robbed of all their valuables. Wealthy foreigners and important personages are taken into captivity to await ransom. Indeed, piracy in China is run on up-to-date lines like a laundry. As in most modern businesses there are employers and employees. It is said that any enterprising man with capital and influential connections with the Government, invests in piracy, buys a ship, hires a crew, pays big wages, and does not grumble at the high taxes on his nefarious profit. When foreign governments protest the Chinese administrators blandly assert that they have no authority. They are very, very sorry, hut nothing is done about it. . Thus, in these exasperating circumstances, the British Government recently took action. It sent warships to the pirates lair and there perpetrated a booming farce. Pirate villages were destroyed with all the thoroughness of the British Navy in action. The destruction did not perturb the former inhabitants. They had prudently abandoned their mud huts, took refuge in the hills, and when the smoke and the ships had cleared away, returned to the littered village sites and rebuilt their hovels. Banditry is even worse, and will continue so long as China remains without stable government. Foreigners can do nothing, hut patiently wait for China to work out her own salvation. And China has never been in a hurry.