CONFLICT IN CHINA

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 347, 7 May 1928, Page 10

CONFLICT IN CHINA

A NATION that makes a luxury of war among its own people is bound soon or later to clash extravagantly with its neighbours and other nations having interests in the zone of conflict. This has been the experience of China, whose rival war-lords threaten to make a vicious habit out of a had policy. Last year several of the major Powers found it necessary to send warships and expeditionary forces to Southern China ports in orejer to protect their nationals and commercial interests under treaty rights. Their combined action had a disciplinary effect without recourse to anything like serious warfare. Now, the trouble has spread further north where, on this occasion, the Chinese Nationalist forces have clashed with the Japanese. So far, there has been more noisy talk than action between the representatives of two races who in no way love one another. A brittle temper actuates both, and because of this sensitive racial enmity the circumstances of the present quarrel might very easily precipitate a severe conflict. Then, in the background, but not far back, are the mischievous Communists of Soviet Russia whose malign influences throughout China, though definitely broken recently by the Nationalists’ crushing defeat of Bolshevism in Canton, would certainly have included inflammatory propaganda against Japan. So, it may be said, that on all sides of an ugly triangle, there is neither brotherly love nor the urge for peaceful brotherhood. Out of all the chronic confusion in China one thing at least is clear and steady: Whatever happens in the sorting out of China’s political tangles and internecine strife, Japan will never surrender her interests in Chinese territory. As a Japanese publicist sees the problem, China might be able to get along without Japan, but it is exceedingly doubtful whether Japan could maintain her existence without China. It was because of this need that Japan openly has sympathised with the Chinese Nationalist movement toward stable government. So long as forces in China were aiming at China’s peaceful unification, Japan was willing to give the revolution moral support. It becomes a different story, however, when the march of revolt jostles or menaces Japanese interests in China. Then, of course, the rising sun of Japan assumes the fiery hue of a storm. If the storm breaks in Manchuria, both Chinese Nationalists and Russian Bolsheviks will have something worse than revolt and propaganda in their hands and heads.