THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1908. CHINA’S FUTURE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43380, 1 October 1908, Page 2

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1908. CHINA’S FUTURE.

In all international questions which suggest a strong element of peril, it is well to be on our guard against ungrounded apprehensions. Perhaps one thing which has fostered the ever present sense of the yellow peril in our national mind has been the national sense of wrong committed in connection with the opium trade. Possibly to the uninformed the expiation of that crime lies all in the dark future. In one sense it certainly does. Yet Nemesis has already overtaken the British in a financial form. Only the other day, in conversation with a gentleman, who has had years’ experience of residence in China, he said “ Great Britain has lost trade with China for thirty years past owing to the opium crime. Yet the Chinese, realising that the British, as a Christian nation are against this evil, are disposed to exercise the charity which covereth a multitude of sins, and to show the British a friendly spirit. The Chinese merchant, recognising the honesty of British merchants’ dealings, is honest in response, though he is not always so strict m his dealings with men of his own nationality. Ultimately we believe the import trade of China will be done chiefly with Britain and j America.” The shrewdness of the Chinese is evidenced by the way in which they

now contest concessions which have been wrung from them in past times of weakness. They will raise a technical point, and fight the question out. In the matter of the Pekin Syndicate, a syndicate which held the monopoly of a coal mine said to contain coal sufficient to supply the whole world for two thousand years, exception was taken by the Chinese to the way in which the syndicate had translated the agreement to suit themselves. Investigation proved the syndicate to have been at fault in the matter, and the British minister there being unable to uphold their case, they lost the monopoly, though the provincial gentry reimbursed the syndicate for all expenses incurred. In the matter of their railway construction the Chinese show a shrewd desire to keep the work in the hands of their own people. Not only the workmen, but often the engineers are Chinese. In her strategic railway from Pekin via Kalgan through Mongolia, to get to the Siberian border, China has none but Chinese employed. But though China is awaking in the matter of modern armaments and is determined to have an army and navy second to none, she is naturally the most peaceable nation in the world. In this resolve to have a peerless fleet and army, she has been retarded in the realisation of her ambitions by financial considerations. When, however, she has'exploited her immense resources she will have wealth for anything. There is no doubt about it that if China wished to do so she could make it uncomfortable for the rest of the world. But she is not a bellicose people, and she does not need to colonise. She now inhabits practically only a little over one fifth of her immense territory of more than five million square miles. But she realises the necessity of being on the defensive, perhaps particularly with respect to the Japanese, though she is protected at present by the treaties between Britian and Japan, also France and Japan, and Russia and Japan, which treaties compel these nations to preserve the integrity of China. Though the Chinese are conservative, yet they possess remarkable adaptability, great physical endurance, and keen intelligence; in fact all the qualities which in an unchristiauised state would make them a very unpleasant factor in modern international quarrels, supposing they were to take the aggressive attitude.

But in the Missionery Conference at Shanghai, last year at which the Chinese government was represented, it was stated by an official gentleman present that Christianity has come and was being embraced by the people. Such information coming from a gentleman who is familiar with China and her people, strengthens us in the view that China is territorially self-sufficient and will not need New Zealand, at any rate for a colony.