The Daily News. THURSDAY, MARCH 31. WHEN CHINA AWAKES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 351, 31 March 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, MARCH 31. WHEN CHINA AWAKES.

It bu been shown that China contain-j plates the introduction of universal' military training, and we have taken the opportunity of pointing out that such military training would give that great country a preponderance of troopß over almost any trained combination that might be brought into the field. It is interesting to note that China is entirely self-dependent; that with her internal resources she could live—or at least exist—indefinitely, simply because the majority of trading concerns and industries in the Empire are small. That is to say, there are no railway trusts, or oil rings, or any combinations which will starve the people in order to rig a market. China is not spendthrift, and it seems absurd to call the £54,000 owed by the Empire ten year* ago a "national debt." There has, of course, been added to this, since <ihe conflict with the nations, the indemnity then demanded, and which is ■ixty million pounds. China's four hundred million people therefore owe a great deal less than New Zealand's one million. China haa been satisfied with carefully attending to her internal affairs, and to the extra twenty-four million people who inhabit Mongolia, Manchuria, Chinese Turkestan, and Tibet, so that the total trade, at a careful estimate, is at present only about geventy-two millions, which covers both imports and exports. The Chinese is a born business man and a gambler. If he can be induced to get out of his age-old habit of concluding that what was good for his forefathers three thousand years ago is good' enough for him, his genius for making money will necessitate the use of the potential army he is going to raise. It is not to be thought that he has not at present an army. The Boxer outbreak found him unprepared, and there <was enough imitativeness of Western methods in the Empire to make the authorities recognise the value of an army. Even before the outbreak there were five divisions of effective troops of twenty thousand each. All these were drilled by foreign officers, for the Chinese difficulty is to get good officers of therr own. Mercenaries from Germany, France, and Scotland, and latterly from Japan, practically controlled the army. These troops were generally concentrated round Pairing. The Chinese army of the moment consists of 150,000 trained and efficient troops, armed with magazine rifles made in their own small-arms factories,, with high-class field-guns, ; and having to carry the cavalry the hardiest ponies in the world. Besides this standing array there are one million men receiving the pay of soldiers, and these are liable to be called out at any time by the provincial viceroys, and are ready for field service. The system of training is largely German, with, of course, the necesgary deference to existing conditions. The Chinese is as hardy as any soldier on earth; he is leae liable to disease because he eats leas food, and that of a plainer character than tlha Western soldier. His endurance i» incredible, »nd he is his own pack-horse. Under a scheme of universal military service the Chinese Government could put into the field a larger army than ths whole of the armies of the. world, and, like the Japanese army, this force could take the field, without any of the cumbrous commissariat that hampers the movements of all European armies. It is dictinctly unlikely that a Chinese i army would cross the water to strike a foe, for at present China has no navy. But the Chinese is an "ancestor-wor-shipper," and to him the land where thousands of millions of his forefathers sleep is sacred. The military spirit has been forced on China by the Great Powers.. These Powers have shown China what may be done by force, and China is learning the lesson. The "enlightenment" of the "heathen" Chinese J by Western peoples is an invitation by ] those people to conflict; and should China become Westernised and as am- . /bitious for blood as their relatives, the Japs, there may be an ill time in store ' for the nations that oppose "the Son i of Heaven." <