OVERCROWDED CHINA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 73, 16 September 1911, Page 9

OVERCROWDED CHINA.

Life, so far as the average Chinese is concerned, is merely a struggle for existence ; tile state of the "'submerged tenth" of the West can be likened to the state of. nine-tenths of the people of China. A writer in the Century Magazine describes vividly the social conditions of a people who have hopelessly overcrowded their limited territory, or, as he puts it, have "crowded upon the subsistence po«sibilities of their environment." To realise this one has ony Ito see the manner in which every square inch of good ground,is tilled; even the mountains and the hills have their crops. Nearly twenty per cent, of many of the farms is given up to the graves of ancestors, but otherwise land is too precious to devote to open squares, to ornamental gardens, or even to the production of foods that rank as luxuries. Superstition alone forbids the exploitation of mineral wealth, but all that the sea and the rivers can produce is exploited. Anything that swims or creeps, and even seaweed and kelp, are seized for the larder. Descending into details one is faced with conditions that, are deplorable, loathsome, but never humorous. All manner of animal life is eaten; the butcher does not scorn anything, and the fact that it has died a natural death does not exempt it from his knife. The (logs that eat the offal of their city are regarded as good food, livery part and portion of them is eaten, skin, hones and flesh. So great is the strain to relieve. starvation that many of the working men—-the coolies—are literally killing themselves by their exertions] The masses do not live, they subsist. What is the cause of it all? They have a. fertile country; they are industrious and peaceful. Tt is simply over-population. Ancestor-worship, early marriage, and the passion for big families, are some of the contributing causes. The problem, "What shall we do with the Chinese?" says the writer, from being a. f'alifornian, an Australian, and a Canadian question, will become a world question.