MINING IN CHINA

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 86, 2 October 1911, Page 8

MINING IN CHINA

China is at last to become a mining ?' country (says the National Review, ,-jS Shanghai), which remarks that the two J great peaceful agents of civilisation are the locomotive and the miner's pick. In *' i America, Australia, and Africa the picik: preceded! the locomotive, notes the wri- i tnr; in; China, on the contrary, mining * has only recently bee,n developed. Yot ;j mining promotes progress' in as many J ways as locomotion, he argues. It re- "1 quires scientific skill of a high order, it ,1 bring® capital into the country, anil fur- 'J niishes to home industries the raw mater- |f kls which would otherwise have to bo 4 imported. China has long been behind in J tliis fiald af enterprise, yet no territoy on * earth is better endowed with mineral wealth, audi we read: > "China possesses a huge store of mine- > rals. Almost every province in this Em- J pire is heavily mineralised, and almost «| every mineral known to mankind can "be J found somewhere or otlier throughout her 4,000,000 square miles of territory, i And yet China is importing coal and iron ii! and every sort of commodity involving j the use or application of minerals. Many ,1 millions of gallons of petroleum arc im- / j ported annually, and yet China possesses | what may some day prove to be the vast- ' est oil-fields of the world. She has irecenitly borrowed some £.20,000,000 sterling, and yet she owns goldfields of equal j value to any known in history. When we consider these facts, to say nothing abouit any other of the multifarious ap- ;J plications af the same incidence, we feel | more tham justified in attaching even •< greater importance to the work of the | pick in China than to the use of the I locomotive." i

As China has no capital and no ex- ■ pert mining engineers, she has recently "J accepted "the only solution of the mil*- ■ ing problem—the employment of foreign capital and the foreign expert." Tho jj Review encourages her to let the good ; work go on. i

Every facility should be given to Americans and Europeans to enter into > Chinese mining .operations with thft ; same ardor that they have shown in > subscribing to the Imperial Chinese rail- 1 road. The foreigner is to be protected , i in Ins .person, his property, and his po- , litieal rights as citizen of his own coun- ; try. Even if this necessitates a charge 1 in the laws of China, it must be accomplished, so that, ''by the pick arid shovel, the drill and the dynamite," the country | may open up the great treasure-house of ; wealth lying beneath her age-long pioneered and cultivated terrain." Tho Government and the people have at last seen this, .we are told, and mining, which*' will produce wealth, bring in Western science and mechanical skill and broaden the national outlook, has at last become as real a thing as the railroads in Man- , churia.