APPLIED SCIENCE IN CHINA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 91, 7 October 1911, Page 9

APPLIED SCIENCE IN CHINA.

There was a Viceroy named Chang Chi-Tung, and he was far-seeing and able. In the year ISBB he started, near Hankow, an iron and steel works. The i situation is btl miles inland, on the Yang- | tse river, but ocean steamers from all over the world may navigate the waterway, for it is deep, and at Hankow it is a mile wide. If you visited those works now you would see, not only the natural advantages under which it is being developed, but the latest machinery from Europe. The ore seems almost inexhaustible, and is of excellent quality. There are blast furnaces, SiemensMartin furnaces, a rolling-mill plant, two electric anil two hydraulic power stations, together with machine and repair shops. .Millions of tons of ore and millions of tons of good cooking coal are available for the company's purposes. About forty European technical experts are employed, and 20,000 Chinese workmen. The most astonishing thing is that this place is (iO miles inland, in the heart of a huge country blessed with a natural waterway, the river being .navigable to lehang, 420 miles higher up. In 181)3 a great cotton-mill, with 700 looms, was erected, and for years worked twenty-two hours a day, making yarn and doth from native cotton. The modern economist accepts the fact that the wealth of a nation depends upon the development of its industries, and that the great factors in such development are coal and iron and easy methods of transport. Judged by these standards we see the enormous potentialities of China. In every province of tha't empire minerals abound. Experts tell us that the coalfield in Shausi is sullicient to supply the whole world —at the present rate at which coal is being consumed—for several thousands of years. The Ho and Y r ang-tse rivers have a course of about 3000 miles. This curious nation built a grand canal, which a hundred years ago caused an Englishman to write: "In point of magnitude, our most extensive inland navigation in England can no more be compared to the grand trunk that intersects China than a park or garden fishpond to the great lake' of Windermere.''