CHINESE FOR TAHITI.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 106, 25 October 1911, Page 8

CHINESE FOR TAHITI.

AN ISLAND PROBLEM. MYSTERIOUS MOVEMENTS OF THE YELLOW MAN. By Telegraph—Prees Association. Auckland, October 23. By the steamer Maheno yesterday there arrived in Auckland a party of forty-Beven Chinese en route to Tahiti. The island boat now almost regularly carries large numbers of Chinamen to Papeete, and the total for the past three months is considerable. Why they go, and what they do when they get there, arc questions fraught with a certain amount of interest, and were the subject of an interview this morning with Mr. J. A. Phillips, a well-known resident of Tahiti, at present on a visit to Auckland.

"Where do the Chinese go to?" said Mr. Phillips. "Well, that's not easy of explanation. For two years past they hav« been arriving in Papeete in large numbers, but just where they drift to is a problem. The party to leave Auckland by the Navua on* Wednesday will probably do as most previous parties have done. For a while, perhaps a fortnight, they will do casual work on the plantations, then they will disappear. The Chinese in Tahiti as a type are above the ordinary. Very few are coolies, and mostly they belong to the merchant class. At the present time the Chinese population totals well on a thousand, and is fast reaching the combined strength of the European population. Moreover, they bid fair to monopolise trade.

"At present the biggest business in I Papeete is carried on as a branch conI cern by a well-known Auckland firm, but 1 the principal French and German houses complain that the Chinese are gradually under-selling and monopolising the whole of the native trade. They have established a name for integrity, and have steadily increased their influence, until it embraces all the islands in the group. The vanilla trade is entirely in the hands of John Chinaman, and'his influence throughout the group is extending all the while. "The Chinese immigrant, however, does not come to swell 'the long-established celestial population of Papeete. Each group of new arrivals becomes 'swallowed up,' and presumably goes into different islands to complete the network by which most of the native trade is drawn into the hands of the Chinese merchants. "The extraordinary thing is, however, that almost every month comes a*new batch of Chinese.'and just where they disappear to is something that even the European resident in the group cannot quite explain. The French C T overnment imposes no substantial embargo upon their advent, and very few go out, while hundreds come in."