CHINESE AFFAIRS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 254, 25 March 1914, Page 5

CHINESE AFFAIRS.

BRIGANDS- EVERYWHERE. A special message to a Sail Francisco paper the other day said: — The recent exploits of White Wolf, the robber chieftain of Hupeh province, have drawn attention generally to brigandage in China. At the present time it is being pursued as a profession, with more or less success, in several parts of the country, and the old-time method of stopping a robber's depredations by giving him a high governmental post has not always been successful. In Mongolia a considerable baud is forming under an outlawed Mongol Prince named Tao Slii-tao, apparently one of the numerous Mongol chieftains whose extravagance has brought them to ruin with Chinese money lenders. Hung-liutze—-red-haired robbers aTc indigenous to Mongolia, and of these Prince Tao is reported to have collected 15,000 in Eastern Inner Mongolia to ravage the Manchurian and Chih-li frontiers. An army has been sent against him and more doubtless will be heard from him.

In Manchuria there appears to be a chronic state of brigandage—as indeed for fifty years past. But numbers of the outlaws are being constantly taken and executed. <>

At Funing, in Kiangsu province, there is a well organised band whose purposes are not indiscriminate killing and robbing, but the systematic despoiling of the wealthy. These men. however, are being relentlessly pursued by General Chang Ilsun, who only a few days ago caused the execution of fifty-six of tliem at one time.

In the South may be noted one Choo, who tried unsuccessfully to loot C-m----ton and fled to Fushau. Uiifortuu-ite-ly some of the soldiers sent against him threw in their lot with him, and Cho# is at- present driving a brisk business. TIGER HSU. Associated with White Wolf was at one time a formidable bandit chief named Wang Tien-chung, but he succumbed to the proffer of a lucrative Government position. To-day he s renderng valuable service to his new masters. The famous "Tiger Hsu" was another wellknown robber whose claws were cut by an attractive offer. A similar proffer .was made to White Wolf, but it was refused. He is not only against the present, but against every government that savors of reform, his ideas and actions having their roots in the Taiping rebellion. The immense distances, the wildness of many regions of China, and the. want of even passable roads make it extremely difficult to proceed successfully against these bandits; and to some extent China has always suffered from them. But it cannot be questioned that two vears of revolution and relaxed authority have given to them exceptional opportunities, and the terrorism they exercise is badly holding up trade.