THE NEW CHINA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3172, 24 April 1909, Page 7

THE NEW CHINA.

Fifteen hundred tons of pig iron from the iron and steel works of Hanyang, China, travelled 600 miles down the Yangtse Kiver, and 14,000 miles by sea, and were laid down in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1907. Thus did commercial competition come knocking at America's doors to serve notice 'that the new China was no longer a surmise, but a fact. Under semi-official management 3,500 workmen at Hanyang turn out daily 500 tons of pig iron and 250 tons of steel. They made the rails and much other constructive material for the 750 mihs of Pekin-Hankow railroad, and for most of the other Chinese lines since then, besides exporting in 1907 87,000 tons. They are putting up another plant for the manufacture of cars, steel bridges and other structural material. That is a partial expression of the new China, and in such language there is no equivucation. Thirty years ago the Chinese Government purchased the first railroad constructed on Chinese soil, tore it up and dumped it in the sea. It had, unfortunately, offended the Earth Dragon. Thirteen years ago the mammoth Empire was pitifully beaten by little Japan. She had not considered her army worih attending to. Then years ago the late Emperor tried to deduce the logic of events and reform his people, but an anti-foreign court and a reactionary Dowager dethroned him, exiled his counsellors, and undid his work. Then they set about to defy the world. They incired the Boxers, murdered the 'foreigners, and besieged the Legations in Pekin, but they only succeeded in encompassing their own ruin. A wiser couit 1 back to Pekin in 1902. Perhaps [ they had not learned to love the foreigner. any better for his instruction, but they had discovered that the only China that could resist his encroachments was a unified China, a China of railroads and telegraphs, a China of well-drilled soldiers and modern rifles, a China that exploited its mines and pushed its manufactures, and, above all, a China with a national spirit and a thorough-<roing education.