THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 1910. THE OUTBURST IN CHINA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10031, 29 April 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 1910. THE OUTBURST IN CHINA.

There is a marked similarity be tween the present anti-foreign out- ! burst in China and many similar outbreaks in the past. The, missionaries were the early objects of attack, and then the mob assailed all foreigners indiscriminately. But the dearness of rice was apparently the first cuae of the rising. A hungry mob is the worst kind of mob to deal with. Even the French Bevolution began with a bread riot, and a rice riot may prove hardly less formidable unless it is promptly checked. The most significnt phase of the outbreak is the statement that the foreign-drilled trocp3 have joined the rioters, and that the Chinese officials declare that they are unable to protect the foreigners. Acute observers have been hinting for some time past that the new political, regime, which is already in its inaugoral stage in. China,, will not hj&

brought to its fulfilment without widespread disturbances. The first stirrings of national self-conscious-ness seem to be moving the populace in Hunan, and also in Hupeh, to expel the foreigners. With their brains inflamed by the new political ideas, and their judgment beclouded by hunger, the Chinese mobs may easily get beyond the control of officials and j troops, who are either covertly or openly in sympathy with them. And when it ia borne in mind that the j population of Hunan is 21,000,000, while the population of hupeh is 30,000,000, it will be seen that the amount uf force necessary to check j that enormous deadweight, if it once acquires momentum, will be very considerable. The fact that the I Japanese Consulate has been looted arid burnt, while the British Consulate was unharmed, is significant. The Japanese are probably the best hated of all the foreigners in China. The Taisu Maru incident, when Japan subjected the national honour i of China to humiliation, still rankles, | and the aggressive tactics of the Jap-1 anese in Manchuria, which is still , nominally a province of China, have , • embittered the Chinese against them even in the rezTiote inland regions. Japan, moreover u more favourably , situated for exacting reparation and making reprisals than any other for eign Tower. When the Chinese turn/

Ed rusty in consequence cf Japan's veto upon their railway construction schemes in Manchuria, the Tokio war Offic3 contented itself with remarking that it was "ready for all eventualities." It is the misfortune of the ioreign missionaries in China that the Chinese mobs have come to regard them as the "avantcouriers" of foreign aggression. The Chinese, with their newly-awakened national consciousness, are becoming leas ai>d less tolerant of foreign aggression in any form. And even if he symptoms of inflammation, due tu the presence of foreign bodies in the system, are abated in Changsha, the indications certainly pjint to similar eruptions in other parts of China, as long as the prime cause of the trouble remains.