Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1941. CHINA AND WORLD ORDER.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1941. CHINA AND WORLD ORDER.

ENTERING on the fifth year of her Avar with Japan, China is not only to be credited with a heroic and, at the broadest view, wonderfully successful stand against unprincipled and brutal aggression, but is in a position to claim that she has made and is making a vital contribution to future world order. The facts were put pertinently by the Consul-General for China in New Zealand, Mr Wang Feng, at a large meeting in the New Zealand Chinese Association’s rooms in Wellington yesterday, when he asked: —

What would have been the situation in the Pacific and in the world today had China refrained from defending herself, and had surrendered to force?

As matters stand. Japan, whatever the ambitions, desires and aggressive intentions of her riders may be, is largely in bonds because of the “China affair.” In lour years ol bloodthirsty effort the Japanese have occupied an enormous amount of Chinese territory, but their hold on much ol this territory is exceedingly insecure. With upwards of a million men deployed on the vast. Chinese front, they are Io all appearance not within measurable distance of breaking the resistance ol the Chinese armies and nation.

Those who know China best declare that not only are her people incomparably more united than they were when , the Japanesebset out four years ago on what they thought was an easy task of conquest, offering large and speedy gains at small cost, but that China, in spite of all she has lost in the interval, is in many respects a much more powerful nation than she was in 1937. The fact stands for all to see that China, valiantly reorganising and building up her national life in her western territories, is absorbing a large part of Japan’s aggressive energy and power for harm.

The position, as Mr Wang Feng has reminded us, would have been tremendously different had China submitted tamely to Japan four years ago. Tn that event the white democracies undoubtedly would have found themselves involved in a life and death struggle, not only Avith the European Axis Powers, but with Japan, and that country would have drawn freely, in furtherance of totalitarian aims, on the enormous resources of China. Mr Wang Feng put the facts with studious moderation when he said: “China’s resistance is a part of the world’s general resistance to aggression.”

Much is to be said in these circumstances for the proposal advanced by the Chinese “Central Daily News,” a publication of official standing in Chungking, that a conference of all the democracies should be called in the United States with the object of concluding an agreement for military and economic co-operation on all fronts by the United States, Britain, Russia, and China against the Axis. It certainly may be hoped, too, that China will play a full part, when victory over aggression has been won, in building up world democracy and a new international order.