THE ECONOMIC FACTORS.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20278, 21 August 1937, Page 6

THE ECONOMIC FACTORS.

The struggle between China and Japan is not simply the outcome of some incident that was held to involve national prestige. It may be the culmination of a tenseness that has marked their relations for some years for even the Communist forces in China offered to join with the troops of lhe Nanking Government if the leaders there would make war on Japan. Beneath all these things probably lies an economic policy. Japan cannot grow sufficient foodstuffs to feed the domestic population, nor can she produce more than a fraction of the raw materials needed to keep tlio big industrial machine moving. China, and especially Northern China, can make good these deficiencies, and at the same time provide a huge market for Japanese goods. That is probably the factor that is inllueueing Japanese policy at the present time. The American publicist, Willard Price, writing on this aspect said: “Japan has been buying cotton from America, India and Egypt, but all three of these countries have seen fit to raise tariffs against Japanese goods. Japan, in reprisal, is now feverishly developing vast cotton plantations in North China.” Elio expects very soon to get the bulk of the supply from Shantung. The Chinese farmers there have been supplied with free cotton seed and are guaranteed a price for all the cotton they can produce. Last year they marketed 400,000 bales. That development is the result of Japanese enterprise, but it so happens that the new supply is still grown in a foreign land, and one in which the authorities have shown a decided anti-Japanese spirit. That explains the determination of Tokio to create a separate unit in the north; one like Manchukuo, completely under Japanese control, it has been estimated that Japanese investments in Shantung and Ilopei provinces aggregate £12,000,000. Inland there are valuable deposits of iron oro and Japan is seriously short of that commodity, and there are other resources that would bo of immense value to the energetic people of Nippon. The quarrel, then is not solely ono of prestige, but the outcome of economic policies that could not be reconciled. W lien she created Mancliukuo Japan told the world that sho had no territorial designs on any Chinese territory south of the Great Wall, but she at once proceeded to secure vast economic interests there, and now the time is deemed ripe for consolidating the position.