The Powers and the Unity of China

Abstract

CHINESE propaganda tends to foster a flattering and sentimental misconception of the Far Eastern situation as, in essence, a conflict between China and Japan. But in spite of the political unification of China and the obvious breakdown of the semblance of a united anti-Chinese front, the picture is false. It reflects a point of view which was not held by Sun Yat-sen and would indeed be hard to find in Chinese revolutionary literature before the advent of the Nanking Government in I928. Then at least it was recognized that China had the status of a subcolony, as Dr. Sun expressed it, a term chosen to indicate that China was under the domination not of one but of many powers. This is still the true perspective. The real struggle is between the powers that control, in one degree or another, the Pacific area. This does not mean that imperial rivalries are silhouetted against a background of massive and tempting Chinese impotence. On the contrary, the specific development of the Chinese nationalist movement and its evolution into civil war between the Nanking Government and the Chinese Soviets are important factors modifying the situation and linking it with world developments. During 1936 China has suffered from the recent phase of the Pacific struggle, the increasing rivalry between England and Japan. There has been much to illustrate this growing antagonism. One example is Shanghai, where the municipal electors of the International Settlement are at last realizing that the city is almost completely under Japanese domination and an attempt is being made to prevent a formal increase in Japanese membership of the Municipal Council. Few can have been blind to the purpose of the Leith-Ross Mission and its attempt to safeguard the interests of British bondholders and preserve what remains of British financial hegemony in China, not only against Japan but against the United States. A further illustration is the conspiracy of silence in the British press about the Communist situation in China and the all too obvious anxiety of officially inspired publicists to emphasize the progress, under Chiang K'ai-shek, of a country about which, not so very long ago, they had little to say that was favorable. Every blow struck at China, such as the Japanese smuggling in the northern provinces, is a blow at British influences and interests in the Far East.