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COLINA LUPTON
The purpose of the opening account of the establishment of the British foothold in China and the development of Chinese attitudes to the whole outside world in the first thirty years of this century is really to explain the Chinese outlook today rather than to offer a new analysis of events. So much in the Chinese mentality is related to the humiliations suffered at the hands of arrogant and greedy foreigners; on a people who had always thought of themselves as the most civilised and intelligent in the world these made a profound impression. What emerges most clearly here is the way commercial interests dominated British policy in and towards China until as recently as Britain's involvement in the Japanese war. The legend (and Mr. Luard hints that he thinks, even today, that it is a legend) of a market of four hundred million eager buyers for British goods continually obliterated other considerations. Britain came to China for trade and the measures she took while there were designed largely to protect her commerce. Not until the 1930s did any feeling of sympathy for China emerge in Britain; in 1935 for instance, she made some effort to assist the Chinese economy, in particular to stabilise the currency, offering financial aid and advice and participation in joint ventures. But any goodwill which might have been engendered by this move was dissipated by the way British firms appeared interested only in whether and how they could carry on their businesses in Japanese-conquered parts of China, being otherwise indifferent to the inroads made on Chinese territory. Not until Britain and China were fighting side by side did the British government finally give up the so-called "treaty rights" which had been anachronistic for about thirty years—and this, the author points out with justice, was a moment when commercial interests were in abeyance.
Since the end of the second world war and the establishment of the Communist government in China the world has become a much smaller place, and Britain has declined to the status of a second-class power. Mr. Luard's book has one weakness in that as he chiefly discusses British policy it sometimes seems rather narrow: Britain is not now so important that her interests can be considered in isolation from those of the rest of the world. To ponder how she can best promote her own influence rather than to discuss it in the context of world affairs and world survival seems shortsighted. This slightly distorted emphasis—