A
:
there is not one of my colleagues in Peking who would take the responsibility for expressing any definite
opinion or of placing concrete proposals before his
Government.
It would be hard to say what genuine grievances the Cantonese have. Declarations by C.C. Wu and
the son of Sun Yat sen, recent reports regarding
negotiations, and the general attitude of the dominant
red faction would certainly load one to believe that
they are filled with a bitter hatred of Great Britain,
and that they hope, by taking advantage of the alleged economic grievances of the strikers, to compel the
Hongkong Government to come to terms with the strikers
at an early date and to submit to further impossible and humiliating concessions. The Bolsheviks openly direct and encourage this faction, and so long as it remains predominant, I have little hope that any attempts at conciliation will meet with success. We have, incident.
the ally, no right or power alone to offer to/Canton
Government control, over local Customs revenues, but I feel that neither this nor a generous allocation of Boxer indemnity funds for education or public utility schemes would produce any good result. Internal
dissensions aro, however, beginning to manifest themselves
Except in Kuangtung, Bolshevik influence and prestige
have suffored severely throughout the whole of China, oven
in extreme Nationalist and student circles. Tho high-
handed policy of the Soviot Government and their
threats to resort to force during the recent dispute on
the Chinese Eastern Railway were much resented; while the failure of the oxtremista to profit by Chang Tso-lin's temporary collapse to set up a Communist Government in
2
Manchuria
117