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sought. I have a record of the principal people I saw and what they told me, but it is far too long to include in this report. I was further provided with all the statistics, maps, particulars of factories, &c., that I required, so that, although the time available was short, it was, I think, fully used, and I obtained a very definite and detailed picture of what was happening in Western China, which I shall give in broad outline in the pages that follow.
14. I was not able in the time available to visit the war zones or those very large areas of China behind the Japanese lines which are still under the control of the Chinese Nationalists. The picture that I give is, therefore, primarily of Western China, principally of the provinces of Yunnan, Szechuan and Kansu. Szechuan is now the nerve centre of Chinese resistance apart from those areas where mobile and guerrilla forces are operating. It must not be understood from this that the Chinese Nationalist forces are only operating in these three provinces; in fact they are in control of at least five-sixths of Chinese territory, but their main industrial and administrative effort is now concentrated in the western provinces as far as possible from the danger of Japanese bombing. Further to the north-west the country is less accessible and a great deal of it is mountainous and desert, while the vast Province of Sinkiang is in a special position as will be explained later. Nevertheless, there exist great natural resources in the north-west, and the area around Paoki and Sian is developed by a railway and also has road transport. There is, however, at the present time the greatest difficulty in getting supplies so far north, especially anything in the way of machinery or heavy goods. The cost of gasoline is too heavy to make it practicable, and in addition the political situation with the Communist Border Government leads the Central Government to concentrate its energies upon those provinces under its own direct control.
15. I visited Hong Kong and stayed with the Governor mainly in order to contact the various groups who were interested in the Chinese situation from different angles. I saw and had talks with Rogers, the financial adviser; Whittan, the tea adviser; Mme. Sun Yat-sen and her group; T. V. Soong; Gunther Stein; J. J. Patteson (of Jardine Mathesons), and a number of other Taipans, as well as a good many Chinese and others connected with the Administration. I then proceeded to Shanghai, where I saw the Taipans, and so on to Tokyo. On my return via Formosa and Canton. I had some opportunity of seeing the conditions in the Japanese colonial possessions and the occupied parts of China.
16. In my talks with American representatives and also with the Chinese and the British sympathisers with China, I was constantly urged to visit America and report to the Administration there in the hope that there might be better co-ordination between the British and the American policy, as this was looked upon as one of the most vital factors in the salvation of China. I consequently flew across the Pacific to Washington and en route was able to meet and talk with the High Commissioner and the President in the Philippines, and to hear their views upon the future rôle of Japan in the Pacific. I also had a long talk with the Naval Governor of Guam on this and other Pacific problems. I concentrated as far as possible upon immediate issues, bearing in mind all the time their relationship to the ultimate reconstruction of China and the part that might be played in tha reconstruction by Great Britain. I found the outlook of most of the British representatives in Eastern China singularly short-sighted upon this issue, though they are beginning to realise that the situation in China has completely changed and that their rôle in the future, if they have one at all. will be very different from that which they have played in the past.
The references in this report to we refer to myself and Mr. G. M. Wilson, who accompanied me as a friend and in a secretarial capacity. He was present at most of the interviews that I had and acquired a very good knowledge of the personalities and problems of the countries we visited.
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General Background.
17. I shall not attempt to recapitulate the well-known history of the last twenty years in China, or even the more recent history of the last two years, as this latter. I understand. has been dealt with far more thoroughly and accurately than I could attempt in despatches from the ambassador. I would, however, like to make certain general observations upon the background to the present phase of China's struggle for national independence.
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18. During the pre-revolutionary era of Manchu imperialism, every effort was made to destroy the political initiative of the people. The official class. dependent on the ruling régime for its position and exploiting the people by various forms of well-recognised "squeeze," was naturally anxious to avoid all criticism of its methods. The Board of Censors, which theoretically attended to the petitions for redress by the people and had the power to impeach officials. was. in fact, largely the creature of the official class. The only form of political activity was when some local official went beyond all reasonable bounds with his squeeze. Then the people would rise against him and try to drive him out of office by force. If they succeeded in getting a more reasonable appointment in his place they were fully satisfied and all agitation died down. It was this incipient rebellion against isolated officials that the revolutionary movement tried to make use of in its early stages. Under the old régime any person who busied himself with trying to bring about the redress of wrongs or the abolition of squeeze among officials was looked upon as a revolutionary and treated accordingly. There resulted from long years of this method of government an almost complete political apathy amongst the people. Added to this political inertia was the Taoist and Confucian outlook, the one of negative action and the other of giving way to all forms of aggression, together with an insistence upon the exact performance of all social rituals by the scholar gentry whose function was to keep the people quiet and well ruled. It was not considered to be the function of the people to participate in any way in their own government.
The whole atmosphere was therefore one of let things alone." if there are evils like " squeeze and face," leave them alone unless they become too unbearably bad. Do not insist upon progress or change; if it comes, well so much the better. but it is boorish to insist and if things should stand in the way, well, there they are and they can't be helped or remedied.
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19. It was largely against this attitude of corrupt officialdom and inertia, associated with the Manchu system of viceregal administration, that the revolution was originally aimed, as is shown by the three principles of Dr. Sun Yat-sen which formed the basis of the revolution and are still accepted by the Kuomintang. But China is a vast country with an immense population, and it is bound to be a long time before the habits and traditions of centuries can be changed. Amongst the younger officials and administrators there is a very strong realisation that the old traditions of inefficiency and corruption must go. but amongst many of the older men they still survive, even though in a modified form. The younger ones tend in some instances to become disillusioned and to accept the bad state of affairs as inevitable, and so lose their drive for reform. As in the case of many revolutionary movements, the first leaders tended to react violently and with extreme ideas to all the evils of the old régime and the revolution adopted a semi-Communist form, many of its institutions and ideas being influenced by the Russian precedent. Since the early days, however, there has come a tendency to revert to more reactionary and less revolutionary ideas, so that the Kuomintang to-day is not only not revolutionary in its outlook, but very definitely hostile to the Communists who carry on the revolutionary tradition. The Communists claim that they are in the true line of succession to the revolutionary leaders, and that the Kuomintang is reverting to the principles of pre-revolutionary China, but they also profess complete loyalty to the Generalissimo in the struggle for Chinese national independence against Japan. 20. The New Life Movement, which has been revived and is under the special patronage of Mme. Chiang, is, in essence, a puritanical movement, but so far it has not made a great deal of headway. Though it is much talked about and has a good deal of theoretical support, it has not been a great force to achieve practical results. Some of Madame's outspoken articles state the position with great candour and condemn root and branch the old methods. The Generalissimo is equally anxious to bring about reforms, but he realises the difficulty of displacing older officials who have influence and whose loyalty he feels it necessary to retain at the present critical time. The fact that the Communists are fighting strongly and openly against the old corruption tends to bring a political atmosphere into this struggle for reform. A number of the best of the younger Chinese have become Communists or Communist sympathisers from this point of view, and the antipathy of the Kuomintang party machine to the Communists makes it difficult to utilise the drive for efficiency and honesty by the Communists as part of a united attack on the evil. The anti-Red bogey also provides a
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