CO129-440 - Others & Individuals - 1916 — Page 81

promote what was called the opening up of China. Pioneer work was always very hard, very often unre- munerative, and it also required a great deal of patience. (Hear, hear.) In the days to which he was referring any tentative attempts in the direction of the opening up of China seemed to show that if sanguine people cast their bread upon the waters" they would have to live to a green old age before they could have more than the faintest hope of finding any of it again. In the last few years considerable changes had taken place in China, and he thought it was not unlikely that Mr. Ainscough would refer to those changes, and perhaps be able to indicate to thein what effect those changes were having upon trade. His (Mr. Ainscough's) experience might enable him to show them how practical advantage could be taken of those changes. His qualifications for forming a sound opinion on those subjects were excellent. After taking a full course of administration in commerce at Manchester University, and passing in Chinese where he was examined by their friend, Mr. Byron Brenan he spent a good many years in mercantile work both in this country and in China. After giving up that work, he travelled overland from China to Burma, and stayed for about eight months in Western Szechuan. He need hardly say that this journey involved a good deal of discomfort and was not unattended with danger. During the last sixteen months Mr. Ainscough had been engaged, on behalf of the Board of Trade, in investigating and reporting upon the condition of affairs in the interior of China; he had written a great many most interesting reports. He (the Chairman) had not read them all, but those which he had read he thought were extremely interesting. In the course of his travels Mr. Ainscough had journeyed over nearly all the main trade routes of China and had visited 18 of the 21 provinces of that vast country, so that with an experience of that kind he was entitled to an attentive hearing which he was sure those present would accord him. (Applause.)

Mr. AINSCOUGH said :—

To deal adequately with the vast and comprehensive question of British Trade in China is a task well-nigh

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impossible in the limited time at my disposal on this occasion, but in addressing the Far Eastern Section of the London Chamber of Commerce and the China Association, I feel sure that the majority of those present are already well acquainted-many of them from long years of residence in the East-with the conditions and general trend of events in the past. With your permission, therefore, I propose to confine my remarks this afternoon to certain vital problems and tendencies which have engaged my careful attention in the course of the recent mission throughout the interior of China-a mission which has embraced almost every province, and certainly every important trade route from Manchuria to the Shan States, and from the coast ports to the Tibetan border.

The interior of China has in the past been regarded by the average British merchant in Shanghai and the larger Treaty Ports as a terra incognita, a vast area where communications were difficult, currency con- ditions chaotic, and where there was little security for life or property; and, inasmuch as the foreign merchant was not allowed to hold land or buildings in his own name beyond the Treaty Port limits, and pioneering journeys in the interior demanded a know- ledge of the language and customs of the people which he did not possess, he regarded the hinterland as being well beyond the pale of safe and satisfactory trading. In this he was encouraged by his Chine-e entourage of compradores and dealers in the open ports, who relieved him of financial risk by guaranteeing native accounts, discouraged him from learning the language by making pidgin English the lingua franca of foreign trade, and facilitated intercourse to such an extent that the British merchant was able to conduct a steady, moderately safe business with quite a satisfactory margin of profit without troubling himself as to the ultimate destination, conditions of distribution of his imports, or the origin and conditions of production of his exported articles. The little clique of native com- pradores and merchants in the meantime amassed con- siderable fortunes, and developed trade only in those channels most profitable to themselves. The system was, in fact, a survival of the time-honoured Co-Hong

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