CO129-491 - Public Offices - 1925 — Page 535

For other recent articles on China see THE LABOUR MONTHLY:-

May, 1925. Sun Yat Sen's Life and Work. July, 1925. The Writing on the Chinese Wall.

By TANG CHIN CHE. By W. N. EWER

Copies of these numbers can be obtained from 162 Buckingham Palace

Road, London, S.W.I

"FACE PIDGIN"-THE CHINESE STRUGGLE

T

By TIEN SEN SHIAO

HE events now taking place throughout China are the biggest thing that has happened since October, 1917. But in 1917 the stage was crowded with the happenings

of the great Imperialist War, shaking the world from Belgium to Mesopotamia and beyond. Capitalism had, to all intents, broken down in Russia, then fed with Allied loans and a meagre supply of the munitions for which the Russians were pleading; and the Revolution burst forth, as it were, without the full knowledge of all those who, in ordinary times, would have strained every nerve to throttle it.

To-day, the stage is clearer. Capitalism in China is prosperous, active and alive.

A great blow has been struck. The bankers of the Consortium capitals, London, New York, Tokyo and Paris, are staggered, and in front of them the four Governments cry out unison," and at once begin, each according to his desires, to discuss a different policy, all seeking the opportunity to slip further into China whilst the others are not looking.

Merchants and business men in Shanghai, Tientsin and elsewhere in China are sending frantic cablegrams to their London offices, urging pressure to be brought on the British Government to carry out the policy of the firm hand, meaning more machine- guns and more dead Chinese.

Enormous interests are at stake; interests which, in their potentialities at any rate, dwarf those Britain held in Russia into

nsignificance.

China has been called "a Paradise for employers," the happily coined phrase of the American Secretary of the Chinese Y.M.C.A. 1"To lose face" is an idiom of Chinese origin (Deu Lien), which has now come into everyday English use. Pidgin " is a well known expression among Anglo-Chinese in the East, e.g.," that is his pidgin " meaning "that is his business." When an Anglo- Chinese controversy arises, involving national prestige, it is sometimes colloquially defined as being a matter of "Face Pidgin."

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