CO129-499-3 Canton situation- governor's despatches 12-2-1927 - 10-3-1927 — Page 5

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I have often said that Chinese merchants are mostly poor.

Few of them have as much as $100,000 or $200,000 and those

who are worth $1,000,000 are still rare. The majority of

the Chinese then have no money.

As to industry in China,

outside of the concessions

I mean I have not yet seen a factory which can employ as

many as 20,000 or 30,000 workmen. The Yangtsze Factory in

Wong Shek Kong has been closed.

There is yet another legacy to us from the Past which

I will mention; I refer to officials of the ancient regime,

most of whom are corrupt, take no care for the interests of the people, and whose only skill is to make profit for themselves. They are the offsprings of the Manchus and the militarist goverments during the past 15 years. These old- time officials are partly bandits. And there is a long record of increasing numbers of them who engage in robbery

and piracy for their livelihood. These are again, I say,

sources of trouble which have been left to us by the Past and

which, though not of our own creation, remain problems for

us to solve. Some of these old-time officials are militar-

ists. They have made mischief everywhere, and retained large

numbers of soldiers to oppress the people and extort money from them. They have made away with the entire resources of every place they have visited.

Again there is yet another heritage left to us in the unequal treaties, the yoke of the Chinese.

Now the Central Government in Peking is already a thing of the past. And are the legacies I have mentioned left by the Past to us revolutionaries, good or bad? I answer unhesitatingly that in my opinion they are bad. It is no easy task for us revolutionaries to construct a new

Government on such a bad heritage. With such a heavy liability and such a state of chaos, it is indeed a very

difficult task to build a new Government. What can we do,

then