CO129-557-2 British Empire and China Trade Fair 4-3-1936 - 24-6-1936 — Page 21

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Not many foreign women have had the experience of being captured twice by bandits "when marketing goods in outlying villages",

and another and I congratulate you upon having lived to tell the tale tale, entitled "The Awakening of China," which appears over your name in the Manchester Guardian Commercial. Being very much interested in

which I have watched very closely perhaps this "awakening" process for a longer period than yourself I read what you had to say about this country, and as a result have learned some very surprising things about China and its people. For instance, you estimate that the "wealthier, educated classes who have made foreign contacts" represent 10 per cent. of the population "a figure which equals the population of Great Britain." Your arithmetical calculations is correct enough but alas! it is far from true to say that 10 per cent. of the population of this country is either "wealthy" or "educated" in the

If you scaled down your sense that they have made "foreign contacts." estimate to 1 per cent you would be still rather optimistic, but to tell people in England that there are 45,000,000 persons in this country who can be regarded as forming the "wealtheir, educated

I wish it were not so. I wish it were classes" is absurdly untrue. possible to say that you had under-estimated the situation indeed, you indicate that you have by saying "if we assume that the Chinese number but 10 per cent. of the whole," but the unpleasant fact is you have grossly exaggerated the facts, and have mislead readers of the Manchester Guardian Commercial in a very important

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Then, again, you say that the "Southern Chinese" hold in their hands "practically the whole of the business carried on in Siam, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines." Alas again I wish you were speaking the truth, but the facts are most decidedly not as stated, otherwise China would not have found that remittances from her people overseas had fallen off so tremendously during the last few years. Then you tell your readers that in South China and the non-Chinese territories just mentioned there is a