Directory_and_Chronicle_1924 — Page 940

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HANKOW

The question of conserving the Yangtsze and deepening the various so-called "crossings" to enable ocean-going steamers to visit Hankow during the winter or low-water season is under consideration. Mr. Maze, the Commissioner of Customs, wrote as follows on the subject in the course of a review of the trade of the Yangtsze Valley for the year 1921 -"The first official, but indirect, recognition of the important and far-reaching question of the conservancy of the Yangtsze with a view to improv- ing navigational facilities on a general scale may be said to have been made by the Whangpoo Conservancy Board. In order to obtain full knowledge of the approach channels to the port of Shanghai a general investigation of the condition of the entire estuary was made by the Board in 1914-17. Later, the Board undertook the Shanghai Harbour investigation, which has been recently concluded by the conference of experts in Shanghai, in November, 1921, and in the report issued the question of how the approaches to Shanghai through the estuary of the Yangtsze should be improved is dealt with. The activities of this Board, however, have been necessarily of a local character and restrict- ed to schemes directly connected with the shipping interests of Shanghai itself. The larger question of the Yangtsze conservancy as a whole has hitherto been left in abeyance, but has come into prominence of late through the medium of the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, and at a recent conference there the matter was discussed at some length, as is well known, and a resolution was passed suggesting that a technical commission should be appointed to make a preliminary study of the whole question with a view to formulating general proposals în connection with the ultimate appointment of a Yangtsze Conservancy Board. The extensive silting at Chinkiang, moreover, has been the subject of further representations during the past few years from public bodies urging the necessity of adopting measures to save the waterfront, etc., at that important centre, and while largely a local question immediately con- cerning the port of Chinkiang, it is, nevertheless, connected to some extent with the general regimen of the river as a whole. But notwithstanding the magnitude of the trade, shipping, and revenue interests involved, the possibility of facilitating business by im- proving the communications and rendering navigable for deep-draught steamers at all seasons of the year a considerable part of the waterway draining some 750,000 square miles of territory, with a population approaching 180 millions, nothing of a tangible nature has hitherto been done to tackle the question seriously, and, indeed, until the last few years it has aroused little or no public interest. It may be mentioned, however, that Mr. F. Palmer, one of the eminent engineers who served recently on the Shanghai Harbour Investigation Committee, mentioned above, has been requested by the Chinese Government to visit the Yangtsze and submit a preliminary report on the general subject of conservancy in conjunction with Mr. H. von Heidenstam, of the Whiangpoo Conservancy Board, and Mr. Yang Pao-ling, of the Commission for the Im provement of the River System of Chihli, and further investigations on the same lines will be continued during the autnmn of 1922. It is idle for a layman to speculate upon such a highly technical subject as the conservancy policy which ought to be adopted in connection with so large a river as the Yangtsze, but obviously one of the chief objects to be attained is to render it possible for steamers of larger draught than are at present admitted in the winter season to come up to Hankow at all times of the year. And to accomplish this end it will be necessary to proceed on general lines and not confine operations merely to improving local conditions at individual ports, but rather to have one co-ordinated scheme for the whole river, or, at least, from Hankow to the sea. Financial difficulties will arise, of course, but the capacity of the trade dealt with on the Yangtsze to pay for such expenditure as would be involved may be presumed. At other centres in China the slight increase of taxation imposed to meet the cost of conservancy works has not adversely influenced general business interests, while the economies effected in transportation, and in many cases the elimination of transhipment charges, etc., have far outbalanced such charges. The collapse of a cluster of those curious dwellings erected on piles on the shores of the Han River, on the 7th December, which resulted in the loss of some 10 lives, emphasises the highly unsatisfactory conditions which exist along the banks of this stream in the vicinity of Hankow. In the first place, a number of these ramshackle houses overhang the waterway in an alarning manner, the object being to escape the high ground-rents on shore; and secondly, jetties and such-like structures have been permitted to spring up on both banks to an extent which has seriously impeded the flow of water and resulted in narrowing the fairway to an inconvenient extent by the dangerous accumulation of silt. The last right-angle bend just before the Han debouches into the Yangtsze is in a particularly unsatisfactory condition, and if the erosion there continues unchecked the question of either cutting a new mouth, as has already been