Directory_and_Chronicle_1932 — Page 448

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CHINA

All foreign Postal Agencies in China have been withdrawn on the understanding that an efficient Chinese postal service is maintained and that the Chinese Government do not contemplate any change in the present Postal Administration so far as the status of the foreign co-Director-General is concerned.

This arrange- ment came into force on January 1st, 1923. All the British Postal Agencies were closed and withdrawn by December 1st, 1922.

During the past few years the country has been in a state of disorder unparalleled in its previous history and it is only with the victory of the Southern armies over Chang Tso-lin in the spring of 1928 that any measure of unification under a central Government has been achieved. In the South the ascendancy of the Kuomintang Party was signalised by the declaration of an anti-imperialist and anti-British boycott which was not terminated until October, 1926. In the North there was constant war. ring between the military leaders. In July, 1925, a Nationalist Government was form- ed in Canton and in 1926 an expedition to the North was organised in order "to unify' the Country and to bring it under Nationalist control. This expedition met with remarkable success. The forces of Wu Pei-fu were defeated and towards the close of the year the Wuhan cities were captured and Wuchang declared the new capital of the Nationalist Party. Threatened by a mob, urged to excesses by Bolshevist agita- tors, the British in order to avoid bloodshed withdrew from the Hankow concession and left it in control of a Nationalist committee of administration. During 1927 the Northern expedition intended "to unify" the country only succeeded in dividing the Kuomintang Party. Owing to the dissensions, rival governments were established at Nanking and Hankow, both claiming to represent the Nationalist cause. Following the decision of Nanking to oust Bolshevik influence the Hankow Government dis- appeared. The Nanking section extended its authority to Shanghai and continued intermittent warfare with the North, but no decision was reached for a long time a supreme effort was eventually made in the early part of 1928, and under leadership of Chiang Kai-shek the North was invaded. A clash occurred with Japanese troops at Tsinan. It proved only a temporary set-back, and very soon afterwards Chang Tso- lin retired to Manchuria. Just before reaching Mukden the Dictator's train was blown up by a mine on one of the bridges, and he himself died of wounds. The Nationalist troops entered Peiping without resistance and the capital of China was transferred to Nanking. Meanwhile Chang Tso-lin's son established a separate gov- ernment for Manchuria, but opened negotiations with the Nationalists, hostilities being suspended. A movement to oust Chang Hsueh Liang, Chang Tso-lin's son from the Manchurian government, was nipped in the bud, its instigator Yang Yu-ting, “the brains of the North," being summarily executed. Meanwhile the Nanking government formulated an united policy in which treaty revision and abolition of extraterritoriality figured prominently. In the autumn of 1928, conditions had so far improved that Chiang Kai-shek was proclaimed President of the Republic, and early in 1929 the Nationalist flag was formally recognised by the Northerners the first demonstration of National unity China has seen for many years.

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An important event at the end of 1928 was the signing of a Tariff Autonomy treaty between Great Britain and China in which "His Britannic Majesty agrees to the abrogation of all provisions of existing treaties which limit the right of China to impose tonnage dues at such rate as she may think fit." The political union painfully acquired in 1928 did not last long. Li Tsung-jen, the military Governor of Hankow, and a member of the powerful "Kwangsi clique," effected a coup d'etat against the civil Government, which he proclaimed to be Bolshevist. Marshal Li Tsai-hsin, member of the same party, and Governor of Kwangtung, who went to Nanking to attend the annual Koumintang Conference, was summarily seized and imprisoned by Chiang Kai-shek. This was a signal for a general conflagration and it was at one time suggested that all the Northern war lords were uniting against Nanking. Canton declared for the National Government, but a curious alliance of the Kwangsi militarists and Chang Fat-fui, leader of the semi-Red Ironsides, marched on the Southern city. Help was sent from Nanking and the attack was beaten off, largely thanks to a squadron of twenty aeroplanes. The Northern War Lords held aloof and Nanking triumphed. The main cause of the war was probably Nanking's proposals for general disbanding of troops, and the defeat of the resisting war lords was a big victory for the central Government. On June 1st, amid an amazing display of funeral pageantry, the state funeral of Dr. Sun Yat-sen took place at Nanking. The vast mausoleumn of the Father of the Republic is designed on the lines of the national shrine.