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 So stated, the argument is incontestable, but it overlooks the fact that the ground of the Japanese complaint is not that one Chinese national has been illegally injured by another, but that the injury has been done to Japanese interests by the employment of methods which are illegal under Chinese law, and that failure to enforce the law in such circumstances implies the responsibility of the Chinese Government for the injury done to Japan.

This leads to a consideration of the last controversial point involved in the policy of the boycott—namely, the extent of the responsibility of the Chinese Government. The Chinese official attitude is that "the liberty of choice in making purchases is a personal right which no Government can interfere with; while the Governments are responsible for the protection of lives and property, they are not required by any commonly recognised regulations and principles to prohibit and punish the exercise of an elemental right of every citizen".

The Commission has been supplied with documentary evidence which is reproduced in the Study No. 8 annexed to this Report and which indicates that the part taken by the Chinese Government in the present boycott has been somewhat more direct than the quotation above would tend to indicate. We do not suggest that there is anything improper in the fact that Government departments should support the boycott movement; we only wish to point out that official encouragement involves a measure of Government responsibility. In this connection, the question of relations between the Government and the Kuomintang must be considered. Of the responsibility of the latter there can be no question. It is the controlling and co-ordinating organ behind the whole boycott movement. The Kuomintang may be the maker and the master of the Government, but to determine at what point the responsibility of the party ends and that of the Government begins is a complicated problem of constitutional law on which the Commission does not feel it proper to pronounce.

The claim of the Government that the boycott is a legitimate weapon of defence against military aggression by a stronger country, especially in cases where methods of arbitration have not previously been utilised, raises a question of a much wider character. No one can deny the right of the individual Chinese to refuse to buy Japanese goods, use Japanese banks or ships, or to work for Japanese employers, to sell commodities to Japanese, or to maintain social relations with Japanese. Nor is it possible to deny that the Chinese, acting individually or even in organised bodies, are entitled to make propaganda on behalf of these ideas, always subject to the condition, of course, that the methods do not infringe the laws of the land. Whether, however, the organised application of the boycott to the trade of one particular country is consistent with friendly relations or in conformity with treaty obligations is rather a problem of international law than a subject for our enquiry. We would express the hope, however, that, in the interest of all States, this problem should be considered at an early date and regulated by international agreement.

In the course of the present chapter, it has been shown first that Japan, in connection with her population problem, is seeking to increase her industrial output and to secure for this purpose reliable oversea markets; secondly, that, apart from the export of raw silk to the United States of America, China constitutes the principal market for Japanese exports and at the same time supplies the Island Empire with an important amount of raw materials and foodstuffs. Further, China has attracted nearly the whole of Japan's foreign investments, and even in her present disturbed and undeveloped condition, offers a profitable field to Japanese economic and financial activities of various types. Finally, an analysis of the injury caused to Japanese interests in China by the various boycotts which have