Page:League of Nations-Appeal by the Chinese Government.pdf/21

 other political parties. It has become an actual rival of the National Government. It possesses its own law, army and government, and its own territorial sphere of action. For this state of affairs there is no parallel in any othercountry. Moreover, in China, the disturbance created by the Communist war is made more serious by the fact that the country is going through a critical period of internal reconstruction, still further complicated during the last eleven months by an external crisis of exceptional gravity. The National Government seems to be determined to regain the control of the districts under Communist influence, and to pursue in those districts, once their recovery is achieved, a policy of economic rehabilitation; but in its military campaigns, apart from difficulties aleady mentioned, both internal and external, it is hampered by lack of funds and defective communications. The problem of Communism in China is thus linked up with the larger problem of national reconstruction.

In the summer of 1932, important military operations, having for their object a final suppression of the Red resistance, were announced by the Government of Nanking. They were commenced and, as stated above, were to have been accompanied by a thorough social and administrative reorganisation of the recaptured regions, but up to the present no important results have been announced.

So far as Japan is China's nearest neighbour and largest customer, she has suffered more than any other Power from the lawless conditions described in this chapter. Over two-thirds of the foreign residents in China are Japanese, and the number of Koreans in Manchuria is estimated at about 800,000. She has more nationals, therefore, than any other Power, who would suffer if they were made amenable to Chinese law, justice and taxation under present conditions.

Japan felt it impossible to satisfy Chinese aspirations so long as satisfactory safeguards to take the place of her Treaty rights could not be hoped for. Her interests in China, and more especially in Manchuria, began to be more prominently asserted as those of the other major Powers receded into the background. Japan's anxiety to safeguard the life and property of her subjects in China caused her to intervene repeatedly in times of civil war or of local disturbances. Such action was bitterly resented by China, especially when it resulted in an armed clash such as occurred in 1928 at Tsinan. In recent years, the claims of Japan have come to be regarded in China as constituting a more serious challenge to national aspirations than the rights of all the other Powers taken together.

This issue, however, though affecting Japan to a greater extent than other Powers, is not a Sino-Japanese issue alone. China demands immediately the surrender of certain exceptional powers and privileges because they are felt to be derogatory to her national dignity and sovereignty. The foreign Powers have hesitated to meet these wishes as long as conditions in China did not ensure adequate protection of their nationals, whose interests depend on the security afforded by the enjoyment of special Treaty rights. The process of fermentation, inevitable in a period of transition, which this chapter has attempted to describe, has developed forces of public opinion which will probably continue to embarrass the Central Government in the conduct of its foreign policy, as long as it is weakened by failure to complete the unification and reconstruction of the country. The realisation of China's national aspirations in the field of foreign relations depends on her ability to discharge the functions of a modern Gvernment in the sphere of domestic affairs, and until the discrepancy between these two has been removed the danger of international friction and of incidents, boycotts, and armed interventions will continue.

The present extreme case of international friction having forced China once more to seek the intervention of the League of Nations should, if a satisfactory settlement can be effected, convince her of the advantages of