Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/110

 to little more than three dollars gold per head of population. That the Japanese people on a per capita basis should have a commerce a thousand per cent. larger than the commerce of the Chinese people—born traders, be it remembered—proves conclusively that the whole Chinese fiscal system is radically wrong; and as the commercial nations hold China in thraldom with their commercial treaties, it is they who must make the first move to liberate the purchasing-power of the Chinese people. Statisticians are agreed that a legitimate basis of calculation is to assume that China could immediately do a trade per head of population amounting to half the amount of the Japanese trade per person, if all obstructions were cleared away. On this assumption, a China liberated from provincialism and militarism should have an annual turn-over of six billion gold dollars, (1,200 millions sterling,) an amount which would place her in the front rank of trading nations, and (assuming that imports and exports roughly balanced and that the twelve and one-half per cent. Mackay Import Tariff was the average levy) would give her an annual revenue of 375 million gold dollars from import duties alone. This sum would provide interest and sinking-fund on four times