Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/144

 no unity in Chinese railways, neither in administration or in finance; they are run on the most unbusinesslike and wasteful principles; and whilst nominally the Ministry of Communications is in supreme command, in practice a centralized government control, of the type which the war has made a commonplace, is still unthought of and unrealizable.

It is this centralized control which must be brought to China—with every railway on Chinese soil directly controlled from Peking. The fact that existing lines are already large dividend-earners should simplify the solution of the problem—which as in the case of currency should be worked out by government experts dispatched to China by the interested states, who will not be in any way influenced by the old-fashioned mercantile imperialism.

China requires such a reform for internal political reasons as well as for external. For, as in the case of every other modern convenience, provincial control cannot be properly centralized unless the abuses which are rapidly becoming stereotyped are absolutely checked. At the present moment the military element tend more and more to monopolize the railways; to act generally with such a high hand that the earning-power and safety of existing lines is