CHINA: British Gift

A diligently prayerful Methodist and a tireless preacher of Spartan virtues to indulgent Chinese is enterprising Premier and Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, the best man to head the Chinese Government in living memory. Last week he connected the Chicago of his country with its New Orleans, sent the first train chuffing 700 miles over the new line from Hankow to Canton. Years ago Chiang set out from Canton with no railway to carry the troops of his Revolution, plunged overland to seize Hankow and then fought his way down the great River Yangtze to establish his Government in its present seat, Nanking.

The original contract for the Canton-Hankow Railway was let by the Imperial Manchu Government in 1898 to American

China Development Corp. This concern sold its control to Belgian interests whom Chinese suspected of being secret agents for the Imperial Russian Government. In 1905 the Imperial Chinese Government bought back the concession for $6,750,000. At the time the Manchu Dynasty was overthrown by the Chinese Revolution of 1911, some 30 miles of the railway had been completed. In succeeding turbulent years parts of the line were built by fits & starts by Chinese groups to serve their local interests.

In 1925 hard-hitting British Editor Henry George Wandesfdrde Woodhead of the Peking & Tientsin Times started a campaign in which he “questioned”—to use his own mild fighting word—the advisability of Britain’s continuing to devote her share of the Boxer Indemnity to Chinese Education. Editor Woodhead recently recalled in Oriental Affairs: “China at that time was already experiencing considerable trouble from the insubordination of her students, and it hardly seemed credible that purposes mutually beneficial to China and Great Britain would be realized by adding enormously to the number of higher educational institutions.”

The wisdom of these thoughts prevailed in London, and the British Boxer Indemnity Trustees accordingly have aided Premier Chiang to complete a railway each of whose 700 miles may be regarded as representing just so many less Chinese students. In Oriental Affairs suave Editor Woodhead led the way for editors in the British Empire generally to call the completed railway “a gift from the British taxpayer to the Chinese people.”

Last week the new railway was a symbol of the genuine Progress achieved under Chiang’s party which calls itself the Kuomintang. Japan forced dissolution of all locals of the Knomintang in North China last year (TIME, Dec. 2). Last week the Tokyo dailies declared that the Japanese Army now demands that Premier Chiang dissolve the locals of the Kuomintang in all China. In the North the local regime in Hopei and Chahar Provinces established by Chinese under Japanese auspices last week took for itself the kind of autonomy which in China matters most, autonomy in collecting and keeping in its treasury the customs revenues which would otherwise be sent to Nanking. In a blunt manifesto Hopei-Chahar assumed this prerogative amid local cheers, for the new Hopei-Chahar duties are only one-eighth the Nanking duties.

In South China after three months of the most ferocious verbal strife between the Nanking Government and Kwangsi Province, with a formal military ultimatum being issued every few days by Premier Chiang to the Kwangsi generals or vice versa, sudden peace came this week. Instead of Generalissimo Chiang arriving in Canton with overwhelming force to master Kwangsi, he persuaded Kwangsi General Li Tsung-Jen to assume the office of Pacification Commissioner of Kwangsi under instructions from Nanking to pacify himself thoroughly and send no more ultimatums. Only logical assumption was that Li had finally got out of Chiang the bribe running into several millions of dollars which has generally been considered the only real point at issue (TIME, Aug. 10).