Nanyang Bros. Said to be Preparing to Finance Peking From Our Own Correspondent.
Peking, Jan. 4.
Tobacco companies seem to be favourite targets for the rumourmongers in Peking at this juncture. The repeated denials of the British American Tobacco Company's intention of financing the Chinese Government have no sooner begun to make an impression upon the general public, than a whole new series of stories springs up about the Nanyang Brothers. Tobacco Comparv and its nefarious relations with the impoverished Peking, Government. Before the Chinese press comes out in full blast and publishes these yarns as fact with an array of circumstantial details s convincing as those submitted in the presentation of the B.A.T." fable, it may. be inst as well to introduce them as fairy stories and to point out that there is no better stound for believing them than there was in the B.A.T. case.
Among other things it is said that the Nanyang Brothers are now registering themselves as a banking house and that they will establish banks in al] the principal cities of China, with a total eanitolization of £90,000.000. From this it is deduced that the Nanyang Brothers nronose to lend large sums of money to the provincial and Central Governments. From this deduction it is again deduced that the Nanyang Brothers are going to demand from the Government all manner of immunities and trading privileges. From this again other interesting deductions are made as the story. spreads which it is a waste of time to reproduce.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.