We have already mentioned the activity of German representatives in the country, and of them we shall hear still more as time goes on. It is well-known that these representatives, stationed in outlying places, were engaged keeping up their connexion with their former constituents during the war, and it is a commonplace to-day} that some Chinese firms in Shanghai are merely camouflaged German. concerns.
The Germans have been enabled} to retain what hold they had on! the Chinese by their system, prior to the war, of giving loans to enable them to purchase German products. A good deal of this money seems to have been outstanding at the time that China entered the war, and it remained in Chinese hands. Through this policy they have kept up a connexion, and owing to the depreciated value of the mark have often been able to outbid other countries.
It may be remembered that several months ago the Chinese discussed an import tariff, differing from the ordinary one, to be levied on goods of non-treaty powers, e.g. Germany. At one time it was thought that this might prove to be tolerably heavy, and as the mark at the same time showed signs of a rapid improvement, not since realized, a setback to German enterprise took place. Things have not developed as there was a belief that they might, and it would be unsafe to conclude that there has been any real diminution of the German trade menace.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.