One other policy of the Japarese in Manchoukuo, to which perhaps these days the' term retrograde not strictly applicable but which is at any rate a very dangerous on. ly that of land expropriation, The land is taken away compulsorily from the Chinese farmers against a nominal compensation and redistribvited among Korean and Japanese settlers, In Japanese official circles it strongly denied that sucha policy existed. Nevertheless all my. in-quirles' lead me to believe that it lo very much a fact, All the peasants one talked once brought up this matter, and some even asked me. whether thought their land was safe Manchoukuo press is continually making a great splash about tlement schemes. for only in unpopulated regions.
Last summer in the district seth of Tan in Ni th Manchuria there was a very serious revolt with heavy losses on both sides, This was said to have been due to expropriaon of land. And it has since been off cially admitted that this district has been earmarked for a large Korean settlement.
"Political" Bandits Moreover, in discussing banditry with a Japanese offer T'made spe-dal inquiries about this Man district, without referring to exproptiation, He admitted that banditry had been very bad there, but excused it fon the grounds that they were not ordinary bandits but were polities bandits." I am quite sure of this Point, because I had some dimeulty in understanding the distinction at first. Everybody will draw his own. conclusion as to what "political bandits" may be, especially in a region so very remote from the Chinese frontier. T even met two Chinese who claimed to have suffer ed expropriation and one Chinese speaking Korean who was on bls way to take up such land, as he celled it "already farmed land". Above all, there are the facts given me by quite reliable and entirely. disinterested foreigners. I repeat: I believe that such a policy is actually being carried out, But what is much more important: a large portion of the population seem to believe it 10 be true foo. The result has been "has been falling, people not being! eager to buy, as they are afraid that their land may be taken away at any time.
"Welding" the Races It will be objected that with the vast uncultivated lands in Manchoukuo there is no necessity to expronate land. already settled by Chi-hose. But that is just the point. this is part of another of those: theoretical schemes of which the. Manchoukuo Government already. tinged with State Socialism '20
The idea is to "weld" and mix the @ifferent races. What would be the good of putting the new settlers in entirely fresh and uncultivated dis tricts? There has so far been great reluctance on the part of Japfanese to take up land in Manchotno, and several minor attempts at settlement have failed. In order to. overcome this, it is necessary to encourage them by offering land that has already been cleared or at least better class lands that have already been staked out by the Chinese The Kwantung Army is backing these land settlement schemes, especially for Japanese. because they nope thus to create close to Rand jan arms-bearing population. And as this Army enjoys nowadays both among its admirers and its critic. a reputation for almost divine tore-Sight, the general opinion is that land expropriation will continue.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.