For all practical purposes China New Year's Day will be January }24—Saturday. There has been considerable doubt about whether it jonid be January 24 or 25, for the reason that it is believed that this year's calendar is not accurate, 'The 11th moon of the year has only. been allotted 29 days, _wherens Jauthorities such as the' Board of Astronomy in Peking give it 30 Jdays, and this is believed to be correct. However, in the official calendar only the 29 days were shown, and the position seems to be that finally those concerned had either to acknowledge that a mistake had been made in respect of the 1th year of the Republic or to 0 on with, a system which will make the dates of tite new calendar wrong for some months to come, It has been decided to stick by the official announcement of the 1st of the year taking place on Satur= Jday, January 24, and it ix believed that this will have certain conveniences to its credit, The Friday will, of course, be a full day' with the the native banks will have ample time to make their wonted arrang ments on the financial side, where had the Inst, day of the year been half working day~Saturday—they might have been cramped for time. It may be mentioned that some of the enlendars already issued have given Sunday, January 25, as the first of the new Chinese Jand those in possession of them ought to note carefully the changes which will ensue from the adoption Jof the with as the correct day, When at the beginning of the present week we set about finding causes, in the midst of apparent! trade depression, for the increased Customs revenue of China, representing in the ease of Shanghai an increase of Huikuan Tls. 70,000,000 in trade, figures were not available for a complete analysis, This we pointed out, and accordingly confined ourselves to a number of ions, one of which medium sized firms were doing a larger business than heretofore, while the really big firms were not. This conclusion is ingly borne out in the weekly business circular issued by Messrs. Thert & Ca which in addition places a none too favourable construction upon the fact. Tables of the import of cotton piece goods, yarn and woollen cloth are given in. the circular mentioned, and adducing his conclusions from these, the writer goes on to say:—Tt will be seen from these tables that the importation of cotton cloths into Shanghai was greater than in 1923 by about 4,000,000. pieces, representing:
value of is. 35,000,000, and
1000 inereae in" revenue. The sing therefore for a possible Tis in importation of yarn would iz this figure down slightly but this be more than offset by" the er Agures for woollen. goads of 30,000 more pieces were imported stg probable value of Tis, 1580,000, "The inference to be drawn from these figures is that business has once fain "reverted to. the unsound. basis which existed in the past, and which has. more than once Drought disaster.
the market here a Treaty Ports." Tuan many dealers of expe Standing have had Little or mo. share the increased imports and in. fact
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.