The telegram pis week on the 1g price of bread in Great Britain called attention to an apparent increased consumption of [wheat as against rice in China. It suggested a growing taste for wheaten food rather for rice, but on the strength of a single year's increase in world wheat it is rather unsafe to generalize so far. The fact of the matter is that has always been a great wheat. Producing country: it grows round here in abundance, and Manchuria contributes a huge quantity. Between the summer of 1923 and that of 1924, however, China was forced to import no less than 300,000 tons of wheat from Australia and America besides an enormous /quantity of flour, but this fact must not be taken as displaying a greater consumption of the cereal. There were severe floods prior to 1928 and subsequently a bad harvest Manchuria, and as a result the numerous flour mills in Shanghai and elsewhere had to make heavy importations from abroad. Such is the economic interdependence of the countries of the world that this would at once prove a contributory factor in forcing up wheat prices elsewhere, but as we see, the case in China is primarily due to a temporary and not a permanent cause, as the telegram suggested. The wheat-eating Chinese live principally in the north, and the rice-eating in the south, but between the two main sections there is a large body of the populace which will eat wheat when it is the cheaper and the same with rice. It Is only natural also that an' increased demand for wheat should have con tinued during the past six months, for battles have been going on in leertain of the important rice pr ducing areas, shortage in the big consuming centres has resulted. This has to be made up by something, and wheat is the natural substitute. Bearing these facts in mind, it would be rash for us to agree with the telegram that China ax a whole is going over to Wheaten flour rather than rice, Competition in Shanghai Since the publication of the. Customs revenue returns for 1924 and our comments thereupon, phase of our correspondence columns has held greater attention than that Fespecting unsound busines of it has been to goods, but its scope could be broadened with advantage, not necessarily continuing to deal with unsound business methods but with general business conditions in Shanghai and the very keen competition which is being felt. For instance only recently tenders were called for the installation of an electrical plant in some locality or other, and ho fewer than 30 offers were made. In this case the discrepancy between the highest and lowest offers came to 20 per cent., and those making the highest tenders were under the impression that they were cutting prices as fine as they could. Yet this difference was small compared with what was found to be the case in another contract, for Jone firm offered to supply the required plant at actually half the cost of what a rival could do it for. No doubt a good deal of this is due to depreciated currencies, bringing with them cheaper labour costs, and in time a certain amount of it will be remedied—as soon as international plans to put the European nations on their fect have had time to make th operations felt. While, however, such a state of things continues, impossible to imagine other than extremely difficult business. "conditions here.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.