'Trade interests here, especially' firms engaged in export of cotton, have been greatly disturbed during the' past few weeks by one of the test' outrageous attempts at extort tion'sinee"the days of Chu Vu-pu. A large consignment of cotton came down'from the interior in the early. part of last month. It was brought down by Fairchild & Ca,, a well-known British firm, and was to have been' exported to Japan and the United States in November and December. The Cotton and Dried Fruits Bureau refused to release the cargo, which consisted of 1,360 bales, worth about $75,000. The first excuse was that Fairchild & Ca, do not export cotton and that this had been brought down for re-sale here. The contracts showing the destination of the goods in the. United States and Japan were duly produced: 'Then the Bureau said they had not' got the Sanlientan, but repped that when Consular aid was sought and it was pointed out that if the Bureau had not circulate Jed. the serial numbers of the San-lien tan in the usual way the cargo could not have passed the likin stations. ing' this particular lot, Mr. Giles saw coolies carrying bales from a whole mountain of cotton nearby. "There is not a single-bale in all that pile of cargo with sewn edge: said the Cotton Bureau Directo The Consal-General went up to the coolies, and pointed out to the Chinese officials that the edges of these bales, too, were sewn. That ought to have demolished the last shred case. But Mr. Sung came back with the retort that those bales were not for export! It was the only thing he could think of, and he probably knew nothing at all about the ownership or destination of the cargo, Meanwhile 90 per cent, of the cargo had been grudgingly released. The 10 per cent., with the sewn edges remain in the custody of the Burea and while pressure was being brought to bear for the release of these bales, two further consignments, aggregating a larger amount than that originally involved in the dispute, came down, and the Bureau threaten to undo such reparation as they have made by holding up both the 10 per cent,, and the new con-
The Bureau then put forward half 'a dozen ludicrous pretexts for the refusal to release the cargo. For instance, they pointed out that the Sanlientan (which they seemed to know a lot atour though they claimed they did not possess the passes) stated Kaochenhsien to be the di of origin, whereas several the bales were shown to come from other places. The simple explana-centre of that name, the exact tricts being specified to enable the firm to check up which of their buyers brought down the best lots and where they came from. The Bureau alleged that some of the bales bore the characters Tung Peh Yuan, the fame of a Shanghai cotton deale The fact is that one bale was and the testing-house coolie admits he did it by mistake when marking an adjoining lot belonging to Tung Peh Yuan. The name "Tung Chi" on a number of other bales, the Bureau alleged, was that of a cotton hong of four Chinese merchants in Tientsin. There is no such hong, and Tung Chi is in fact the name of the Nantung hand-press packing concern which handled these bales.
The Bureau made matters worse' by inspiring a scurrilous attack on the British firm in one of the lea Chinese papers, in the course of which it asserted that the principals the firm, having no "sly argu-to offer, were afraid to seo This after weeks fof the firm, who produced export documents and offered to show a. certificate from the Maritime!
Customs proving that the firm hac exported well over 6,000 picals th year; and later by the Consular authorities.
The Director and underlings of the Cotton Bureau remained adamant, and the Consul-General took the matter to the new Governor, who nominated a well-known and, reputable Chinese of foreign legal' training to go into it. Sung Fengchuen, the head of the Bureau, was Jcompelled to drop one pretext after another, but finally clung like a pet to the fact that a small part the consignment, amounting at, had the edges ofthe bales sewn all round, and looked a little fresher than the rest, 'The' implication was that the fends had been changed. That was ridiculous. For one thing the ends, bore the stencilled serial- numbers. and'could not have been changed en, route. Secondly, there was no necessity at all to change them. There was no point in this at all. But, as, it happened, while the Consuled the whole original lot, and published notices offering the cotton for sale by public auction—a monstrous proceeding, which would have been most unjust even had it been true that the film does not export cargo, 'The Bureau held up the cotton very' toon after the new officials took office. Perhaps they felt sure that too much cotton was coming down under Sanlientan and that domestic consumers were doing them in the eye. Certainly the Chinese mill-owners and—estton dealers generally have been agitate! ing against the exorbitant local rate of this tax which is higher by far than anywhere else, may take the resolutions of the Industrial Conference in Nanking, and the Government's statements ding the stimulation of exports home manufacture and the litien of illegal levies, as meaning what they say, right is on the side of the merchants, The Bureau is a useless parasite, battering on the cotton trade. The Chinese merchant would have as much moral right to evade the tax demanded by this Bureau as a man would have to evade a gang of armed robbers if he spotted them or. the road. But there nothing whatever to show that the Fairehil cargo was for re-sale and the sworn ath of the acting head of the firm is-supported by contracts showing that the whole cargo was for immediate export.
idea behind the hold-up was probably to terrorize all cotton buyers and te make it so difficult for exporters that the Sanlientan would became a positive hindrance instead of a help. In that ease all cotton: would come in on the same basis, and the Cotton Bureau would eelleet their squeeze on the lot. This is not the avowed policy, of course, The stated object is to' suppress "smug-ling." It has already, according to the unguarded assertion of one of the officials of the Bureau, caused one er two well-known' foreign experters to pay this illegal tax as the only way of avoiding ruinous losses and interminable trouble.
The attitude of the Bureau continues to be dictated by this aim. For instance, when the new consignment of 1.970 bales reached the likin station at Yangliuching, the Sanlientan were duly presented for the Bureau's chop. The Bureau representative promised in the presence of the British Vice-Consal to chop the documents, but when they were brought to his office later the day he ordered the bearer out, and further trouble ensued before the Bureau finally chopped the Sanlienta By that time the canals and rivers General, the Governor's representa-, had become frozen, and a day or sett tivo and other paction were inspeet-' tivo ago it had to be brought in by! million dollars—Reuter, learts, involving the firm in further heavy expense: Now the Bureau officially demand the production of forwarding bills, draft counterfoils, correspondence, Chinese and English accounts, telegrams, and all other details referring to the cargo, As it happened the complete file, com plete to the last comma, had been handed to the British Consulates General at their request, and the latter refuses to permit them to be shown to the Bureau, but will take the issue up again with the Governor. This request has never been made by the Bureau before, and it is an obvious attempt to ' pursue their vendetta against this firm, to try to recover something' of the face" the officials have lost, and to use this firm as a warning to others who may feel disposed stand on their tights and fight this icious system of extortion inst which a nation-wide revolt is brewing.
There is, one fears, only one way: in which likin and al'other forms of egulay levies will be effectively polished. Judging by the truculent comment by local taxation authorities, it will not be effected by Nanking decree, But these who have their ears to the ground have heard the ominous mutterings of the coming storm. Unless the provinces and the Central Government can come toa proper and effective arrangement for the relief and centralization of taxation, things will go from bad to worse, and: time will come when from' Kalgan to Canton the tax-collector will be hunted down without merey. The fanciful antipathies of the political class—the Imperialist, the Communists, the Militarists, ete—are not shared by the angry and hungry peasants, The taxcoliector is their supreme aversion, og Communist: propaganda shows, with its me sidious invitation to cease payment of all taxes, There is n> more me flammable rallying ery.
Not one of the promises regarding: the removal of irregular taxation has hitherto been fulfilled, though. it has well-nigh ruined the export trade of North China, The millions of taels worth of camels! wool, shoop's wool, furs, ete, which used to press through this port now finds an outlet through Soviet Russia. Whereas the trade was almost whole we 1¥ in the hands of Chinese, with local foreign firms as the link with the buyers abroad, a few years ago, neither of them now has any con nection with the trade, 'The last vestiges of Chinese influence have been wiped out in Mongolia, and a foreigner who came down' from Urea a little time ago told me that. it was an amazing sight Inst. sunt-mer to see long columns of ruined Chinese on trek through Mongolia. toward the dilapidated and tax-ridden Peking-Suiyuan Railway.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.