The chairman of the Tientsin British Chamber of Commerce, speaking recently at the annual general meeting of the chamber, drew attention to the manner in which Japanese assurances as to the sanctity of neutral third party interests are being observed in north China. It appears that soon after the occupation of Paotou by the Japanese troops, all Chinese wool merchants were ordered to register theír stocks with the Japanese authorities who thereupon sealed the premises in which the wool was stored. About three months ago the Japanese purchased 33,000 bales on the basis of $75.80 a picul clean weight, paid for in Meng Chiang notes, or the old Three Eastern Provinces Notes surcharged with the name of the Bank of Manchoukuo and later by the Bank of Charnan. The cargo was then transported into Manchoukuo. The value of the Meng Chiang notes is at present maintained by what is practically exchange control It is now reported that an organization is bein. formed in Kalgan to take charge of the exportation of camel and sheep wool with a capital of Yen 8,000,000 subscribed by eight Japanese firms. This will have monopolistic rights over the purchase of these commodities coming from Mongolia, Hsinchiang and Kansu, and while an endeavour will be made to use some of them in Japan, most of it is to be exported to America and the Continent of Europe. A business, therefore, in which many British firms in Tientsin are vitally interested, is seriously menaced, not, as the chairman of the Chamber pointed out, by fair and open competition but by a form of monopoly which has already succeeded in eliminating all foreign interests in the Hailar wool business in Manchoukuo. There last year the whole of the Hailar wool output was sold by Japanese representatives in Philadelphia to the American Carpet Manufacturers. Here is an example of the manner in which the technique which the Japanese have applied in Manchuokuo since 1931, is being applied in northern China, and that despite the frequent announcements that the latter would never be regarded in the same manner as Manchoukuo. British wool traders have for many years past bought freely, of wool in northern China, and without any difculty save that arising out of ordinary normal competition. The actions now complained of are designed to wipe those British interests as completely out of northern China as they have been out of Hailar, and they form but another instance of how official Japanese assurances are belied by the acts of their nationals.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.