Nov. 26.
The present autumn has been unusually rich in distinguished visitors to Shanghai. Some came for the Kyoto Conference, some, for business, some belonged to the class wittily described by Mr, Malcolm MacDonald. the other day as "experts". They have tasted of Shanghai's hospitality, which may claim without: boasting to be fairly openhanded. They have conversed exhaustively with our leading citizens. And now we may wonder-a little anxiously, what sort of an impression they will take away with them, There have been those who, with certainly no reason to complain of the entertainment they had received here, went Home to describe Shanghai as exclusively devoted to wining, dining and: gambling. It sounds rather mean, Let us fasten to add that we would not for a moment accuse any of this autumn's visitors of similar hypocrisy. But the unfortunate fact remains that Shanghai does not enjoy too good a reputation abroad, and in justice to ourselves we hope that our visitors will not misunderstand our point of. view on certain essential The conventional conception abroad of the Shanghai foreign community appears to be that it is narrow-minded, grasping, incapable of seeing any good la the Chinese and rootedly opposed to allowing them the smallest concession, That. is not a-true picture and its unfair be too strongly str realize fully that changes must come; we see a great deal more clearly than our visitors can, how deeply Nationalism has fired the imagination of educated Chinese; and we readily under~ stand that, when its ideals have been transformed into the strong organization of government which will. eventually emerge from the still necessarily disordered state of the country, that Government will justly insist on being wholly master in its own house: nor could any consum-motion be better for foreign as for Chinese trade. We only ask that the changes we expect shall be made gradually and with fair regard for facts, Mr. Mac-Donald hi nail on the head when, speaking at the Pan Pacific lunch on Saturday, he said that the London Labour] Council, though with thirty years experience behind it, was not able to take over the administration of such an area. If we of Shanghai distrust the idea of the management of the Settlement being taken over by the Chinese, no offence is meant: it is due simply to the palpable fact that they have no expericence to qualify them for such a task, Nothing in their history has prepared them for it. No Chinese citizen of Nantao and Chapei has any voice in their administration nor in the spend ing of a cent that he pays in taxation, Yet these districts are so, close to Shanghai—which might therefore have been thought likely to serve as object lesson—that very few residents even could tell where tone begins and the other ends.
'The second point which the "foreigner in China would make is that it is not unreasonable to ask her to give some return for' the many concessions made her in the last few years. Take, for example, taxation. "At present there is a distinct limit within which this can be imposed in the foreign Settlements of Shanghai but the, example of what "is, happening elsewhere in China fresno confidence that: this we fear we must add,.mor-any reasonable limit, would.oe spected if once foreign control jete removed. A year ago, then concluding the new Customs Treaty with the National Government, Sir Miles Lampson sought an explicit assurance that goods having paid duty at the point of entry, would go to the consumer free of all further impost of any kind; and Dr. C. 'T. Wang replied in writing that such was the National Government's intention. So far from any. sign of areal attempt to fulfil this pledge, it would certainly be no exaggeration to say that internal taxation on all goods! is heavier and more capricious than it was before the Sino-British Treaty December, 1928, was signed. The Chinese: Government may plead that circumstances have been too strong for it, that it has had to fight two civil wars in the past year, and that it has not yet been able to assert its authority fully in all districts, The plea may be accepted, But the state of affairs to which it points is no. argument for entrusting China with further responsibilities when those she Was already accepted she is stil! unable to discharge.
"Die-hards" as we in Shanghai may be dubbed—it used, by the way, tobe a. complimentary epithet, we use it in the uncomplimentary sense given to it by our detractors—we not only know that Shanghai must eventually revert to China, but we are willing to admit that it con stitutes an anomaly which no: self-respecting and well ordered country would tolerate, A similarly constituted city on the coast of England of America is beyond imagination. But may we go a step further and urge that: it is also unique, a world problem as has often been said, for the solution of which there are no precedents and no legal maxim that. is precisely applicable? Shanghai has become what it is, not through the particular viciousness or design of anyone, but largely under the compulsion of external circumstances. Almost from its birth it has been encompassed by rebellions, civil wars, the decline and fall of one system of government, the chaos which accompanied and still obstructs the introduction of another. Granted that foreigners were given—or rather permitted to purchase—a tract of land, inside which, with the full approval of the then Government of China, they were to have the entire management of their owa affairs and property, and the subsequent development things was inevitable. We are far from trying to argue that the International Settlement is blameless, or that the Chinese may not have reasonable causes for complaint.. We do content that no just appreciation of its present status can be formed noc disposal of its destinies declared except in the full light of its! own history and that of China for the past eighty years. The question of what Shanghai is to be in years to come is not one for politicians.and diplomats. No offence to them is intended in saying that. We merely mean that they have not the necessary equipment for such a task. Nothing less than an international commission of the best available jurists could deal equitably with a problem that involves s> many and great interests and complications so unparalleled.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.