Trans-Frontier Trade Reduced to Small Proportions Szechuen Market Desired by Burmese By F. B, Lesca Secretory to" earn Chen (Former Che Secretary to Burma Government, now wher of Commerce)
Transfrontier trade between Burand China is very old and mentioned in a previous letter the trade-route from Yunnan down to the Irrawaddy at Bhamo Is one of the old trade-routes of the world, but recent developments have reduced its trade to small proportions, for a great part of it still remains pack-road and neither rail nor motor transport has taken the place of the mule, Two generations ago in the carly ays of Rangoon great ideas were Prevalent of the possibilities of this rule, and it was hoped that the annexation of Upper Burma would lead to the tapping of an enormous trade from western Ching which would Jcome down to the sea at Rangoon.
The earliest annual report which exists of the Rangoon Chamber of Commerce (1867), talks of "the advantages which would accrue from same year the' Government Jsent an exploring expedition to western China. through Bhamo, it was accompanied by a "mercantile man," Mr. Theodore Stewart, to whom the Chamber of Commerce sent a letter of instructions, ending with the hope that the result of your researches nay be such as to inspire us with a well-founded hope that a prosper trade will ere long be established between China and British Burm: fand that the time is not far distant when the prediction that Rangoon will become the 'Liverpool of the East' will no longer be a dream of the future but an accomplished fact."
Doubts Well-Founded, This idea still persisted up to and for sometime after the annexation of Upper Burma in 1885, but there were doubts expressed in some quarters, pain,|and a loiter written in December, icezema 1085, discussing the views of Mr. Archibald Colquhoun, the newspaper correspondent, says "Mr, Colquhoun may be, and this Chamber ig inclined to think that he is, over sanguine jas to the immediate establishment of great inter-continental trade be. tween India and China." Fifty yea experience have shown' these doubts to be well-founded, and the [prosperity of Rangoon has depended fon the products of Burma itself, not on the trade with China.
Major Davies, who explored Yunnan very thoroughly in the ninety and wrote what is still the standard Ibook on the province, showed the niost insuperable difficulties of railway construction across the valleys of the Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekor jan Yangtze Rivers, running in row and contiguous' valleys separated bby towering ranges of mountains. He wrote before motor transport existed [but motor roads have proved almost Jas impracticable as railways in such dificult and thinly populated region, and the Red River Railway from Haiphong to Yunnanfu remains the Jonly important means of exit from Certain Amount of Trade Exists 'A certain amount of trade, how-lever, continues between western [China and Burma, though recent JGovelopments In road construction on [the China side have decreased rather than increased it From Yunnanfu to Bhamo is a distance of some 050 miles, the road passing through only five towns, Hsiakuan, Talifu, Shunning, Yungehang and Tengyueh. Tengyuch is the last town in China, about 120° miles from Bhamo, and the other four towns contain [between them only about 100,000 people, and the whole country is very thinly populated, Until g few years ago, mule trans. port was the only possible form, and the journey took about six weeks and was hardly possible for more than six months in the year, but a motor road has now been constructed from Yunnanful westwards as for as Talitu, }370 miles distant, which has made this pert of the journey possible in two days instead of about three The result of this is that freight from Bhamo is now cheaper than freight from Shanghai only about {far og Yungchang, and only the small and thinly populated atta in the extreme west of Yunnan hag any temptation to look to Burma as source of supply, and the rest of the country can obtain its needs more economically from the coast, by sea down to Haiphong, thence ' up the railway' to. Yunnanful and on by motor as far og Talifu. Any further extension of this motor road will, of course, decrease the area ' which Burma can serve with profit unless 'a motor road is made from this side,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.