The military group who are running north China are clearly determined to hold on to what they have got and to develop it according to their own ideas. And while Tokyo is busy discussing this, that, and the other plan for ending the China Incident, they go ahead with their own schemes for exploiting the: resources of north China for the benefit of themselves and their fellow nationals who have thrown in their lot with them there.
It is perhaps not generally realized that Japanese immigrants into north China already number over 200,000, and are continuing to pour in at the rate of more than 10,000 a month. All the towns, even as far away as southern Shansi, have their Japanese populations of hundreds of shopkeepers and small traders, which run into thousands in the larger places—always provided that such towns are garrisoned by the Japanese forces.
Then again, some observers estimate that at the present time the Japanese armies of occupation in north China are already deriving about 75 per cent, of the cost of their upkeep from local sources, such as: levies on Customs revenue and railways; royalties from salt, coal and iron mines; contributions from transport companies and the larger Japanese business concerns; buying up produce, such as cotton and grain at rock bottom prices.
Many new motor roads and railways lines are in course of construction,; plans for new residential quarters for Japanese outside the old cities have been drawn up; tremendous building activity is going on everywhere. One almost gets the impression that north China is no longer concerned with the China Incident.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.