encom Shana eho bat Mr. E. T. Nash, the of this "last e, in which he rose from the most fiom ouncil's employ and is as he describes it, junior rank to the high post of Acting Deputy Secretary. may at first sight appear paradoxical to conclude, as this memorándum does, that the immediate welfare of the Settlement is best built upon the divorcement of its municipal policy from the nátionalistic policies of the Powers having a stake here, when at the same time I stress the urgently insistent pressures of several national sovereignties in the Settlement and the necessity for their correct historical assessment.
From the time of the military and political defeat of China by Britain in 1840 and the establishment by the British of the Settlement—with Japanese foreign policy, which had feud truer exemplification in the capitalization of the wer engrossment of the Western Powers by an attempt in terms of "The Twenty-One De-mends" to subordinate China once and for all I should interpolate here that it is not an aim of this memorandum to indict the foreign policy of Japan or any other nation. Certainly it does not purport to be an indictment of Japan from the subjective viewpoint of a Western writer naturally dis-Fosed to be prejudiced against any subordination anywhere of his own country's power. It is an objective presentation, and as policies of America, expressed in en-depict the evitabil and "nadeavour merely to temper Japanese furalness" from the Japanese view-power and so maintain the status quo, point of. Japan's dual aims, in "her as evidenced in the, Washington own geographical sphere". to domin-Treaties of 1922 and reciprocated tem-ate China and exclude or subordinate porarily by the liberal policies of Western power.
Baron Shidehara in China. From What Japan therefore regarded as 1914 to 1005 British exhaustion, being both natural and proper on American disinterestedness, Japanese their part, in the concession of the acquiescence, and Chinese' impotence Western Powers to China's legitimate expressed the interplay of national policies in China and in their focus aspirations, she in no wise similarly esteemed her own appropriate role. point the International Settlement of Accordingly, in the International Set-Shanghai, These policies cancelled tlement of Shanghai, where the cream. each other out and the consequence of the modernist and nationalist was a ten years' placidity in our Chinese intelligentsia was located, municipal life which the ensuing ten while Japan enjoyed the spectacle of years might well envy! a progressive rectification of the Sovereign Soil Fosition of dominance of Western as against Chinese public influence and The impotetice of Chinese power in interest, she watched with apprehen-the Setüement/s municipal life dis. sivaness the growth of Chinese power appeared in 1925 and was replaced by in relation to herself. In the pursuit the potency of a nationalistic revolu-of her dual aims of weakening both fiom, which was insistent that the Western influence and China at the Settlement was sovereign soil and same tite, she was forced into the that its municipal life must be condi. tioned to Chinese national aspirations incon, us role of repudiating the then-liberalism of British and Ameri-and articulateness, instead of Chinese can policy, as it expressed itself in passivity, For the succeeding five swiftly increasing concessions to years the dominating tendency of Chinese aspirations to a greater im-Anglo-American policy in China and portance in the municipal polities of in the Settlement, expressed in the Chamberlain Christmas Memorandum the International Settlement, and of charging that such policies involved of 1926, was that of increasing submisa betrayal of traditional foreign poli-sivaness to ^China's legitimate aspiracies in the Settlement, tions," In the Settlement, the incom. potability with those aspirations of Revolutionary Change traditional municipal- policies and practice, which to the sensitive In the five years from 1925 to 1930 Chinese nationalist bespoke the ulti-the liberal submissiveness of America mate sanction of Anglo-American and Britain to the nationalist express gunboats, was translated, in the plans sivaness of young China had produc-formulated by Justice Feetham, into ed a revolution in the social, econo-future harmonious Sino-Foreign: eras mic and municipal life of the Settle-of. and, ultimately, of ment. As the gracefulness of Chin-"rendition." ese women on the floors of foreign Tt is well that {he British and ballrooms, en association hitherto undreamed of, outbid that of their should at this point get it firmly American citizen of the Settlement foreign sisters, similarly there were in his mind that what he may from portents of a too rapid outdistancing 1025 to 1990 have déeriéd as "a great of the foreigner by the Chinese in betrayal" was the si historical more important and vital spheres. tact that the policies of The young Chinese traded direct, and Britain and America, and the imple-the elimination of the foreigner's key mentation of those policies by the "middleman's" role in trade, finance Settlement reform proposals of the and commerce presaged to the more Feetham report, asserted the progress. alarmist the too sudden elimination sive augmentation of Chinese national sovereignty as expressed in the muni. altogether, of the foreigner and his Settlement
cipal life of the Settlement; envisaged In municipal life, too. Chinese pub-at first a virtual and ultimately an lic opinion was organizing with a actual ent of a charter—skill and force which was alarming. known as "The Land Regulations" lu 1928 it forced itself into the seat which characterized an erstwhile re-of municipal government, hitherto lative Chinese impotency; and pro-exclusively foreign. But the pace vided for the progressive growth and allowed to them by the foreigner was ultimately for the preponderance of still too slow for Chinese liking. So Chinese influence in the Settlement's the acceleration of the Feetham re-municipal life, aims and policies. forms was offered; only to be regarded by the Chinese as being at Fundamental Policy half-throttle and therefore insufüci-
Despite the uncompromising et. titude of sections of their local communities, that was the fundamental Policy laid down by the British and American Governments for the Settlements, in spirit where not in the letter. These Governments were "willing to admit that a progressive government such as China had estab. lished at Nanking in 1928, which had entered into the most cordial political end commercial relations with Britain and America, was entitled to require that, complementary to the envisaged abolition of the status of inferiority signalized in the Extraterritorial Treaties, the Chinese citizen of the Settlement should have his vote and, og the natural consequence of such fair-dealing, should ultimately secure that this national section of the community had preponderating influence in the Settlement's municipal life.
"This was Anglo-American policy it marked a point of radical conflict with the imperial policy of Jepan. Japan's interpretation of the "legitimacy" of Chinese national aspirations was, unfortunately for the welfare of Shanghai, all too soon made clear. The militant power acceting to a progressively modernize ing Japan had been accelerated by the benefits afforded her by the World War. It was a misconception, shared by large sections of the foreign communities of the Settlement, that Japan's aims in China could ever be the same as those of America ani Britain. Fundamentally, Japan sought Anglo-American subordination id Japanese power in the Far East. as she similarly sought a subordination of China herself. In the Asiatic brotherhood with China which Japan proclaimed she cast herself in the role of a very senior brother. It was 5 brotherhood which on the one hand had no place for the Western interlopers, and as fundamentally on other hand demanded 'a China enough only to assist in the exclusion of the West but not sufü- ciently strong to exclude Japan herself.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.