—109—
Farmers and town workers.Evidence regarding the attitude of farmers and town workers is divergent and naturally difficult to obtain. Opinion among foreigners and educated Chinese was to the effect that they were either hostile or indifferent to "Manchukuo". The farmer and worker is politically uneducated, usually illiterate, and normally takes little interest in the Government. The following reasons were advanced by witnesses for the agricultural populations being hostile to "Manchukuo", and were confirmed in some of the letters received from this class of person. The farmers have good grounds for believing that the new regime will lead to an increased immigration of Koreans, and possibly of Japanese. The Korean immigrants do not assimilate with the Chinese, and their methods of agriculture are different. While the Chinese farmer mainly grows beans, kaoliang and wheat, the Korean farmer cultivates rice. This means digging canals and dykes and flooding the fields. If there are heavy rains, the dykes built by the Koreans are liable to burst and flood neighbouring Chinese land, ruining the crops. There have also been constant quarrels in the past with Koreans over land ownership and rents. Since the establishment of "Manchukuo" the Chinese allege that the Koreans have often ceased to pay rent, that they have seized lands from the Chinese, and that the Japanese have forced the Chinese to sell their lands at an unfavourable price. The farmers near the railways and towns have suffered from orders forbidding the planting of kaoliang—a crop which grows to ten feet in height and favours the operations of bandits—within five hundred metres of railway lines and towns. The falling-off of the seasonal migration of labourers from China proper, due to the economic depression and accentuated to some extent by the political disturbances, continues. The public lands, usually available on terms to immigrants from China, have now been taken over by "Manchukuo".
Since September 18th, 1931, there has been an unparalleled growth of banditry and lawlessness in the countryside, partly due to disbanded soldiery and partly due to farmers who, having been ruined by bandits, have to take to banditry themselves for a living. Organised warfare, from which Manchuria, compared to the rest of China, had been free for many years, is now being waged in many parts of the Three Provinces between Japanese and "Manchukuo" troops and the scattered forces still loyal to China. This warfare naturally inflicts great hardships on the farmers, especially as the Japanese aeroplanes have been bombing villages suspected of harbouring anti-"Manchukuo" forces. One result has been that large areas have not been planted, and next year the farmer will find it harder than ever to pay his taxes. Since the outbreak of disorders, large numbers of the more-recently-established immigrants from China have fled back inside the Wall. These material reasons, when added to a certain ingrained dislike of the Japanese, caused many witnesses to tell us that the Chinese farmers, who constitute the overwhelming mass of the population of Manchuria, suffer from and dislike the new regime, and that their attitude is one of passive hostility.
As regards the townspeople, in certain places they have suffered from the attitude of Japanese soldiers, gendarmes and police. Generally speaking, the behaviour of the Japanese troops has been good, there being no widespread lootings or massacres, though we have received in our letters complaints of individual brutality. On the other hand, the Japanese have been vigorous in suppressing elements that they believed to be hostile. The Chinese allege that many executions have taken place, and also that prisoners have been threatened and tortured in Japanese gendarmerie stations.
It was, we were told, impossible to stimulate in the towns a show of popular enthusiasm for the inauguration ceremonies of "Manchukuo".
