The expansion of China towards the south and south-west seems most probable, because there is here most natural wealth to develop, and because the circumstances are specially favourable: administrations guided by commercial principles, and populations too weak to resist immigration.[1] Nothing but the vigilant opposition of the Australian democracies has kept the Chinese from becoming a power on that more remote continent; and at one time within the last forty years the Chinamen actually in Victoria numbered something like 13 per cent of the adult male population.[2] It cannot be held, however, that the Chinese are debarred from gaining territory to the north or west. Even if we choose to regard the Corea and Thibet as already Chinese, there is Nepaul, which might easily be annexed on the Indian frontier if England were crippled or occupied; and there are parts of Turkestan which might be wrested under some similar conjuncture from Russia; or, more naturally still, China might first people and then occupy the provinces along the lower course of the Amoor, which she ceded very reluctantly under pressure, at a time when she was in dire need. There are those who believe that the Chinaman is likely to supersede Spaniard and Indian alike in parts of South America.[3] Without assuming that all of these possibilities are likely to be realised, there is surely a strong presumption that so great a people as the Chinese, and possessed of such enormous natural resources, will sooner or later
- ↑ " Necessity has made the law" (against emigration) "a dead letter." — Williams, Middle Kingdom, vol. i. p. 278 (c. 1883).
- ↑ In 1857 Victoria had a total male population of 297,547. Of these the Chinese numbered 34,874.—Hayter's Statistical Summary of Victoria from 1835-81 inclusive; Fairfax's Handbook to Australasia for 1859.
- ↑ Or, le Chinois, ce me semble, dominera un jour ce monde, qui des maintenant dépend cle lui.—Wiener, Pérou et Bolivie, p. 36.
