region of the Yangtze,[1] where we claim a sphere of influence. The fourth group consists of a single demand, that China shall not cede any harbour, bay or island to any Power except Japan. The fifth group, which was the most serious, demanded that Japanese political, financial, and military advisers should be employed by the Chinese Government; that the police in important places should be administered by Chinese and Japanese jointly, and should be largely Japanese in personnel; that China should purchase from Japan at least 50 per cent. of her munitions, or obtain them from a Sino-Japanese arsenal to be established in China, controlled by Japanese experts and employing Japanese material; that Japan should have the right to construct certain railways in and near the Yangtze valley; that Japan should have industrial priority in Fukien (opposite Formosa); and finally that the Japanese should have the right of missionary propaganda in China, to spread the knowledge of their admirable ethics.
These demands involved, as is obvious, a complete
- ↑ On this subject George Gleason, What Shall I Think of Japan? pp. 174–5, says: "This paragraph concerns the iron and steel mills at the city of Hanyang, which, with Wuchang and Hangkow, form the Upper Yangtze commercial centre with a population of 1,500,000 people. The Hanyeping Company owns a large part of the Tayeh iron mines, eighty miles east of Hangkow, with which there are water and rail connections. The ore is 67 per cent. iron, fills the whole of a series of hills 500 feet high, and is sufficient to turn out 1,000,000 tons a year for 700 years. [Probably an overstatement.] Coal for the furnaces is obtained from Pinghsiang, 200 miles distant by water, where in 1913 five thousand miners dug 690,000 tons. Japanese have estimated that the vein is capable of producing yearly a million tons for at least five centuries.… "Thus did Japan attempt to enter and control a vital spot in the heart of China which for many years Great Britain has regarded as her special trade domain." Mr. Gleason is an American, not an Englishman. The best account of this matter is given by Mr. Coleman, The Far East Unveiled, chaps. x.–xiv. See below, pp. 232–3.
