JAPAN AND THE "IRREPRESSIBLE EXPANSION" DOCTRINE
The population of China exclusive of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Thibet, roughly is placed at 400,000,000. The 1921 China Year Book gives it as 413,977,395. The population per square mile in this area is 270. Great areas of China are sterile and thinly populated; other large areas have had their productiveness reduced by deforestation and causes superinduced by deforestation, like erosion and floods. Roughly, old China in size is 3/5 the area of the United States. The population of China in that area is four times as great as the population of continental United States. China barely produces enough to sustain her population; the frequent famines show this.
Shantung Province, next to Chekiang, is the most densely populated region of China. The population of Shantung is 550 to the square mile, and parts of the province are mountainous, a density that is exceeded elsewhere only by Belgium. Whatever reasons Japan may have for wanting to keep a hold on Shantung, the reason hardly can be to get "room" there for Japanese to colonize. For Japanese to emigrate to a country, and an Asiatic country, too, where Japanese are under an economic disadvantage, and where the density of population is almost double that in Japan, seems to offer slight prospect of relief.
Manchuria as a whole is fertile and there is "room" there for many people and much agricultural development. Manchuria has belonged to China for 600 years. Manchuria has about 13,000,000 population, of whom all except about 300,000 are Chinese. The population per square mile is less than 40; which, however, is MORE THAN THE POPULATION DENSITY OF THE UNITED STATES. In recent years more Chinese have gone to settle in Manchuria; Chinese do not mind the cold, they are used to it; that is, those are who have inhabited the northern provinces of China proper. Since 1905, when the present "position" of Japan was established there,
[9]
