27 NOVEMBER 1909, Page 1

The Peking correspondent of the Times gives in Tuesday's paper

some account of the proceedings of the new Provincial Assemblies in China. Within a fortnight of their birth some of the Assemblies have denounced many of the Central Government's favourite proposals. In the case of the Stamp- tax, for instance, fifteen Assemblies have declared that the tax is impracticable. The spirit of the Assemblies is said to be " iconoclastic and patriotic—in the sense of anti-foreign," and one is not surprised to learn that they are also without intelligent leadership or constructive policy. The duties of the Assemblies of course are, and will be for nine years, only consultative; they have been created to prepare the people for Constitutional government, and meanwhile in the provinces the "functions of government rest entirely with the officials." But the signs that the period of probation will end in the realisation of Constitutional government are far from reassuring. The correspondent says that ninety per cent. of the Manchus and at least seventy-five per cent. of the Chinese literati have no intention of upsetting the established order of things.