Commonwealth and Foreign
JAPAN AND FORMOSA
By WILLIAM TEELING
THE island of Formosa, two days' journey by boat, south from Japan, is now only rarely visited by foreigners. There is no ban on such visits, but when you ask for your ticket at a Japanese shipping office, you will first be asked what is the latest date on which you can go there ; when you have stated this, you are then usually informed that unfor- tunately all ships leaving before that date are fully booked.
The Japanese look on Formosa as the India of their Empire. The business people are pouring money into it, in order to make it the jumping-off ground for trade in the tropics. The military are pouring money into it to make it the jumping-off ground for attacks on South China ; and the navy are sur- rounding it with an added mystery, since they will allow no foreign ships, even in a storm, to anchor in their nearby naval base, the islands of the Pescadores. Formosa has an added interest when we wish to see how the Japanese would develop China and rule over the Chinese, were they to conquer any further large territories on the Asiatic mainland.
Formosa has been for forty-two years under Japanese rule and her population is almost entirely Chinese. Of all Japanese colonies, Formosa is the oldest ; yet today there are only in the whole island about 200 Japanese families settled on the land. The Japanese are the first themselves to admit that land colonisation in Formosa has been a complete failure ; they realise that the 5,00o,000 Chinese who live in the country are far harder workers than the Japanese and can live on so much less, that it is impossible for a Japanese peasant to compete on a level with a similar Chinese. Also the Japanese find the climate of Formosa too tropical for them to settle.
The position is not quite the same in regard to the towns ; here there are over zoo,000 Japanese, but most of them are in the position of clerks or Government employees. They used to run large numbers of small shops, specialising in goods and foods required by the Japanese. But today the Chinese have copied them in this as well, and are ousting their Japanese rivals.
Soon after Japan took over Formosa, she started to allow a drug traffic to be carried on in the island, but the traffic was sufficiently controlled to prevent most of the ordinary Chinese working classes getting the drugs. The people who were encouraged to take drugs were the sons of the wealthy Chinese upper classes, and this policy has been pursued, however un- officially, in Manchukuo in recent years, and no doubt will be continued in other parts of China. The object is to undermine the better-clEs; Chinese and gradually to get rid of families that might be leaders in opposition. Another method used in Formosa is to make it difficult for better-class Chinese children to get a higher education. When the children grow up, every- thing is done to prevent their parents starting them up in busi- nesses of their own ; and if it is a question of their succeeding to family businesses, it is again made indirectly difficult for them. As a result, I found several Chinese families of good position in Formosa with no sons ; later on I met the sons scattered about in different parts of China, where they were trying to start up a fresh life and where they had to pretend to their Chinese neighbours that they did not come from Formosa.
The reason for this is that Formosans are the most unpopular people in China. Large numbers of the Formosan Chinese coolie class have poured in to the nearby Chinese provinces and there carry on, openly in the streets, a trade in drugs and a consistent business in smuggling. This infuriates the Chinese authorities and better classes, who, when they arrest these men, immediately receive a visit from the Japanese Consul to say that they are Japanese subjects and must be released at once. As if this was not bad enough, we find large numbers of poor Chinese going over to Formosa and stopping there long enough to become Formosans, then they return to China and carry on their illegal but profitable trade, under the protection of their new nationality. This is one reason why there has been in the last few days a threatened pogrom of Formosans in Foochow and Amoy.
The Japanese Big Business men have in recent years been taking an intense interest in Formosa. They have only developed the Northern port of Keelung as a port of call from japan, but they have tremendously enlarged Takao in the South. There is a fine harbour here, and the small town is overlooked by a large hill. The defences are extremely strong and the air- base is a few miles behind the port. The Japanese say quite openly that they intend to make of Takao a second Hong-kong, and that in ten years it will be as large as Hong-kong and doing a similar trade. When we realise that through Hong-kong passes a quarter of the whole export and import trade of China, it can be realised what this boast means. From Takao they mean to develop the whole Japanese trade .with the Southern Pacific and the East Indies. The Mitsui Company have large tea plantations up and down the island ; other companies are interested in sugar ; the Government has a big lumber business ; and the ever-growing fishing trade of Japan, which employs over a million people, has one of its main centres in Keelung. But the most secret experiment in Formosa is with camphor trees. I found it quite impossible to find out much about what the Japanese are doing with regard to camphor in Formosa ; but they are doing a lot.
If the Industrialists are interested in developing Formosa, it is as nothing to the interest shown by the military authorities. Formosa is the only near approach for Japan to South China. Already within the last few days we see that aeroplanes took off from Takao before dawn and were steadily bombing Canton by 6 a.m. the same morning. The wealthy province of Fukien, almost exactly opposite Formosa, is however considered the main object of Japan's attentions for the near future. For some years, possibly with the idea of peaceful penetration, the Japanese have been building the most elaborate buildings in Fukien's two principal cities, Amoy and Foochow. They have a large Japanese population in both these cities. Within the last few days they have commenced evacuating as many Japanese subjects as possible, a sign that their penetration will not be peaceful, at any rate at present.
The province of Fukien used to be one of the richest in China until it came under the rule of one of the rebel armies a few years ago. It still, however, has some of the best roads in China, and the Japanese roads in Formosa cannot be said to be any better. It is interesting to talk to Chinese coolies and peasants in Fukien and to find out their reaction towards a Japanese invasion ; they have many means of judging what it would be like, since numbers of them have relatives who have been in Formosa. The Fukien peasant, when he is not inflamed by propaganda against the Japanese, will tell you that,• on the whole, he would not mind a bit being under Japanese rule ; for he feels it would be a steadier rule than that of a Chinese war-lord, and that on the whole he would have a better time. This can truthfully be said to be the general feeling amongst the five million Chinese inhabitants of Formosa ; they know that their standard of living is on the whole higher than that of their neighbours in China, and they know that in spite of that they are still able to meet any competition from Japanese peasants or workmen. They are paid regular wages for their manual labour, and they can keep these wages with no fear of bandits or of sudden arbitrary taxation. As long as they are allowed their national processions and plays they are quite content.
The Japanese military authorities intend that one day For- mosans shall consider themselves as completely Japanese, but they feel this may take fifty or a hundred years. In the mean- time they allow no Formosan Chinese to enter the Japanese army or even a militia, nor to take part in any form of defence of the island. They demand each year from the local Govern- ment so much money for defence, to be taken from taxation ; and they even insist that those Japanese who have been born in Formosa shall not have the leading positions ; these are to go to Japanese, properly born and educated in Japan itself.
There is no doubt that foreign companies trading in For- mosa are being gradually pushed out. Some people say that the reason for this is only Japan's desire to have no foreign competition, but it is also more than likely that it has much to do with the wish of the military to keep the prying eyes of foreigners away.
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